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VOICE ONE:

THE MAKING OF A NATION -- a program in Special English.

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The president answered, "Ask General Grant. "

"General Grant will not tell us," said the reporters. Said Lincoln, "He will not tell me, either. "

The final Union campaign of the Civil War began on May third, eighteen sixty-four.

After two days of marching, the Army of the Potomac reached the wilderness. It was a thickly-wooded area west of Fredericksburg, Virginia. That was where the Union army had lost a battle to the Confederates one year before. That was where the two armies would fight again.

VOICE ONE:

The battle quickly became a blind struggle. The woods were thick. The smoke was heavy. The soldiers could not see each other until they were very close. Shells set the trees on fire. The wounded could not escape the flames. Their screams filled

the air.

After two days, General Grant decided that the wilderness was not the place to fight Robert E. Lee. He wanted to get around the end of Lee's army. He wanted to fight in the open, where he could use his artillery. So he began to march his men toward

a place called Spotsylvania Court House.

VOICE TWO:

Lee moved his men as fast as Grant. When the Union Army got to Spotsylvania, the Confederates were waiting behind walls of earth and stone.

For several more days, the two armies fought. At times, they were so close they had no time to load and fire their guns. So they used their guns to hit each other.

The Confederate line bent. But it never broke. Once again, Lee had stopped the Union Army.

Grant refused to accept defeat. He said he would fight to the finish, if it took all summer. Once again, he ordered his men to march around the end of Lee's line. Lee quickly pulled his men back to a place called Cold Harbor, not far from Richmond.

There they waited.

VOICE ONE:

As he had done in the wilderness and at Spotsylvania, Grant ordered his men to attack hard. It was a slaughter. In less than an hour, seven thousand Union soldiers fell dead or wounded.

Grant finally stopped the attack. The Union soldiers returned to their lines. They left behind hundreds of wounded men.

For four days, the wounded lay on the battlefield crying for help, for water. Men who tried to rescue them were shot down. Finally, Grant and Lee agreed on a ceasefire to take care of the wounded and bury the dead. It was too late for most of the wounded. They had died.

VOICE TWO:

The battle at Cold Harbor ended one month of fighting for the Army of the Potomac. The campaign had brought it almost to the edge of Richmond, the Confederate capital. But Grant had paid a terrible price: more than fifty thousand dead and wounded.

Confederate losses were much lighter: about twenty thousand.

General Grant was beginning to learn an important lesson of the war. The methods of defense had improved much more than the methods of attack.

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VOICE ONE:

You have been listening to the Special English program, THE MAKING OF A NATION. Your narrators were Larry West and Maurice Joyce. Our program was written by Frank Beardsley.