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The raid had failed, and with the return of spring, the Union Army was closing in around Richmond, which made it an easier matter for Betty Van Lew to communicate with the Union generals, especially with General Grant, through his Chief of Secret Service. As the weary months wore away, more than once the Spy was in an agony of suspense, when it seemed as if some one of her plots was about to bring a revelation of her secret activities; as if disclosure by some traitor was inevitable; but in every case she was saved from danger, and was able to continue her work for the Union.

And now the Confederate forces were ransacking the South in search of horses, of which they were sorely in need. The Spy quickly hid her one remaining animal in the smoke-house, but it was not safe there. Confederate agents were prowling about the city, searching every building in which a horse could be secreted. In the dead of night Betty Van Lew led her steed, with feet wrapped in cloths to prevent noise, from the smoke-house into the old mansion itself, and stabled it in the study, where she had covered the floor with a thick layer of straw to deaden any sound of stamping hoofs. And the horse in his palatial residence was not discovered.

General Grant was now at the head of all the armies of the United States, and to him was given the duty of attacking Lee. General Sherman was at the head of a large force in the West, and his duty was to crush the force of General Johnston.

On the fourth of May, 1864, each general began his task. Sherman attacked Johnston, and step by step drove him through the mountains to Atlanta, where Johnston was removed, and his army from that time was led by General Hood. After trying in vain to beat Sherman, he turned and started toward Tennessee, hoping to draw Sherman after him. But he did not succeed; Sherman sent Thomas, the “Rock of Chickamauga,” to deal with Hood, and in December he destroyed Hood’s army in a terrible battle at Nashville. Meanwhile Sherman started to march from Atlanta to the sea, his army advancing in four columns, covering a stretch of country miles wide. They tore up the railroads, destroyed the bridges, and finally occupied Savannah. There Sherman stayed for a month, during which his soldiers became impatient. Whenever he passed them they would shout: “Uncle Billy, I guess Grant is waiting for us in Richmond!” And on the first of February they resumed their march to North Carolina.

Grant, meanwhile, had begun his attack on Lee, on the same day that Sherman had marched against Johnston. Starting from a place called Culpepper Court House, Grant’s army entered the Wilderness, a tract of country covered with a dense growth of oak and pine, and after much hard fighting closed in around Richmond, laying siege to Petersburg. Bravely Lee and his gallant men resisted the Union forces until April, 1865, when, foreseeing the tragic end ahead, Lee left Richmond and marched westward. Grant followed, and on the ninth of April Lee surrendered his army at Appomattox Court House. Johnston surrendered to Sherman near Raleigh, in North Carolina, about two weeks later, and in May Jefferson Davis was taken prisoner.

This ended the war. The Confederacy fell to pieces, and the Union was saved. “In the hearts of all Union sympathizers was a passionate exultation that the United States was once again under one government; but what a day of sorrowing was that for loyal Southerners!”

It is said that on Sunday, the second of April, when the end was in sight, children took their places in the Sunday Schools, and congregations gathered as usual in the churches, united in their fervent prayers for their country and their soldiers. The worshipping congregation of St. Paul’s Church was disturbed by the sight of a messenger who walked up the middle aisle to the pew where Jefferson Davis was sitting, spoke hastily to him, then went briskly out of the church. What could it mean?