Incidentally, it seemed that troops had been withdrawn from the rebel right to strengthen those fighting Hancock and others, at the Confederate left, and Grant saw his opportunity to strike again for the Weldon track, and this is what he says in his Memoirs:--
"From our left, near the old line, it was about three miles to the Weldon Railroad. A division was ordered from the right of the Petersburg line to reinforce Warren, while a division was brought back from the north side of the James River to take its place. The road was very important to the enemy. The limits from which his supplies had been drawn were already very much contracted, and I knew that he must fight desperately to protect it. Warren carried the road though with heavy loss on both sides. He fortified his new position, and our trenches were then extended from the left of our main line to connect with his new one. Lee made repeated attempts to dislodge Warren's Corps, but without success and with heavy loss. As soon as Warren was fortified and reinforcement reached him, troops were sent south to destroy the bridges on the Weldon Railroad, and with such success that the enemy had to draw in wagons for a distance of about thirty miles all the supplies they thereafter got from that source. It was on the 21st that Lee seemed to have given up the Weldon Railroad as having been lost to him; but along about the 24th or 25th he made renewed attempts to recapture it. Again he failed, and with very heavy losses to him as compared with ours. On the night of the 20th, our troops on the north side of the James were withdrawn, and Hancock and Gregg were sent south to destroy the Weldon Railroad. They were attacked on the 25th, at Reams Station, and after desperate fighting a part of our line gave way, losing five pieces of artillery. But the Weldon Railroad never went out of our possession from the 18th of August to the close of the war."
The foregoing extract from the memoirs of the Lieutenant General has been made as an indication of his opinion of the magnitude of the work of August 18th in the progress of the war. The Army and Navy Journal of August 27th, after noting the extraordinary storm of the 15th, "Which swept away many tents and sutler's booths and filled the trenches with water" and the fierce cannonading on the 16th, also that of 1 a. m. of the 18th, lasting for two hours, has this to offer concerning the event which figures so largely in the annals of our Regiment:--