Lee was now in a very difficult position, apparently face to face with what would soon be the joint forces of Pope, McClellan, and probably another corps from Washington: the whole well fed, well armed, and certainly more than twice as strong as the united Confederates. But Jackson and Stuart multiplied their forces by skillful maneuvers and mystifying raids, and presently Stuart had his revenge for the affront he had suffered on the seventeenth. On the tempestuous night of the twenty-second he captured Pope's dispatches. On the twenty-fourth, at Jefferson, Lee and Jackson discussed the situation with these dispatches before them. Dr. Hunter McGuire, the Confederate staff-surgeon, noticed that Jackson was unusually animated, drawing curves in the sand with the toe of his boot while Lee nodded assent. Perhaps it was Jackson who suggested the strategic idea of that wonderful last week in August. However that may have been, Lee alone was responsible for its adoption and superior direction.

With a marvelous insight into the characters of his opponents, a consummate knowledge of the science and art of war, and—quite as important—an exact appreciation of the risks worth running, Lee actually divided his 55,000 men in face of Pope's 80,000, of 20,000 more at Washington and Aquia, and of 50,000 available reinforcements. Then, by the well-deserved results obtained, he became one of the extremely few really great commanders of all time.

The "bookish theorick" who, with all the facts before him, revels in the fond delights of retrospective prophecy, will never understand how Lee succeeded in this enterprise, except by sheer good luck. Only those who themselves have groped their perilous way through the dense, distorting fog of war can understand the application of that knowledge, genius, and character for war which so rarely unite in one man.

Lee sent Jackson north, to march at utmost speed under cover of the Bull Run Mountains, to cross them at Thoroughfare Gap, and to cut Pope's line at Manassas, where the enormous Federal field base had been established. Unknown to Pope, Longstreet then slipped into Jackson's place, so as to keep Pope in play till the raid on Manassas and threat against Washington would draw him northeast, away from McClellan at Aquia. The final move of this profound, though very daring, plan was to take advantage of the Federal distractions and consequent dispersions so as to effect a junction on the field of battle against a conquerable force.

Jackson moved off by the first gray streak of dawn on the twenty-fifth, and that day made good the six-and-twenty miles to Salem Church. Screened by Stuart's cavalry, and marching through a country of devoted friends on such an errand as a commonplace general would never suspect, Jackson stole this march on Pope in perfect safety. The next day's march was far more dangerous. Roused while the stars were shining the men moved off in even greater wonder as to their destination. But when the first flush of dawn revealed the Bull Run Mountains, with the well-known Thoroughfare Gap straight to their front, they at once divined their part of Lee's stupendous plan: a giant raid on Manassas, the Federal base of superabundant supplies. The news ran down the miles of men, and with it the thrill that presaged victory. Mile after mile was gained, almost in dead silence, except for the clank of harness, the rumble of wheels, the running beat of hoofs, and that long, low, ceaselessly rippling sound of multitudinous men's feet. Hungry, ill-clad, and worn to their last spare ounce, the gaunt gray ranks strained forward, slipped from their leash at last and almost in sight of their prey. So far they were undiscovered. But the Gap was only ten miles by airline from Pope's extreme right, and the tell-tale cloud of dust, floating down the mountain side above them, must soon be sighted, signaled, noted, and attended to. Only speed, the speed of "foot-cavalry," could now prevail, and not a man must be an inch behind. Close up, men, close up!—Close up there in rear!—Close up! Close up!

By noon the head of the column had already crossed those same communications which Pope had told his army to disregard in favor of the much more interesting enemy line of retreat. Little did he think that the man he had come to chase was about to burn the bridge at Bristoe Station and thus cut the line between the Federal front at Warrenton and the Federal base at Manassas. All went well with Jackson, except that some news escaped to Washington and Warrenton sooner than he expected. A Federal train dashed on to Washington before the rails could be torn up. The next two trains were both derailed and wrecked. But the fourth put all brakes down and speeded back to Warrenton. Jackson quickly took up a very strong position on the north side of Broad Run, behind the burnt railway bridge, and sent Stuart's troopers with two battalions of "foot-cavalry" to raid the base at Manassas, replenish the exhausted Confederate supplies, and do the northward scouting.

The situation of the rival armies on the night of the twenty-seventh forms one of the curiosities of war. Jackson was concentrating round Manassas Junction. Lee was following Jackson's line of march, but was still beyond Thoroughfare Gap. Between them stood part of Pope's army, the whole of which occupied an irregular quadrilateral formed by lines joining the following points: Warrenton Junction, Bristoe Station, Gainesville, and Thoroughfare Gap. Thirty miles northeast were the twenty thousand Federals who joined Pope too late. Thirty miles southeast the rear of McClellan's forces were still massing at Aquia. In Pope's opinion Jackson was clearly trapped and Lee cut off.

But when Pope began to close his cumbrous net the following day Jackson had disappeared again. Orders and counter-orders thereupon succeeded each other in bewildering confusion. McClellan could be left out: and a very good thing too, thought Pope, who wanted the victory all to himself, and whose own army greatly outnumbered Lee's and Jackson's put together. But Washington was nervous again; it contained the reinforcements; and it had suddenly become indispensable to Pope as an immediate base of supplies now that the base at Manassas had been so completely destroyed. Pope's troops therefore mostly drew east during the twenty-eighth, forming by nightfall a long irregular line, facing west, with its right beyond Centreville and its extreme left held by Banks's mauled divisions south of Catlett's Station. Meanwhile Jackson had slipped into place in the curve of Bull Run, facing southeast, with his left near Stone Bridge, his back to Sudley Springs, and his right open to junction with Lee, who was waiting for daylight to force the Gap against the single division left there on guard.

During the afternoon, while Jackson's tired men were lying sound asleep in their ranks, Jackson himself was roused to see captured orders which showed that some Federals were crossing his front. Reading these orders to his divisional commanders he immediately ordered one to attack and another to support. If the Federals concerned were exposing an unguarded flank they should be attacked at a disadvantage. If they were screening larger forces trying to join the reinforcements from Washington or Aquia, then they should be attacked so as to distract Pope's attention and draw him on before the Federal union became complete, though not before Lee had reached the new Bull Run position the following day. The attack was consequently made from the woods around Groveton not too long before dark. It resulted in a desperate frontal fight, neither side knowing what the other had in its rear or on its flanks. Again the Federals were outnumbered: twenty-eight against forty-five hundred men in action. But again they fought with the utmost resolution and drew off in good order. The strategic advantage, however, was wholly Confederate; for Pope, who thought Jackson must now be falling back to the Gap, at once began confusedly trying to concentrate for pursuit on the twenty-ninth—the very thing that suited Lee and Jackson best.

Early that morning the two-days' Battle of Second Manassas (or Second Bull Run) began with Pope's absurd attempt to pursue an army drawn up in line of battle. Moreover, Jackson's position was not only strong in itself but well adapted for giving attackers a shattering surprise. The left rested on Bull Run at Sudley Ford. The center occupied the edge of the flat-topped Stony Ridge. A quarter-mile in front of it, and some way lower down, were the embankments and cuttings of an unfinished railroad. On the right was Stuart's Hill, where Lee was to join by sending Longstreet in. The approaches in rear were hidden from the eyes of an enemy in front. The cuttings and embankments made excellent field works for the defense. And the forward edge of the Ridge was wooded enough to let counter-attackers mass under cover and then run down to surprise the attackers by manning the cuttings and embankments.

Sigel's Germans, supported by the splendid Pennsylvanians under Reynolds, advanced from the Henry Hill to hold Jackson till Pope could come up and finish him. The numbers were about even, with slight odds in favor of Jackson. But the shock was delivered piecemeal. Each part was roughly handled and driven back in disorder. And by the time Reynolds had come to the front Lee's advanced guard was arriving. Then eighteen thousand Federals marched in from Centreville under Reno, Kearny, and "fighting Joe Hooker," of whom we shall hear again. Pope came up in person with the rest of his available command, rode along his line, and explained the situation as founded on his ignorance and colored by his fancy. At this very moment Longstreet came up on Jackson's right. Reynolds went into action against what he thought was Jackson's extended right but what was really Longstreet's left. Meanwhile the Centreville troops attacked near Bull Run. But that dashing commander, Philip Kearny, was held up by Jackson's concentrated guns; so Hooker and Reno advanced alone, straight for the railroad line. The Confederates behind it poured in a tremendous hail of bullets, and the long dry grass caught fire. But nothing stopped Hooker till bayonets were crossed on the rails and the Confederate line was broken. Then the Confederate reserves charged in and drove the Federals back. No sooner was this seen than, with a burst of cheering, another blue line surged forward. Again the Confederate front was broken, but again their reserves drove back the Federals. And so the fight went on, with stroke and counterstroke, till, at a quarter past five, twelve hours after Pope's first men had started from the Henry Hill, his thirty thousand attackers found themselves unable to break through.

Pope wished to make one more effort to round up Jackson's supposedly open right. But Porter quite properly sent back word that it was far too strong for his own ten thousand. In reply Pope angrily ordered an immediate attack. But it was now too dark, and the battle ended for the day.

Strangely enough, Lee was also having trouble with his subordinate on the same flank at the same time, but with this difference, that Porter was right while Longstreet was wrong. Lee saw his chance of rolling up Pope's left and ordered Longstreet to do it. But, after reconnoitering the ground, Longstreet came back to say the chance was "not inviting." Again Lee ordered an attack. But Longstreet wasted time, looking for needlessly favorable ground till long after dark. Meanwhile the Federals were also feeling their way forward over the same ground to get into a good flanking position for next day's battle. So the two sides met; and it was past midnight when Longstreet settled down. Lee wanted a sword thrust. Longstreet gave a pin prick. We shall meet Longstreet again, in the same character of obstructive subordinate, at Gettysburg. But he was, for the most part, a very good officer indeed; and the South, with its scanty supply of trained leaders, could not afford to make changes like the North. The fault, too, was partly Lee's; for his one weak point with good but wayward subordinates was a tendency to let his sensitive consideration for their feelings overcome his sterner insight into their defects.

At noon on the fatal thirtieth of August, Pope, self-deluded and self-sufficient as before, dismayed his best officers by ordering his sixty-five thousand men to be "immediately thrown forward in pursuit of the enemy," whose own fifty thousand were now far readier than on the previous day.

Then the dense blue masses marched to their doom. Twenty thousand bayonets shone together from Groveton to Bull Run. Forty thousand more supported them on the slopes in rear, while every Federal gun thundered forth protectingly from the heights behind. The Confederate batteries were pointed out as the objective of attack. Not one glint of steel appeared between these batteries and the glittering Federal host. To the men in the ranks and to Pope himself victory seemed assured. But no sooner had that brave array come within rifle range of the deserted railroad line than, high and clear, the Confederate bugles called along the hidden edges of the flat-topped Ridge; when instantly the great gray host broke cover, ran forward as one man, and held the whole embankment with a line of fire and steel.

A shock of sheer amazement ran through the Federal mass. Then, knightly as any hero of romance, a mounted officer rode out alone, in front of the center, and, with his sword held high, continued leading the advance, which itself went on undaunted. The Confederate flank batteries crossed their fire on this devoted center. Bayonets flashed out of line in hundreds as their owners fell. Colors were cut down, raised high, cut down again. But still that gallant horse and man went on, unswerving and untouched. Even the sweeping volleys spared them both, though now, as the Federals closed, these volleys cut down more men than the cross-fire of the guns. At last the unscathed hero waved his sword and rode straight up the deadly embankment, followed by the charging line. "Don't kill him! Don't kill him!" shouted the admiring Confederates as his splendid figure stood, one glorious moment, on the top. The next, both horse and man sank wounded, and were at once put under cover by their generous foes.

For thirty-five dire minutes the fight raged face to face. One Federal color rose, fell, and rose again as fast as living hands could take it from the dead. Over a hundred men lay round it when the few survivors drew back to re-form. Pope fed his front line with reserves, who advanced with the same undaunted gallantry, but also with the same result. As if to make this same result more sure he never tried to win by one combined assault, wave after crashing wave, without allowing the defense to get its second wind; but let each unit taste defeat before the next came on. Federal bravery remained. But Federal morale was rapidly disintegrating under the palpable errors of Pope. Misguided, misled, and mishandled, the blue lines still fought on till four, by which time every corps, division, and brigade had failed entirely.

Then, at the perfect moment and in the perfect way, Lee's counterstroke was made: the beaten Federals being assailed in flank as well as front by every sword, gun, bayonet, and bullet that could possibly be brought to bear. Only the batteries remained on the ridge, firing furiously till the Federals were driven out of range. The infantry and cavalry were sent in—wave after wave of them, without respite, till the last had hurled destruction on the foe.

As at the First Bull Run, so here, the regulars fell back in good order, fighting to the very end. But the rest of Pope's Army of Virginia was no longer an organized unit. Even strong reinforcements could do nothing for it now. On the second of September, three days after the battle, its arrival at Washington, heralded by thousands of weary stragglers, threw the whole Union into gloom.

The first counter-invasion naturally followed. Southern hopes ran high. Bragg's invasion of Kentucky seemed to be succeeding at this time. The trans-Mississippi line still held at Vicksburg and Port Hudson. Richmond had been saved. Washington was menaced. And most people on both sides thought so much more of the land than of the sea that the Federal victories along the coast and up the Mississippi were half forgotten for the time being; and so was the strangling blockade. Lee, of course, saw the situation as a whole; and, as a whole, it was far from bright. But though the counter-invasion was now a year too late it seemed worth making. Maryland was full of Southern sympathizers; and campaigning there would give Virginia a chance to recuperate, while also preventing the North from recovering too quickly from its last reverse. Thus it was with great expectations that the Confederates crossed the Potomac singing Maryland, my Maryland!

But Maryland did not respond to this appeal. The women, it is true, were mostly Southern to the core and ready to serve the Confederate cause in every way they could. But the men, reflecting more, knew they were in the grip of Northern sea-power. Nor could they fail to notice the vast difference between the warlike resources of the North and South. Northern armies had been marching through for many months, well fed, well armed, and superabundantly supplied. The Confederates, on the other hand, were fewer in numbers, half starved, in ragged clothing, less well armed, and far less abundantly supplied in every way. A Northerner who fell sick could generally count on the best of medical care, not to mention a profusion of medical comforts. But the blockade kept medicines and surgical instruments out of the Southern ports; and the South could make few of her own. So, to be very sick or badly wounded meant almost a sentence of death in the South. Eighteen months of war had disillusioned Maryland. The expected reinforcements never came.

Lee had again divided his army in the hope of snatching victory by means of better strategy. On the thirteenth of September Jackson was bombarding the Federals at Harper's Ferry, Longstreet was at Hagerstown, and Stuart was holding the gaps of South Mountain.

The same day McClellan, whose whole army was at Frederick, received a copy of Lee's orders. They had been wrapped round three cigars and lost by a careless Confederate staff officer. Had McClellan forced the gaps immediately, maneuvered with reasonable skill, and struck home with every available man, he might have annihilated Lee. But he let the thirteenth pass quietly; and when he did take the passes on the fourteenth it cost him a good deal, as the Confederate infantry had reinforced Stuart. On the fifteenth Jackson took Harper's Ferry. On the sixteenth he joined Lee at Antietam. And on the seventeenth, when the remaining availables had also joined Lee, McClellan made up his mind to attack. "Ask me for anything but time," said the real Napoleon. The "Young Napoleon" did not even need the asking.

Antietam (so called from the Antietam Creek) or Sharpsburg (so called from the Confederate headquarters there) was one of the biggest battles of the Civil War; and it might possibly have been the most momentous. But, as things turned out, it was in itself an indecisive action, spoilt for the Federals, first, by McClellan's hesitating strategy, and then by his failure to press the attack home at all costs, with every available man, in an unbroken succession of assaults. He had over 80,000 men with 275 guns against barely 40,000 with 194 guns of inferior strength. But though the Federals fought with magnificent devotion, and though the losses were very serious on both sides, the tactical result was a mutual checkmate. The strategic result, however, was a Confederate defeat; for, with his few worn veterans, Lee had no chance whatever of keeping his precarious hold on a neutral Maryland.

October was a quiet month, each side reorganizing without much interference from the other, except for Stuart's second raid round the whole embattled army of McClellan. This time Stuart took nearly two thousand men and four horse artillery guns. Crossing the Potomac at McCoy's Ford on the tenth he reached Chambersburg that night, destroyed the Federal stores, took all the prisoners he wanted, cut the wires, obstructed the rails, and went on with hundreds of Federal horses. Next day he circled the Federal rear toward Gettysburg, turned south through Emmitsburg, and crossed McClellan's line of communications with Washington at Hyattstown early on the twelfth. By this time the Federal cavalry were riding themselves to exhaustion in vain pursuit; while many other forces were trying to close in and cut him off. But he reached the mouth of the Monocacy and crossed White's Ford in safety, fighting off all interference. The information he brought back was of priceless value. Lee now learned that McClellan was not falling back on Washington but being reinforced from there, and that consequently no new Peninsula Campaign was to be feared at present. This alone was worth the effort, risk, and negligible loss. Stuart had marched a hundred and twenty-six miles on the Federal side of the Potomac—eighty of them without a single halt; and he had been fifty-six hours inside the Federal lines, mostly within four riding hours of McClellan's own headquarters.

This second stinging raid roused the loyal North to fury; and by November a new invasion of Virginia was in full swing on the old ground, with McClellan at Warrenton, Lee at Culpeper, and Jackson in the Valley.

But McClellan's own last chance had gone. Late at night on the seventh he was sitting alone in his tent, writing to his wife, when Burnside asked if he could come in with General C. P. Buckingham, the confidential staff officer to the War Department. After some forced conversation Buckingham handed McClellan a paper ordering his supersession by Burnside. McClellan simply said: "Well, Burnside, I turn the command over to you." The eighth and ninth were spent in handing over; and on the tenth McClellan made his official farewell. Next day he was entraining at Warrenton Junction when the men, among whom he was immensely popular, broke ranks and swarmed round his car, cursing the Government and swearing they would follow no one but their "Old Commander." McClellan, with all his faults in the field, was a good organizer, an extremely able engineer, a very brave soldier, a very sympathetic comrade in arms, and a regular father to his men, whose personal interests were always his first care. The moment was critical. McClellan, had he chosen, might have imitated the Roman generals who led the revolts of Praetorian Guards. But he stepped out on the front platform of the car, held up his hand, and, amid tense silence, asked the men to "stand by General Burnside as you have stood by me." The car they had uncoupled to prevent his departure was run up and coupled again; and then, amid cheers of mournful farewell, they let him go.

General Ambrose E. Burnside was expected to smash Lee, take Richmond, and end the war at once. He was a good subordinate, but quite unfit for supreme command, which he accepted only under protest. Moreover, he was not supported as he should have been by the War Department, nor even by the Headquarter Staff. While changing his position from Warrenton to Fredericksburg he was hampered by avoidable delays. So when he reached Falmouth he found Lee had forestalled him on the opposing heights of Fredericksburg itself.

The disastrous thirteenth of December was dull, calm, and misty. But presently the sun shone down with unwonted warmth; the mists rolled up like curtains; and there stood 200,000 men, arrayed in order of battle: 80,000 Confederates awaiting the onslaught of 120,000 Federals.

On came the solid masses of the Federals, eighty thousand strong, with forty in support, amid the thunder of five hundred attacking and defending guns. The sunlight played upon the rising tide of Federal bayonets as on sea currents when they turn inshore. The colors waved proudly as ever; and to the outward eye the attack seemed almost strong enough to drive the stern and silent gray Confederates clear off the crest. But the indispensable morale was wanting. For this was the end of a long campaign, full of drawn battles and terrible defeats. Burnside was an unpopular substitute for McClellan; he was not in any way a great commander; and he was acting under pressure against his own best judgment. His army knew or felt all this; and he knew they knew or felt it. The Federals, for all their glorious courage, felt, when the two fronts met at Fredericksburg, that they were no more than sacrificial pawns in the grim game of war. After much useless slaughter they reeled back beaten. But they could and did retire in safety, skillfully "staffed" by their leaders and close to their unconquerable sea.

Lee could make no counterstroke. The Confederate Government had not dared to let him occupy the far better position on the line of the North Anna, from which a vigorous counterstroke might have almost annihilated a beaten attacker, who would have been exposed on both flanks, beyond the sure protection of the sea. Thus fear of an outcry against "abandoning" the country between Fredericksburg and the North Anna caused the Southern politicians to lose their chance at home. But without a decisive victory they could not hope for foreign intervention. So losing their chance at home made them lose it abroad as well.

Burnside was dazed by his defeat and the appalling loss of life in vain. But after five weeks of most discouraging inaction he tried to surprise Lee by crossing the Rappahannock several miles higher up. On the twentieth and twenty-first of that miserable January the Federal army ploughed its dreary way through sloughs of gluey mud under torrents of chilling rain. Then, when the pace had slackened to a funereal crawl, and the absurdly little chance of surprising Lee had vanished altogether, this despairing "Mud March" came to its wretched end. Four days later Burnside was superseded by one of his own subordinates, General Joseph Hooker, known to all ranks as "Fighting Joe Hooker."

Fredericksburg, the spell of relaxing winter quarters beside the fatal Rappahannock, and then the fatal "Mud March," combined to lower Federal morale. Yet the mass of the men, being composed of fine human material, quickly recovered under "Fighting Joe Hooker," who knew what discipline meant. Numbers and discipline tell. But disciplined numbers were not the only or even the greatest menace to the South. For here, as farther west, the Confederate Government was beginning to be foolish just as the Federal Government showed signs of growing wise. Lincoln and Stanton were giving Joe Hooker a fairly free hand just when Davis and Seddon (his makeshift minister of war) were using Confederate forces as puppets to be pulled about by Cabinet strings from Richmond. Here again (as later on at Chattanooga) Longstreet was sent away on a useless errand just when he was needed most by Lee. Good soldier though he was in many ways he was no such man as Stonewall Jackson; and, in this one year, he failed his seniors thrice.

It is true enough that the April situation of 1863 might well shake governmental nerves; for Richmond was being menaced from three points—north, southeast, and south: Fredericksburg due north, Suffolk southeast, Newbern south. Newbern in North Carolina was a long way off. But its possession by an active enemy threatened the rail connection from Richmond south to Wilmington, Charleston, and Savannah, the only three Atlantic ports through which the South could get supplies from overseas. Suffolk was nearer. It covered the landward side of Norfolk, which, with Fortress Monroe, might become the base of a new Peninsula Campaign. But Fredericksburg was nearest; nearest to Richmond, nearest to Washington, nearest to the main Southern force; and not only nearest but strongest, in every way strongest and most to be feared. "Fighting Joe Hooker" was there, with a hundred and thirty thousand men, already stirring for the spring campaign that was to wipe out memories of Fredericksburg, make short work of Lee, and end the war at Richmond.

Yet Longstreet cheerfully marched off, pleased with his new command, to see what he could do to soothe the Government by winning laurels for himself at Suffolk. On the seventeenth, just two weeks before the supreme test came on Lee's weakened army at Chancellorsville, Longstreet reported to Seddon that Suffolk would cost three thousand men, if taken by assault, or three days' heavy firing if subdued by bombardment. Shrinking from such expenditure of life or ammunition, Davis, Seddon, and Longstreet fell back on a siege, which, preventing all junction with Lee, might well have cost the ruin of their cause.

Lee and Jackson then prepared to make the best of a bad business along the Rappahannock, and to snatch victory once more, if possible, from the very jaws of death. The prospect was grimmer than before. Hooker was a better fighter than McClellan and wiser than Burnside or Pope. Moreover, after two years of war, the Union Government had at last found out that civilian detectives knew less about armies than expert staff officers know, and that cavalry which was something more than mere men on horses could collect a little information too. Hooker knew Lee's strength as well as his own. So he decided to hold Lee fast with one part of the big Federal army, turn his flank with another, and cut his line of supply and retreat with Stoneman's ten thousand sabers as well. The respective grand totals were 130,000 Federals against 62,000 Confederates.

So far, so good; so very good indeed that Hooker and his staff were as nearly free from care on May Day as headquarter men can ever be in the midst of vital operations. Hooker had just reason to be proud of the Army of the Potomac and of his own work in reviving it. He had, indeed, issued one bombastic order of the day in which he called it "the finest on the planet." But even this might be excused in view of the popular call for encouraging words. What was more to the point was the reestablishment of Federal morale, which had been terribly shaken after the great Mud March. Hooker's sworn evidence (as given in the official Report of Committee on the Conduct of the War) speaks for itself: "The moment I was placed in command I caused a return to be made of the absentees of the army, and found the number to be 2922 commissioned officers and 81,964 non-commissioned officers and privates. They were scattered all over the country, and the majority were absent from causes unknown."

On the twenty-eighth of April Stuart saw the redisciplined Federals in motion far up the Rappahannock, while next day Jackson saw others laying pontoons thirty miles lower down, just on the seaward side of Fredericksburg. Lee took this news with genial calm, remarking to the aide: "Well, I heard firing and was beginning to think it was time some of your lazy young fellows were coming to tell me what it was about. Tell your good general he knows what to do with the enemy just as well as I do." On the thirtieth it became quite clear that Hooker was bent on turning Lee's left and that he had divided his army to do so. Jackson wished to attack Sedgwick's 35,000 Federals still on the plains of Fredericksburg. But Lee convinced him that the better way would be to hold these men with 10,000 Confederates in the fortified position on the confronting heights while the remaining 52,000 should try to catch Hooker himself between the jaws of a trap in the forest round Chancellorsville, where the Federal masses would be far more likely to get out of hand. It was an extremely daring maneuver to be setting this trap when Sedgwick had enough men to storm the heights of Fredericksburg, when Stoneman was on the line of communication with the south, and when Hooker himself, with superior numbers, was gaining Lee's rear. But Lee had Jackson as his lieutenant, not Longstreet, as he was to have at Gettysburg.

Hooker's movements were rapid, well arranged, and admirably executed up to the evening of the first of May, when, finding those of the enemy very puzzling among the dense woods, he chose the worst of three alternatives. The first and best, an immediate counter-attack, would have kept up his army's morale and, if well executed, revealed his own greater strength. The second, a continued advance till he reached clearer ground, might have succeeded or not. The third and worst was to stand on his defense, a plan which, however sound in other places, was fatal here, because it not only depressed the spirits of his army but gave two men of genius the initiative against him in a country where they were at home and he was not. The absence of ten thousand cavalry baffled his efforts to get trustworthy information on the ground, while the dense woods baffled his balloons from above. On the second of May he still thought the initiative was his, that the Confederates were retreating, and that his own jaws were closing on them instead of theirs on him.

Meanwhile, owing to miscalculations of the space that had to be held in force, his right was not only thrown forward too far but presented a flank in the air. This was the flank round which Stonewall Jackson maneuvered with such consummate skill that it was taken on three sides and rolled up in fatal confusion. Its commander, the very capable General O. O. Howard, who perceived the mistake he could not correct, tried hard to stay the rout. But, as his whole reserve had been withdrawn by Hooker to join an attack elsewhere, his lines simply melted away.

The three days' battle that followed (ending on the fifth of May) was bravely fought by the bewildered Federals. Yet all in vain. Hooker was caught like a bull in a net; and the more he struggled the worse it became. At 6 P.M. on the second the cunning trap was sprung when a single Confederate bugle rang out. Instantly other bugles repeated the call at regular intervals through miles of forest. Then, high and clear on the silent air of that calm May evening, the rebel yell rose like the baying of innumerable hounds, hot on the scent of their quarry, with Jackson leading on. Nothing could stop the eager gray lines, wave after wave of them pressing through the woods; not even the gallant fifty guns that fought with desperation in defense of Hazel Grove, where Hooker was rallying his men.

For two days more the tide of battle ebbed and flowed; but always against the Federals in the end, till, broken, bewildered, and disheartened, they retired as best they could. Lee was unable to pursue. Longstreet's men were still missing; and so were many supplies that should have been forwarded from Richmond. There the Government clung to the fond belief that this mere victory had won the war, and that pursuit was useless. Thus Lee's last chance of crushing the invaders was taken from him by his friends.

At the same time the Southern cause suffered another irreparable loss; but in this case at the purely accidental hands of Southern men. Jackson's staff, suddenly emerging from a thicket as the first night closed in, was mistaken for Federal cavalry and shot down. Jackson himself was badly wounded in three places and carried from the field. He never heard the rebel yell again. Next Sunday, when the staff-surgeon told him that he could not possibly live through the night, he simply answered: "Very good, very good; it is all right." Presently he asked Major Pendleton what chaplain was preaching at headquarters. "Mr. Lacy, sir; and the whole army is praying for you." "Thank God," said Jackson, "they are very kind to me." A little later, rousing himself as if from sleep, he called out: "Order A. P. Hill to prepare for action! Pass the infantry to the front! Tell Major Hawks—" There his strength failed him. But after a pause he said quietly, "Let us cross over the river and rest under the shade of the trees." And with these words he died.



CHAPTER VII

GRANT WINS THE RIVER WAR: 1863

We have seen already how the River War of '62 ended in a double failure of the Federal advance on Vicksburg: how Grant and Sherman, aided by the flanking force from Helena in Arkansas, failed to catch Pemberton along the Tallahatchie; and then how Sherman alone, moving down the Mississippi, was defeated by Pemberton at Chickasaw Bayou, just outside of Vicksburg.

Leaving Memphis for good, Grant took command in the field again on the thirtieth of January. His army was strung out along seventy miles of the Mississippi just north of Vicksburg, so hard was it to find enough firm ground. The first important move was made when, in Grant's own words, "the entire Army of the Tennessee was transferred to the neighborhood of Vicksburg and landed on the opposite or western bank of the river at Milliken's Bend."

Grant, everywhere in touch with Admiral D. D. Porter's fleet and plentifully supplied with water transport of all kinds, thus commanded the peninsula or tongue of low land round which the mighty river took its course in the form of an elongated U right opposite Vicksburg. His farthest north base was still at Cairo; and the whole line of the Mississippi above him was effectively held by Union forces afloat and ashore. Four hundred miles south lay Farragut and Banks, preparing for an attack on Port Hudson and intent on making junction with the Union forces above.

Two bad generals stood very much in Grant's way, one on either side of him in rank—McClernand, his own second-in-command, and Banks, his only senior in the Mississippi area. McClernand presently found rope enough to hang himself. Our old friend Banks, who had not yet learnt the elements of war, though schooled by Stonewall Jackson, never got beyond Port Hudson, and so could not spoil Grant's command in addition to his own. Fortunately, besides Sherman and other professional soldiers of quite exceptional ability, Grant had three of the best generals who ever came from civil life: Logan, Blair, and Crocker. Logan shed all the vices, while keeping all the virtues, of the lawyer when he took up arms. Blair knew how to be one man as an ambitious politician and another as a general in the field. Crocker was in consumption, but determined to die in his boots and do his military best for the Union service first. The personnel of the army was mostly excellent all through. The men were both hardy and handy as a rule, being to a large extent farmers, teamsters, railroad and steamboat men, well fitted to meet the emergencies of the severe and intricate Vicksburg campaign.

Throughout this campaign the army and navy of the Union worked together as a single amphibious force. Grant's own words are no mere compliment, but the sober statement of a fact. "The navy, under Porter, was all it could be during the entire campaign. Without its assistance the campaign could not have been successfully made with twice the number of men engaged. It could not have been made at all, in the way it was, with any number of men, without such assistance. The most perfect harmony reigned between the two arms of the Service. There never was a request made, that I am aware of, either of the Flag-Officer or any of his subordinates, that was not promptly complied with." And what is true of Porter is at least as true of Farragut, who was the greater man and the senior of every one afloat.

Grant could take Vicksburg only by reaching good ground, and the only good ground was below and in rear of the fortress. There was no foothold for his army on the east bank of the Mississippi anywhere between Memphis and Vicksburg. This meant that he must either start afresh from Memphis and try again to push overland by rail or cross the swampy peninsula in front of him and circle round his enemy. A retirement on Memphis, no matter how wise, would look like another great Union defeat and consequently lower a public morale which, depressed enough by Fredericksburg, was being kept down by the constant naval reverses that opened '63. Circling the front was therefore very much to be preferred from the political point of view. On the other hand, it was beset by many alarming difficulties; for it meant starting from the flooded Mississippi and working through the waterlogged lowlands, across the peninsula, till a foothold could be seized on the eastern bank below Vicksburg. Moreover, this circling attack, though feasible, might depress the morale of the troops by the way. Burnside's disastrous "Mud March" through the January sloughs of Virginia, made in the vain hope of outflanking Lee, had lowered the morale of the army almost as much as Fredericksburg itself had lowered the morale of the people.

Through the depth of winter the army toiled "in ineffectual efforts," says Grant, "to reach high land above Vicksburg from which we could operate against that stronghold, and in making artificial waterways through which a fleet might pass, avoiding the batteries to the south of the town, in case the other efforts should fail." A wetter winter had never been known. The whole complicated network of bends and bayous, of creeks, streams, runs, and tributary rivers, was overflowing the few slimy trails through the spongy forest and threatening the neglected levees which still held back the encroaching waters. There was nothing to do, however, but to keep the men busy and the enemy confused by trying first one line and then another for two weary months. By April, writes Grant, "the waters of the Mississippi having receded sufficiently to make it possible to march an army across the peninsula opposite Vicksburg, I determined to adopt this course, and moved my advance to a point below the town."

Meanwhile, far below, Farragut and Banks were at work round Port Hudson: Farragut to good effect; Banks as usual. On the fourteenth of March Farragut started up the river with seven men-of-war and wanted the troops to make a demonstration against Port Hudson from the rear while the fleet worked its way past the front. But, just as Farragut was weighing anchor, Banks, who had had ample time for preparation, sent word to say he was still five miles from Port Hudson. "He'd as well beat New Orleans," muttered Farragut, "for all the good he's doing us."

Six of the vessels were lashed together in pairs, the heavier ones next the enemy, the lighter ones secured well aft so as to mask the fewest guns. This arrangement also gave each pair the advantage of having twin screws. Farragut's flagship, the Hartford, leading the line-ahead, suffered least from the dense smoke on that damp, calm, moonless night. But the others were soon groping blindly up the tortuous channel. The Hartford herself took the ground for a critical moment. But, with her own screw going ahead and that of the Albatross going astern, she drew clear and won through. Not so, however, the other five ships. Only the Hartford and Albatross reached the Red River. Yet even this was of great importance, as it completely cut off Port Hudson from all chance of relief. Farragut went on up the Mississippi to see Grant, destroying all riverside stores on the way. Grant was delighted, and, in the absence of Porter, who was up the Yazoo, sent Farragut an Ellet ram and some sorely needed coal.

Grant's seventh (and first successful) effort to get a foothold (from which to carry out one of the boldest and most brilliant operations recorded in the history of war) began with a naval operation on the sixteenth of April, when Porter ran past the Vicksburg batteries by night. Though Porter had the four-knot current in his favor he needed all his skill and moral courage to take a regular flotilla round the elongated U made by the Mississippi at Vicksburg, with such a bend as to keep vessels under more or less distant fire for five miles, and under much closer fire for nearly nine. At the bend the vessels could be caught end-on. For nearly five miles after that they were subject to a plunging fire. Porter led the way on board the flagship Benton. He had seven ironclads, of which three were larger vessels and four were gunboats built by Eads, a naval constructor with orignal ideas and great executive ability. One ram and three transports followed. Coal barges were lashed alongside or taken in tow. Some of these were lost and one transport was sunk. But the rest got through, though not unscathed. It seemed like a miracle to the tense spectators that any flotilla should survive this dash down a river of death flowing through a furnace. But the ironclads, magnificently handled, stood up to their work unflinchingly, fired back with regulated vigor, and took their terrific pounding without one vital wound.

Porter presently relieved Farragut, who went back to New Orleans. From this time, till after the fall of Vicksburg and Port Hudson, Porter commanded three flotillas, each with a base of its own: first, a flotilla remaining north of Vicksburg for work on the Yazoo; secondly, the main body between Vicksburg and Grand Gulf; thirdly, the Red River flotilla. This combined naval force commanded all lines of communication north, south, and west of Vicksburg, thus enabling Grant to concentrate entirely against the eastern side.

On the thirtieth of April Grant landed with twenty thousand men at Bruinsburg, on the east side of the Mississippi, about sixty miles below Vicksburg. A week later Sherman reinforced him to thirty-three thousand. Before the fall of Vicksburg his total strength reached seventy-five thousand. The Confederate total also fluctuated; but not so much. There were about sixty thousand Confederates in the whole strategic area between Vicksburg and Jackson (fifty miles east) when Grant made his first daring move, and about the same when Vicksburg surrendered. The scene of action was almost triangular; for it lay between the three lines joining Jackson, Haynes's Bluff, Rodney, and Jackson again. The respective lengths of these straight lines are forty, fifty, and seventy miles. But roundabout ways by land and water multiplied these distances, and much fighting and many obstacles vastly increased Grant's difficulties.

An army, however, that had managed to reach Bruinsburg from the north and west was assuredly fit for more hard work of any kind; while a commander who had left a safe base above Vicksburg and landed below, to live on (as well as in) an enemy country till victory should give him a new land line to the north, must, in view of the resultant triumph, be counted among the master-minds of war. Grant's marvelous skill in massing, dividing, forwarding, and concentrating his forces over a hundred miles of intricate passages between Milliken's Bend and Bruinsburg was only excelled by his consummate genius in carrying out this daring operation, forcing his way through his enemies, into full possession of interior lines, between their great garrison of Vicksburg and their field army from Jackson. He had to create two fronts in spite of his doubled enemy and live on that enemy's country without any land base of his own.

Grant knew the country was quite able to support his army if he could only control enough of it. Bread, beef, and mutton would be almost unobtainable. But chickens, turkeys, and ducks were abundant, while hard-tack would do instead of bread. Bird-and-biscuit of course became unpopular; and after weeks of it Grant was not surprised to hear a soldier mutter "hard-tack" loudly enough for others to take up the cry. By this time, however, he luckily knew that the bread ration was about to be resumed; and when he told the men they cheered as only men on service can—men to whom battles are rare events but rations the very stuff of daily existence. Coffee, bacon, beef, and mutton came next in popular favor when full rations were renewed. So when the Northern land line was reopened towards the end of the siege, and friends came into camp with presents from home, they found, to their amazement, that even the tenderest spring chicken was loathsome to their boys in blue.

Grant set to work immediately on landing. His first objective was Grand Gulf, which he wanted as a field base for further advance. But in order to get it he had to drive away the enemy from Port Gibson, which was by no means easy, even with superior numbers, because the whole country thereabouts was so densely wooded and so intricately watered that concerted movements could only be made along the few and conspicuous roads. On the first of May, however, the Confederates were driven off before their reinforcements could arrive. McClernand bungled brigades and divisions out of mutual support. But Grant personally put things right again.

By the third of May the bridge burnt by the enemy had been repaired and Grant's men were crossing to press them back on Vicksburg, so as to clear Grand Gulf. Grant's supply train (raised by impressing every horse, mule, ox, and wheeled thing in the neighborhood) looked more like comic opera than war. Fine private carriages, piled high with ammunition, and sometimes drawn by mules with straw collars and rope lines, went side by side with the longest plantation wagons drawn by many oxen, or with a two-wheeled cart drawn by a thoroughbred horse.

Before any more actions could be fought news came through that the Federals in Virginia had been terribly beaten by Lee, who was now expected to invade the North. The South was triumphant; so much so, indeed, that its Government thought the war itself had now been won. But Lincoln, Grant, and Lee knew better.

Swiftly, silently, and with a sure strategic touch, Grant marched northeast on Jackson, to make his rear secure before he turned on Vicksburg. On the twelfth he won at Raymond and on the fourteenth at Jackson itself. Here he turned back west again. On the sixteenth he won the stubborn fight of Champion's Hill, on the seventeenth he won again at Big Black River, and on the eighteenth he appeared before the lines of Vicksburg. With the prestige of five victories in twenty days, and with the momentum acquired in the process, he then tried to carry the lines by assault on the spot. But the attack of the nineteenth failed, as did its renewal on the twenty-second. Next day both sides settled down to a six weeks' siege.

The failure of the two assaults was recognized by friend and foe as being a mere check; and Grant's men all believed they had now found the looked-for leader. So they had. Like Lee and Stonewall Jackson in Virginia, Grant, with as yet inferior numbers (but with the immense advantage of sea-power), had seized, held, and acted on interior lines so ably that his forty-three thousand men had out-maneuvered and out-fought the sixty thousand of the enemy, beating them in detail on ground of their own besides inflicting a threefold loss. Grant lost little over four thousand. The Confederates lost nearly twelve thousand, half of whom were captured.

The only real trouble, besides the failure to carry the lines by assault, was with the two bad generals, McClernand and Banks. McClernand had promulgated an order praising his own corps to the skies and conveying the idea that he and it had won the battles. Moreover, he hinted that he had succeeded in the assault while the others had failed. This was especially offensive because Grant, at McClernand's urgent request, had sent reinforcements from other corps to confirm a success that he found nonexistent on the spot, except in McClernand's own words. To crown this, McClernand had sent his official order, with all its misleading statements, to be published in the Northern press; and the whole army was now supplied with the papers containing it. So gross a breach of discipline could not go unpunished; and McClernand was sent back to Springfield in disgrace.

Banks, unfortunately, was senior to Grant and of course independent of Farragut; so he could safely vex them both—Grant, by spoiling the plan of concerting the attacks on Port Hudson and Vicksburg in May; Farragut, by continual failure in cooeperation and by leaving big guns exposed to capture on the west bank. But things turned out well, after all. The guns were saved by the naval vessels that beat off a Confederate attack on Donaldsonville; and Grant's army was saved from coming under Banks's command by Banks's own egregious failure in cooeperation. This failure thus became a blessing in disguise: a disguise too good for Halleck, whose reprimand from Washington on the twenty-third of May shows what dangers lurked beneath the might-have-been. "The Government is exceedingly disappointed that you and General Grant are not acting in conjunction. It thought to secure that object by authorizing you to assume the entire command as soon as you and General Grant could unite."

In the end the Confederates suffered much more than the Federals from civilian interference; for the orders of their Government came through in time to confuse a situation that was already bad and growing worse. Between Porter afloat and Grant ashore Vicksburg was doomed unless "Joe" Johnston came west with sufficient force to relieve it in time. Johnston did come early enough, but not in sufficient force; so the next best thing was to destroy all stores, abandon Vicksburg, and save the garrison. The Government, however, sent positive orders to hold Vicksburg to the very last gasp. Johnston had meanwhile sent Pemberton (the Vicksburg commander) orders to combine with him in free maneuvering for an attack in the field. But Pemberton's own idea was to await Grant on the Big Black River, where, with Johnston's help, he thought he could beat him. Then followed hesitation, a futile attempt to harmonize the three incompatible schemes; and presently the division of the Confederates into separated armies, driven apart by Grant, whose own army soon dug itself in between them and quickly grew stronger than both.

Grant's lines, facing both opponents, from Haynes's Bluff to Warrenton, were fifteen miles long, which gave him one man per foot when his full strength was reached Pemberton's were only seven; and his position was strong, both towards the river, where the bluffs rose two hundred feet, and on the landward side, where the slopes were sharp and well fortified. Grant closed in, however, and pressed the bombardment home. Except for six 32-pounders and a battery of big naval guns he had nothing but field artillery. Yet the abundance of ammunition, the closeness of the range, and the support of his many excellent snipers, soon gave him the upper hand. Six hundred yards was the farthest the lines were apart. In some places they nearly touched.

All ranks worked hard, especially at engineering, in which there was such a dearth of officers that Grant ordered every West Pointer to do his turn with the sappers and miners as well as his other duty. This brought forth a respectful protest from the enormously fat Chief Commissary, who said he could only be used as a sap-roller (the big roller sappers shove protectingly before them when snipers get their range). The real sap-rollers came to grief when an ingenious Confederate stuffed port-fires with turpentined cotton and shot them into rollers only a few yards off. But after this the Federals kept their rollers wet; and sapped and burrowed till the big mine was fully charged and safe from the Confederate countermine, which had missed its mark.

While trying to blow each other up the men on both sides exchanged amenities and chaff like the best of friends. Each side sold its papers to the other; and the wall-paper newsprint of Vicksburg made a good war souvenir for both. There was a steady demand for Federal bread and Confederate tobacco. When market time was over the Confederates would heave down hand-grenades, which agile Federals, good at baseball, would heave uphill again before they exploded. And woe to the man whose head appeared out of hours; for snipers were always on the watch, especially that prince of snipers, Lieutenant H. C. Foster, renowned as "Coonskin" from the cap he wore. A wonderful stalker and dead shot he was a terror to exposed Confederates at all times; but more particularly towards the end, when (their front artillery having been silenced by Grant's guns) Coonskin built a log tower, armored with railway iron, from which he picked off men who were safe from ordinary fire.

On the twenty-first of June Pemberton planned an escape across the Mississippi and built some rough boats. But Grant heard of this; the flotilla grew more watchful still; and before any attempt at escape could be made the great mine was fired on the twenty-fifth. The whole top of the hill was blown off, and with it some men who came down alive on the Federal side. Among these was an unwounded but terrified colored man, who, on being asked how high he had gone, said, "Dunno, Massa, but t'ink 'bout t'ree mile." An immense crater was formed. But there was no practicable breach; so the assault was deferred. A second mine was exploded on the first of July. But again there was no assault; for Grant had decided to wait till several huge mines could be exploded simultaneously. In the meantime an intercepted dispatch warned him that Johnston would try to help Pemberton to cut his way out. But by the time the second mine was exploded Pemberton was sounding his generals about the chances of getting their own thirty thousand to join Johnston's thirty thousand against Grant's seventy-five thousand. The generals said No. Negotiations then began.

On the third of July Grant met Pemberton under the "Vicksburg Oak," which, though quite a small tree, furnished souvenir-hunters with many cords of sacred wood in after years. Grant very wisely allowed surrender on parole, which somewhat depleted Confederate ranks in the future by the number of men who, returning to their homes, afterwards refused to come back when the exchange of prisoners would have permitted them to do so.

That was a great week of Federal victory—the week including the third, fourth, and eighth of July. On the third Lee was defeated at Gettysburg. On the now doubly "Glorious Fourth" Vicksburg surrendered and the last Confederate attack was repulsed at Helena in Arkansas. On the eighth Port Hudson surrendered. With this the whole Mississippi fell into Federal hands for good. On the first of August Farragut left New Orleans for New York in the battle-scarred Hartford after turning over the Mississippi command to Porter's separate care.

Meanwhile the Confederates in Tennessee, weakened by reinforcing Johnston against Grant, had been obliged to retire on Chattanooga. To cover this retirement and make what diversion he could, Bragg sent John H. Morgan with twenty-five hundred cavalry to raid Kentucky, Indiana, and Ohio. Perplexing the outnumbering Federals by his daring, "Our Jack Morgan" crossed the Ohio at Brandenburg, rode northeast through Indiana, wheeled south at Hamilton, Ohio, rode through the suburbs of Cincinnati, reached Buffington Island on the border of West Virginia, and then, hotly pursued by ever-increasing forces, made northeast toward Pennsylvania. On the twenty-sixth of July he surrendered near New Lisbon with less than four hundred men left.

The Confederate main body passed the summer vainly trying to stem the advance of the Army of the Cumberland, with which Rosecrans and Thomas skillfully maneuvered Bragg farther and farther south till they had forced him into and out of Chattanooga. In the meantime Burnside's Army of the Ohio cleared eastern Tennessee and settled down in Knoxville.

But in the middle of September Longstreet came to Bragg's rescue; and a desperate battle was fought at Chickamauga on the nineteenth and twentieth. The Confederates had seventy thousand men against fifty-six thousand Federals: odds of five to four. They were determined to win at any price; and it cost them eighteen thousand men, killed, wounded, and missing; which was two thousand more than the Federals lost. But they felt it was now or never as they turned to bay with, for once, superior numbers. As usual, too, they coveted Federal supplies. "Come on, boys, and charge!" yelled an encouraging sergeant, "they have cheese in their haversacks!" Yet the pride of the soldier stood higher than hunger. General D. H. Hill stooped to cheer a very badly wounded man. "What's your regiment?" asked Hill. "Fifth Confederate, New Orleans, and a damned good regiment it is," came the ready answer.

Rosecrans, like many another man who succeeds halfway up, failed at the top. He ordered an immediate general retreat which would have changed the hard-won Confederate victory into a Federal rout. But Thomas, with admirable judgment and iron nerve, stood fast till he had shielded all the others clear. From this time on both armies knew him as the "Rock of Chickamauga."

The unexpected defeat of Chickamauga roused Washington to immediate, and this time most sensible, action. Grant was given supreme command over the whole strategic area. Thomas superseded Rosecrans. Sherman came down with the Army of the Tennessee. And Hooker railed through from Virginia with two good veteran corps. Meanwhile the Richmond Government was more foolish than the Washington was wise; for it let Davis mismanage the strategy without any reference to Lee. Bragg also made a capital mistake by sending Longstreet off to Knoxville with more than a third of his command just before Grant's final advance. The result was that Bragg found himself with only thirty thousand men at Chattanooga when Grant closed in with sixty thousand, and that Longstreet was useless at Knoxville, which was entirely dependent on Chattanooga. Whoever won decisively at Chattanooga could have Knoxville too. Davis, as the highest authority, and Bragg, as the most responsible subordinate, ensured their own defeat.

Chattanooga was the key to the whole strategic area of the upper Tennessee; for it was the best road, rail, and river junction between the lower Mississippi and the Atlantic ports of the South. It had been held for some time by a Federal garrison which had made it fairly strong. But toward the end of October it was short of supplies; and Hooker had to fight Longstreet at Wauhatchie in the Lookout Valley before it could be revictualed. When Hooker, Thomas, and Sherman were there together under Grant in November it was of course perfectly safe; and the problem changed from defense to attack. The question was how to drive Bragg from his commanding positions on Missionary Ridge and Lookout Mountain. The woods and hills offered concealment to the attack in some places. But Lookout Mountain was a splendid observation post, twenty-two hundred feet high and crested with columns of rock. The Ridge was three miles east, the Mountain three miles south, of Cameron Hill, which stood just west of Chattanooga, commanding the bridge of boats that crossed the Tennessee.

The battle, fought with great determination on both sides, lasted three days—the twenty-third, twenty-fourth, and twenty-fifth of November. Sherman made the flank attack on Missionary Ridge from the north and Thomas the frontal attack from the west. Hooker attacked the western flank of Lookout Mountain.

Thomas did the first day's fighting, which was all preliminary work, by advancing a good mile, taking the Confederate lines on the lower slopes of the Ridge, and changing their defensive features to face the Ridge instead of Chattanooga.

At two the next morning Giles Smith's brigade dropped down the Tennessee in boats and surprised the extreme north pickets placed by Bragg at the mouth of the South Chickamauga to cover the right of the Ridge. By noon Sherman's men were over the Tennessee ready to cooeperate with Thomas. Sherman had hidden his camp among the hills on the other side so well that his movements could not be observed, even from the commanding height of Lookout Mountain. The night surprise of Bragg's pickets and the drizzling rain of the morning prevented the Confederates from hearing or seeing anything of Sherman's attack in the early afternoon; so he found himself on the northern flank of Missionary Ridge before Bragg's main body knew what he was doing. When the Confederates did attack it was too late; and the twenty-fourth ended with Sherman entrenched against the flank on even higher ground than Thomas held against the center. Sherman's cavalry had meanwhile moved round the flank, on the lower level and much farther off, to cut Bragg's right rear connection with Chickamauga Station, whence the rails ran east to Cleveland, Knoxville, and Virginia.

Hooker's work this second day was to feel the Confederate force on Lookout Mountain while keeping the touch with Thomas, who kept the touch with Sherman. Mists hid his earlier maneuvers. He closed in successfully, handled his men to admiration, and gained more ground than either he or Grant had expected. Having succeeded so well he changed his demonstration into a regular attack, which became known as the "Battle above the Clouds." Step by step he fought his way up, over breastworks and rifle pits, felled trees and bowlders, through ravines and gullies, till the vanguard reached the giant palisades of rock which ramparted the top. The roar of battle was most distinctly heard four miles away, on Orchard Knob, where Grant and Thomas were anxiously waiting. But nothing could be seen until a sudden breeze blew the clouds aside just as the long blue lines charged home and the broken gray retreated. Then, from thirty thousand watching Federals, went up a cheer that even cannon could not silence.

At midnight Grant sent a word of encouragement to Burnside at Knoxville. He then wrote his orders for what he now hoped would be a completely victorious attack. The twenty-fifth of November broke beautifully clear, and the whole scene of action remained in full view all day long. Fearful of being cut off from their main body on Missionary Ridge the Confederates had left Lookout Mountain under cover of the dark. But by destroying the bridges across the Chattanooga River, which ran through the valley between the Mountain and the Ridge, they delayed Hooker till late that afternoon, thus saving their left from an even worse disaster than the one that overtook their center and their right.

Sherman had desperate work against their right, as Bragg massed every available gun and man to meet him. This massing, however, was just what Grant wanted; for he now expected Hooker to appear on the other flank, which Bragg would either have to give up in despair or strengthen at the expense of the center, which Thomas was ready to charge. But with Hooker not appearing, and Sherman barely holding his own, Grant slipped Thomas from the leash. The two centers then met hand to hand. But there was no withstanding the Federal charge. Back went the Confederates, turning to bay at their second line of defense. Here again they were overborne by well-led superior numbers and soon put to flight. Sheridan, of whom we shall hear again in '64, took up the pursuit. Bragg lost all control of his men. Stores, guns, and even rifles were abandoned. Thousands of prisoners were taken; and most of the others were scattered in flight. The battle, the whole campaign, and even the war in the Tennessee sector, were won.

Vicksburg meant that the trans-Mississippi South would thenceforth wither like a severed branch. Chattanooga meant that the Union forces had at last laid the age to the root of the tree.



CHAPTER VIII

GETTYSBURG: 1863

On the fifth of May we left Lee victorious in Virginia; but with his indispensable lieutenant, Stonewall Jackson, mortally wounded.

Though thoroughly defeated at Chancellorsville, Hooker soon recovered control of the Army of the Potomac and prepared to dispute Lee's right of way. Lee faced a difficult, perhaps an insoluble, problem. Longstreet urged him to relieve the local pressure on Vicksburg by concentrating every available man in eastern Tennessee, not only withdrawing Johnston's force from Grant's rear but also depleting the Confederates in Virginia for the same purpose. Then, combining these armies from east and west with the one already there under Bragg, the united Confederates were to crush Rosecrans in their immediate front and make Cincinnati their great objective. Lee, however, dared not risk the loss of his Virginian bases in the meantime; and so he decided on a vigorous counter-attack, right into Pennsylvania, hoping that, if successful, this would produce a greater effect than any corresponding victory could possibly produce elsewhere.

On the ninth of June a cavalry combat round Brandy Station, in the heart of Virginia, made Hooker's staff feel certain that Lee was again going up the Valley and on to Maryland. At one time, for want of supplies, Lee had to spread out his front along a line running eighty miles northwest from Fredericksburg to Strasburg. Hooker, on the keen alert, implored the Government to let him attack the three Confederate corps in detail. Success against one at least was certain. Lincoln understood this perfectly. But the nerves of his colleagues were again on edge; and no argument could persuade them to adopt the best of all possible schemes of defense by destroying the enemy's means of destroying them. They insisted on the usual shield theory of passive defense, and ordered Hooker to keep between Lee and Washington whatever might happen. This absurd maneuver was of course attended with all the usual evil results at the time. Equally of course, it afterwards drew down the wrath of the wiseacre public on their own representatives. But wiseacre publics never stop to think that many a government is forced to do foolish and even suicidal things in war simply because it represents the ignorance and folly, as well as the wisdom, of all who have the vote.

Yet both the loyal public and its Government had some good reasons to doubt Hooker's ability, even apart from his recent defeat; and Lincoln, wisest of all—except in applying strategy to problems he could not fully understand—felt almost certain that Hooker's character contained at least the seeds of failure in supreme command. "He talks to me like a father," said Hooker, on reading the letter Lincoln wrote when appointing him Burnside's successor. This remarkable letter, dated January 26, 1863, though printed many times, is worth reading again:

I have placed you at the head of the Army of the Potomac. Of course I have done this upon what appears to me to be sufficient reasons, and yet I think it best for you to know that there are some things in regard to which I am not quite satisfied with you. I believe you to be a brave and skillful soldier, which, of course, I like. I also believe you do not mix politics with your profession, in which you are right. You have confidence in yourself, which is a valuable, if not an indispensable, quality. You are ambitious, which, within reasonable bounds, does good rather than harm; but I think that during General Burnside's command of the army you have taken counsel of your ambition, and thwarted him as much as you could, in which you did a great wrong to the country and to a most meritorious and honorable brother officer. I have heard, in such way as to believe it, of your recently saying that both the army and the Government needed a Dictator. Of course it was not for this, but in spite of it, that I have given you the command. Only those generals who gain successes can set up dictatorships. What I now ask of you is military success, and I will risk the dictatorship. The Government will support you to the utmost of its ability, which is neither more nor less than it has done and will do for all commanders. I much fear that the spirit which you have aided to infuse into the army, of criticizing their commander and withholding confidence from him, will now turn upon you. I shall assist you as far as I can to put it down. Neither you nor Napoleon, if he were alive again, could get any good out of an army while such a spirit prevails in it. And now, beware of rashness, but with energy and sleepless vigilance go forward, and give us victories.

Then came Chancellorsville, doubts at Washington, interference by Stanton, ill-judged orders from Halleck, and some not very judicious rejoinders from Hooker himself, who became rather peevish, to Lincoln's alarm. So when, on the twenty-seventh of June, Hooker tendered his resignation, it was promptly accepted. With Lee in Pennsylvania there was no time for discussion: only for finding some one to trust.

Lee, as usual, had divined the political forces working on the Union armies from Washington and had maneuvered with a combination of skill and daring that exactly met the situation. Throwing his left forward (under Ewell) in the Shenandoah Valley he had driven Milroy out of Winchester on the fourteenth of June and next day secured a foothold across the Potomac. Then the rest of his army followed. It was so much stretched out (to facilitate its food supply) that Lincoln again wished to strike it at any vulnerable spot. But the Cabinet in general (and Stanton in particular) were still determined that the Union army should be their passive shield, not their active sword. On the twenty-fourth Ewell was already beginning to semicircle Gettysburg from the Cumberland Valley. On the twenty-eighth, the day on which Meade succeeded Hooker in the Federal command, the Confederate semicircle, now formed by Lee's whole army, stretched from Chambersburg on the west, through Carlisle on the north, to York on the east; while the massed Federals were still in Maryland, near Middletown and Frederick, thirty miles south of Gettysburg, and only forty miles northwest of nervous Washington.

Hooker's successor, George G. Meade, was the fifth defender of Washington within the last ten months. Luckily for the Union, Meade was a sound, though not a great, commander, and his hands were fairly free. Luckily again, he was succeeded in command of the Fifth Corps by George Sykes, the excellent leader of those magnificent regulars who fought so well at Antietam and Second Manassas. The change from interference to control was made only just in time at Washington; for three days after Meade's free hand began to feel its way along the threatened front the armies met upon the unexpected battlefield of Gettysburg.

Lee in Pennsylvania was in the midst of a very hostile population and facing superior forces which he could only defeat in one of two difficult ways: either by a sudden, bewildering, and unexpected attack, like Jackson's and his own at Chancellorsville, or by an impregnable defense on ground that also favored a victorious counter-attack and the subsequent crushing pursuit. But there was no Jackson now; and the nature of the country did not favor the bewildering of Federals who were fighting at home under excellent generals well served by a competent staff and well screened by cavalry. So the "fog of war" was quite as dense round Lee's headquarters as it was round Meade's on the first of July, when Lee found that his chosen point of concentration near Gettysburg was already occupied by Buford's cavalry, with infantry and some artillery in support. The surprise—and no very great surprise—was mutual. The Federals were found where they could stand on their defense in a very strong position if the rest of their army could come up in time. And Lee's only advantage was that, having already ordered concentration round the same position, he had a few hours' start of Meade in getting there.

Each commander had intended to make the other one attack if possible; and Meade of course knew that Lee, with inferior numbers and vastly inferior supplies, could not afford to stay long among gathering enemies in the hostile North without decisive action. The Confederates must either fight or retreat without fighting, and make their choice very soon. So, when the two armies met at Gettysburg, Lee was practically forced to risk an immediate action or begin a retreat that might have ruined Confederate morale.

Gettysburg is one of those battles about which men will always differ. The numbers present, the behavior of subordinates, the tactics employed, were, and still are, subjects of dispute. Above all, there is the vexed question of what Lee should or should not have done. We have little space to spare for any such discussions. We can only refer inquirers to the original evidence (some of which is most conflicting) and give the gist of what seems to be indubitable fact. The numbers were a good seventy thousand Confederates against about eighty thousand Federals. But these are the approximate grand totals; and it must be remembered that the Confederates, having the start, were in superior numbers during the first two days. On each side there was an aggrieved and aggrieving subordinate general, Sickles on the Federal side, Longstreet on the other. But Sickles was by far the less important of the two. In tactics the Federals displayed great judgment, skill, and resolution. The Northern people called Gettysburg a soldiers' battle; and so, in many ways, it was; for there was heroic work among the rank and file on both sides. But it most emphatically was not a soldiers' battle in the sense of its having been won more by the rank and file than by the generals in high command; for never did so many Federal chiefs show to such great advantage. No less than five commanded in succession between morning and midnight on the first day, each meeting the crisis till the next senior came up. They were Buford, Reynolds, Howard, Hancock, Meade. Hunt also excelled in command of the artillery; and this in spite of much misorganization of that arm at Washington. Warren was not only a good commander of the engineers but a good all-round general, as he showed by seizing, on his own initiative, the Little Round Top, without which the left flank could never have been held.

Finally, there is the great vexed question of what Lee should or should not have done. First, it seems clear that (like Farragut and unlike Grant and Jackson) he lacked the ruthless power of making every subordinate bend or break in every time of crisis: otherwise he would have bent or broken Longstreet. Next, it may have been that he was not then at his best. Concludingly, it may be granted to armchair (and even other) critics that if everything had been something else the results might not have been the same.

Lee, having invaded the North by marching northeast under cover of the mountains and wheeling southeast to concentrate at Gettysburg, found Buford's cavalry suddenly resisting him, as they formed the northwest outpost of Meade's army, which was itself concentrating round Pipe Creek, near Taneytown in Maryland, fifteen miles southeast. Gettysburg was a meeting place of many important roads. It stood at the western end of a branch line connecting with all the eastern rails. And it occupied a strong strategic point in the vitally important triangle formed by Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, and Washington. Thus, like a magnet, it drew the contending armies to what they knew would prove a field decisive of the whole campaign.

The Federal line, as finally held on the third of July, was nearly five miles long. The front faced west and was nearly three miles long. The flanks, thrown back at right angles, faced north and south. Near the north end of the front stood Cemetery Hill, near the south the Devil's Den, a maze of gigantic bowlders. Along the front the ground was mostly ridged, and even the lower ground about the center was a rise from which a gradual slope went down to the valley that rose again to the opposite heights of Seminary Ridge, where Lee had his headquarters only a mile away. The so-called hills were no more than hillocks, the ridges were low, and most slopes were those of a rolling country. But the general contour of the ground, the swelling hillocks on the flanks (Culp's Hill on the right, the Round Tops on the left) and the broad glacis up which attackers must advance against the center, all combined to make the position very strong indeed when held by even or superior numbers.

The first day's fight began when A. P. Hill's Confederates, with Longstreet's following, closed in on Gettysburg from the west to meet Ewell's, who were coming down from the north. Buford's Federal cavalry resisted Hill's advanced brigades successfully till Reynolds had brought the First Corps forward in support and ordered the two other nearest corps to follow at the double quick. Reynolds was killed early in the day; but not before his well trained eye had taken in the situation at a glance and his sure judgment had half committed both armies to that famous field.

The full commitment came shortly after, when Meade sent Hancock forward to command the three corps and Buford's cavalry in their attempt to stem the Confederate advance. Howard was then the senior general on the field, having taken over from Doubleday, who had succeeded Reynolds. But he at once agreed that such a strong position should be held and that Hancock should proceed to rectify the lines. This was no easy task; for Ewell's Confederates had meanwhile come down from the north and driven in the Federal flank on the already hard-pressed front. The front thereupon gave way and fell back in confusion. But Hancock's masterly work was quickly done and the Federal line was reestablished so well that the Confederates paused in their attack and waited for the morrow.

The Confederates had got as good as they gave, much to their disgust. Archer, one of their best brigadiers, felt particularly sore when most of his men were rounded up by Meredith's "Iron Brigade." When Doubleday saw his old West Point friend a prisoner he shook hands cordially, saying, "Well, Archer, I am glad to see you!" But Archer answered, "Well, I'm not so glad to see you—not by a damned sight!" The fact was that the excellent Federal defense had come as a very unpleasing surprise upon the rather too cocksure Confederates. Buford's cavalry and Reynolds's infantry had staunchly withstood superior numbers; while Lieutenant Bayard Wilkeson actually held back a Confederate division for some time with the guns of Battery G, Fourth U. S. Artillery. This heroic youth, only nineteen years of age, kept his men in action, though they were suffering terrible losses, till two converging batteries brought him down.

He was well matched by a veteran of over seventy, John Burns, an old soldier, whom the sound of battle drew from his little home like the trumpet-call to arms. In his swallow-tailed, brass-buttoned, old-fashioned coatee, Burns seemed a very comic sight to the nearest boys in blue until they found he really meant to join them and that he knew a thing or two of war. "Which way are the rebels?" he asked, "and where are our troops? I know how to fight—I've fit before." So he did; and he fought to good purpose till wounded three times.

Late in the evening Meade arrived and inspected the lines by moonlight. Having ordered every remaining man to hasten forward he faced the second day with well-founded anxiety lest Lee's full strength should break through before his own last men were up. His right was not safe against surprise by the Confederates who slept at the foot of Culp's Hill, and his left was in imminent danger from Longstreet's corps. But on the second day Longstreet marked his disagreement with Lee's plans by delaying his attack till Warren, with admirable judgment, had ordered the Round Tops to be seized at the double quick and held to the last extremity. Then, after wasting enough time for this to be done, Longstreet attacked and was repulsed; though his men fought very well. Meanwhile Ewell, whose attack against the right was to synchronize with Longstreet's against the left, was delayed by Longstreet till the afternoon, when he carried Culp's Hill.

This was the only Confederate success; for Early failed to carry Cemetery Hill, the adjoining high ground, which formed the right center, and the rest of the Federal line remained intact; though not without desperate struggles.

The third was the decisive day; and on it Meade rose to the height of his unappreciated skill. This was the first great battle in which all the chief Federals worked so well together and the first in which the commander-in-chief used reserves with such excellent effect, throwing them in at exactly the right moment and at the proper place. But these indispensable qualities were not of the kind that the public wanted to acclaim, or, indeed, of the kind that they could understand.

Meade was determined to clear his flanks. So he began at dawn to attack Ewell on Culp's Hill and kept on doggedly till, after four hours of strenuous fighting, he had driven him off. By this time Meade saw that Lee was not going to press home any serious attack against the Round Tops and Devil's Den on the left. So the main interest of the whole battle shifted to the center of the field, where Lee was massing for a final charge. The idea had been to synchronize three cooeperating movements against Meade's whole position. His left was to have been held by a demonstration in force by Longstreet against the Devil's Den and Round Tops, while Ewell held Culp's Hill, which seemed to be at his mercy, and which would flank any Federal retreat. At the same time Meade's center was to have been rushed by Pickett's fresh division supported by three attached brigades. But though the central force was ready before nine o'clock it never stepped off till three; so great was Longstreet's delay in ordering Pickett's advance. Meanwhile the Federals had made Culp's Hill quite safe against Ewell. So all depended now on the one last desperate assault against the Federal center.

This immortal assault is known as Pickett's Charge because it was made by Pickett's division of Longstreet's corps supported by three brigades from Hill's—Wilcox's, Perry's, and Pettigrew's. The whole formed a mass of about ten thousand men. If they broke the Federal line in two, then every supporting Confederate was to follow, while the rest turned the flanks. If they failed, then the battle must be lost.

Hour after hour passed by. But it was not till well past one that Longstreet opened fire with a hundred and forty guns. Hunt had seventy-seven ready to reply. But after firing for half an hour he ceased, wishing to reserve his ammunition for use against the charging infantry. This encouraged the Confederate gunners, who thought they had silenced him. They then continued for some time, preparing the way for the charge, but firing too high and doing little execution against the Federal infantry, who were lying down, mostly under cover. Hunt's guns were more exposed and formed better targets; so some of them suffered severely: none more than those of Battery A, Fourth U.S. Artillery. This gallant battery had three of its limbers blown up and replaced. Wheels were also smashed to pieces and guns put out of action, till only a single gun, with men enough to handle it, was left with only a single officer. This heroic young lieutenant, Alonzo H. Cushing (brother to the naval Cushing who destroyed the Albemarle), then ran his gun up to the fence and fired his last round through it into Pickett's men as he himself fell dead.

Pickett advanced at three o'clock, to the breathless admiration of both friend and foe. He had a mile of open ground to cover. But his three lines marched forward as steadily and blithely as if the occasion was a gala one and they were on parade. The Confederate bombardment ceased. The Federal guns and rifles held their fire. Fate hung in silence on those gallant lines of gray. Then the Federal skirmishers down in the valley began fitfully firing; and the waiting masses on the Federal slopes began to watch more intently still. "Here they come! Here comes the infantry!" The blue ranks stirred a little as the men felt their cartridge boxes and the sockets of their bayonets. The calm warnings of the officers could be heard all down the line of Gibbon's magnificent division, which stood straight in Pickett's path. "Steady, men, steady! Don't fire yet!"

For a very few, tense minutes Pickett's division disappeared in an undulation of the ground. Then, at less than point-blank range, it seemed to spring out of the very earth, no longer in three lines but one solid mass of rushing gray, cresting, like a tidal wave, to break in fury on the shore. Instantly, as if in answer to a single word, Hunt's guns and Gibbon's rifles crashed out together, and shot, shell, canister, and bullet cut gaping wounds deep into the dense gray ranks. Still, the wave broke; and, from its storm-blown top, one furious tongue surged over the breastwork and through the hedge of bayonets. It came from Armistead's brigade of stark Virginians. He led it on; and, with a few score men, reached the highwater mark of that last spring tide.

When he fell the tide of battle turned; turned everywhere upon that stricken field; turned throughout the whole campaign; turned even in the war itself.

As Pickett's men fell back they were swept by scythe-like fire from every gun and rifle that could mow them down. Not a single mounted officer remained; and of all the brave array that Pickett led three-fourths fell killed or wounded. The other fourth returned undaunted still, but only as the wreckage of a storm.



Lee's loss exceeded forty per cent of his command. Meade's loss fell short of thirty. But Meade was quite unable to pursue at once when Lee retired on the evening of the fourth. The opposing cavalry, under Pleasonton and Stuart respectively, had fought a flanking battle of their own, but without decisive result. So Lee could screen his retreat to the Potomac, where, however, his whole supply train might have been cut off if its escort under the steadfast Imboden had not been reinforced by every teamster who could pull a trigger.

Gettysburg and Vicksburg, coming together, of course raised the wildest expectations among the general public, expectations which found an unworthy welcome at Government headquarters, where Halleck wrote to Meade on the fourteenth: "The escape of Lee's army has created great dissatisfaction in the mind of the President." Meade at once replied: "The censure is, in my judgment, so undeserved that I most respectfully ask to be immediately relieved from the command of this army." Wiser counsels thereupon prevailed.

Lee and Meade maneuvered over the old Virginian scenes of action, each trying to outflank the other, and each being hampered by having to send reinforcements to their friends in Tennessee, where, as we have seen already, Bragg and Rosecrans were now maneuvering in front of Chattanooga. In October (after the Confederate victory of Chickamauga) Meade foiled Lee's attempt to bring on a Third Manassas. The campaign closed at Mine Run, where Lee repulsed Meade's attempted surprise in a three-day action, which began on the twenty-sixth of November, the morrow of Grant's three days at Chattanooga.

From this time forward the South was like a beleaguered city, certain to fall if not relieved, unless, indeed, the hearts of those who swayed the Northern vote should fail them at the next election.



CHAPTER IX

FARRAGUT AND THE NAVY: 1863-4

The Navy's task in '63 was complicated by the many foreign vessels that ran only between two neutral ports but broke bulk into blockade-runners at their own port of destination. For instance, a neutral vessel, with neutral crew and cargo, would leave a port in Europe for a neutral port in America, say, Nassau in the Bahamas or Matamoras on the Rio Grande. She could not be touched of course at either port or anywhere inside the three-mile limit. But international law accepted the doctrine of continuous voyage, by which contraband could be taken anywhere on the high seas, provided, of course, that the blockader could prove his case. If, for example, there were ten times as many goods going into Matamoras as could possibly be used through that port by Mexico, then the presumption was that nine-tenths were contraband. Presumption becoming proof by further evidence, the doctrine of continuous voyage could be used in favor of the blockaders who stopped the contraband at sea between the neutral ports. The blockade therefore required a double line of operation: one, the old line along the Southern coast, the other, the new line out at sea, and preferably just beyond the three-mile limit outside the original port of departure, so as to kill the evil at its source. Nassau and Matamoras gave the coast blockade plenty of harassing work; Nassau because it was "handy to" the Atlantic ports, Matamoras because it was at the mouth of the Rio Grande, over the shoals of which the Union warships could not go to prevent contraband crossing into Texas, thence up to the Red River, down to the Mississippi (between the Confederate strongholds of Vicksburg and Port Hudson) and on to any other part of the South. But what may be called the high-seas blockade was no less harassing, complicated as it was by the work of Confederate raiders.

The coast blockade of '63 was marked by two notable ship duels and three fights round Charleston, then, as always, a great storm center of the war. At the end of January two Confederate gunboats under Commodore Ingraham attacked the blockading flotilla of Charleston, forced the Mercedita to surrender, badly mauled the Keystone State, and damaged the Quaker City. But, though some foreign consuls and all Charleston thought the blockade had been raised for the time being, it was only bent, not broken.

At the end of February the Union monitor Montauk destroyed the Confederate privateer Nashville near Fort McAllister on the Ogeechee River in Georgia. In April nine Union monitors steamed in to test the strength of Charleston; but, as they got back more than they could give, Admiral Du Pont wisely decided not to try the fight-to-a-finish he had meant to make next morning. Wassaw Sound in Georgia was the scene of a desperate duel on the seventeenth of June, when the Union monitor Weehawken captured the old blockade-runner Fingal, which had been converted into the new Confederate ram Atlanta. The third week in August witnessed another bombardment of Charleston, this time on a larger scale, for a longer time, and by military as well as naval means. But Charleston remained defiant and unconquered both this year and the next.

Confederate raiders were at work along the trade routes of the world in '63, doing much harm by capture and destruction, and even more by shaking the security of the American mercantile marine. American crews were hard to get when so many hands were wanted for other war work; and American vessels were increasingly apt to seek the safety of a neutral flag.

Slowly, and with much perverse interference to overcome in the course of its harassing duties, the Union navy was getting the strangle-hold that killed the sea-girt South. By '64 the North had secured this strangle-hold; and nothing but foreign intervention or the political death of the Northern War Party could possibly shake it off. The South was feeling its practical enislement as never before. The strong right arm of the Union navy held it fast at every point but three—Wilmington, Charleston, and Mobile; and round these three the stern blockaders grew stronger every day. The Sabine Pass and Galveston also remained in Southern hands; and the border town of Matamoras still imported contraband. But these other three points were closely watched; and the greatly lessened contraband that did get through them now only served the western South, which had been completely severed from the eastern South by the fall of Vicksburg and Port Hudson. The left arm of the Union navy now held the whole line of the Mississippi, while the gripping hand held all the tributary streams—Ohio, Cumberland, and Tennessee—from which the Union armies were to invade, divide, and devastate the eastern South this year.

Several Southern raiders were still at large in '64. But the most famous or notorious three have each their own year of glory. The Florida belongs to '63, the Shenandoah to '65. So the one great raiding story we have now to tell is that of the Alabama, the greatest of them all.

The Alabama was a beautiful thousand-ton wooden barkentine, built by the Lairds at Birkenhead in '62, with standing rigging of wire, a single screw driven by two horizontal three-hundred horse power engines, coal room for three hundred and fifty tons, eight good guns, the heaviest a hundred-pound rifle, and a maximum crew of one hundred and forty-nine—all ranks and ratings—under Captain Raphael Semmes, late U. S. N. Semmes was not only a very able officer but an accomplished lawyer, well posted on belligerent and neutral rights at sea.

For nearly two years the Alabama roved the oceans of the Old World and the New, taking sixty-six Union vessels valued at seven million dollars, spreading the terror of her name among all the merchantmen that flew the Stars and Stripes, and infuriating the Navy by the wonderful way in which she contrived to escape every trap it set for her. She was designed for speed rather than for fighting, and, with her great spread of canvas, could sometimes work large areas under sail. But, even so, her runs, captures, and escapes formed a series of adventures that no mere luck could have possibly performed with a fluctuating foreign crew commanded by ex-officers of the Navy. Her wanderings took her through nearly a hundred degrees of latitude, from the coast of Scotland to St. Paul Island, south of the Indian Ocean, also through more than two hundred degrees of longitude, from the Gulf of Mexico to the China Sea. She captured "Yankees" within one day's steaming of the New York Navy Yard as well as in the Straits of Sunda. West of the Azores and off the coast of Brazil her captures came so thick and fast that they might have almost been a flock of sheep run down there by a wolf. Finally, to fill the cup of wrath against her, she had sunk a blockader off the coast of Texas, given the slip to a Union man-of-war at the Cape of Good Hope, and kept the Navy guessing her unanswered riddles for two whole years.