"Your President tells me that his soldiers will do all that pluck and muscle, endurance and dogged courage, dash and red-hot patriotism can accomplish. And yet his view is not sanguine. A sad undertone I caught in his voice. He says your war will be long and bloody—"

"Yes—I know," Dick broke in, "but nobody agrees with him. We'll show old Jeff what we can do, if he'll just give us one chance—that's all we ask—just one chance. Read that editorial in the Richmond Examiner—"

He thrust a copy of the famous yellow journal of the South into Socola's hand and pointed to a marked paragraph:

"From mountain top and valleys to the shores of the seas there is one wild shout of fierce resolve to capture Washington City at all and every human hazard!"

The North was marching southward with ropes and handcuffs with which to end in triumph their holiday excursion on July 4. The South was marching to meet them with eager pride, each man afraid the fight would be over before he could reach the front to fire a single shot. And behind each gay regiment of scornful men marched the white silent figure of Death.



CHAPTER XV

THE HOUSE ON CHURCH HILL

As Socola left his room at the Spotswood the following night, a stranger met him at the turn of the dimly lighted corridor.

"Signor Socola, I believe?"

"At your service."

"I know some mutual friends in Washington connected with the Sardinian Ministry—"

"I'm just starting for a stroll through the city," Socola interrupted. "Will you join me?"

"With pleasure. As I am well acquainted with the streets of Richmond, allow me to be your guide."

Socola followed with a nod of approval. Their walk led to the highest of the city's seven hills. But few were stirring at this hour—half-past seven. The people were busy at supper.

The two men paused at the gate of a stately, old-fashioned mansion in the middle of a spacious lawn. The odor of sweet pinks filled the air. The rose trellis and elaborate scheme of flower beds and the boxwood hedges told the story of wealth and culture and high social position.

"I wish to introduce you to one of the most charming ladies of Richmond," the stranger said in quick, business-like tones, opening the gate as if he were used to the feel of the latch.

"Certainly," was the short reply.

In answer to the rap of the old-fashioned brass knocker, a quaint little woman of forty opened the door and showed them into the parlor.

The blinds were closed, and the room lighted by a single small kerosene lamp.

With quick precision the stranger presented his companion.

"Miss Van Lew, permit me to introduce to you Signor Henrico Socola of the Sardinian Ministry. He is the duly accredited but unofficial agent of his Majesty, Victor Emmanuel, and is cultivating friendly relations with the new Government of the South."

Miss Van Low extended her hand and took the outstretched one with a warmth that surprised her visitor beyond measure.

"I recognized him at once," she said with emotion.

"Recognized me?"

"Your dear mother, sir, was my schoolmate in Philadelphia. I loved her. How alike you are!"

"Then we shall be friends—"

"We shall be more than friends—we shall be comrades—"

She paused and turned to the stranger:

"You can leave us now."

With a bow the man turned and left the room.

Socola studied the little woman who had deliberately chosen to lay her life, her fortune and her home on the altar of her Country. He saw with a glance at her delicate but commanding figure the brilliant, accomplished, resolute woman of personality and charm.

She took the young man's hand again in hers and led him to a high-backed mahogany settee. She stroked the hands with her thin, cold fingers.

"How perfect the image of your mother! I would have known you anywhere. You must know and trust me. I was sent North to school. I came back to Virginia a more determined Abolitionist than ever. Our people have always hated Slavery. I made good my faith by freeing mine. We're not so well-to-do now, my mother and I."

She paused and looked wistfully about the stately room.

"This house could tell the story of gay and beautiful scenes—of balls—receptions and garden parties in bowers of roses—of coaches drawn by six snow-white horses standing at our door for the start to the White Sulphur Springs—"

She stopped suddenly, mastered her emotions and went on dreamily:

"Of great men and distinguished families our guests from the North and the South—Bishop Mann, Chief Justice John Marshall, the Lees, the Robinsons, Wickhams, Adams, Cabells,—the Carringtons—Fredrika Bremer, the Swedish novelist, visited us and wrote of us in her 'Homes in the New World.' Jennie Lind in the height of her glory sang in this room. Edgar Allan Poe read here aloud his immortal poem, 'The Raven.' You must realize what it means to me to become an outcast in Richmond—"

She drew from her bosom a newspaper clipping and handed it to Socola.

"Read that paragraph from this morning's editorial columns—"

The young man scanned the marked clipping.

RAPPED ON THE KNUCKS

"One of the City papers contained on Monday a word of exhortation to certain females of Southern residence (and perhaps birth) but of decidedly Northern and Abolition proclivities. The creatures, though specially alluded to, are not named. If such people do not wish to be exposed and dealt with as alien enemies to the country they would do well to cut stick while they can do so with safety to their worthless carcasses—"

"And you will not 'cut stick'?"

"It's not the way of our breed. I've been doing what I could for the past year. I have sent the Government at Washington letter after letter giving them full and accurate accounts of men and events here. I have made no concealment of my principles. We are Abolitionists and Unionists and they know it. These Southern men will not lift their hands against two helpless women unless they discover the deeper plans I've laid. I've stopped them on the streets and openly flung my sentiments into their faces. As the excitement has increased I have grown more violent and more incoherent. They have begun to say that I am insane—"

Socola lifted his hand in a quiet gesture.

"Good. You can play the part."

A look of elation overspread the thin, intellectual features.

"True—I'll do it. I see it in a flash. 'Crazy old Bet,' they'll call me—"

She sprang to her feet.

"Come upstairs."

He followed her light step up three flights of stairs into the attic. She pushed aside an old-fashioned wardrobe and opened a small door of plain pine boards about four feet in height which led to the darkened space beneath the roof.

She stooped and entered and he followed. A small, neat room was revealed eight feet high beside the inner wall, with ceiling sloping to three feet on the opposite side. An iron safe was fitted into the space beside the chimney and covered skillfully by a door completely cased in brick. The device was so perfect it was impossible to detect the fact that it was not a part of the chimney, each alternate layer of bricks fitted exactly into the place chiseled out for it in the wall of the chimney itself.

Socola examined the arrangement with care.

"A most skillful piece of work!" he exclaimed.

"I laid those bricks in that door casing with my own hand. The old safe has been there since my grandfather's day. This is your room, sir. That safe is for your important papers. You can spend the night here in safety when necessary. My house has been offered to the Government as the headquarters of its secret service. I have in this safe an important document for you."

She opened it and handed Socola a sealed envelope addressed:

"Signor Henrico Socola, Richmond, Virginia."

He broke the seal and read the order from the new Bureau of Military Information placing him in command of its Richmond office.

He offered the paper to the little woman who held the candle for him to read.

"I know its contents," she said, observing him keenly. "The Government has chosen wisely. You can render invaluable service—"

She paused and looked at Socola with a curious smile.

"You know any girls in Richmond?"

"But one and she has just arrived with the Presidential party—Miss Jennie Barton—"

"The Senator's daughter?"

"The same."

"Wonderful!" the little woman went on eagerly. "Her father is on the staff of Jefferson Davis. Old Barton is a loud-mouthed fool who can't keep a secret ten minutes. You must make love to his daughter—"

Socola laughed. "Is it necessary?"

"Absolutely. You can't remain in Richmond indefinitely without a better excuse than your unofficial connection with the Ministry of Sardinia. You are young. You are handsome. All Southern girls have sweethearts—all Southern boys. They can't understand the boy who hasn't. You'll be suspected at once unless you comply with the custom of the country."

"Of course. I needn't actually make love to her—"

"That's exactly what you must do. Make love to her with all your might—as if your life depends on her answer and your stay in Richmond can be indefinite."

"I don't like the idea," he protested.

"Neither do I like this—" She swept the little attic room with a wave of her slender hand. "Come, my comrade, you must—"

He hesitated a moment, laughed, and said:

"All right."



CHAPTER XVI

THE FLOWER-DECKED TENT

When Socola rose the following morning he determined to throw every scruple to the winds and devote himself to Jennie Barton with a zeal and passion that would leave to his Southern rivals no doubt as to the secret of his stay.

At the first informal reception at the White House of the Confederacy Jennie had been pronounced the most fascinating daughter of the new Republic, as modest and unassuming as she was brilliant and beautiful.

After the manner of Southern beaux he addressed a note to her on a sheet of exquisitely tinted foreign paper, at the top of which was the richly embossed coat of arms of the Socola family of North Italy.

He asked of her the pleasure of a horseback ride over the hills of Virginia. He was a superb horseman, and she rode as if born in the saddle.

He sealed the note with a piece of tinted wax and stamped it with the die which reproduced his coat of arms. He smiled with satisfaction as he addressed the envelope in his smooth and perfectly rounded handwriting.

He read the answer with surprise and disappointment. The Senator had replied for his daughter. A slight accident to her mother had caused her to leave on the morning train for the South. She would probably remain at Fairview for two weeks.

There was no help for it. He must await her return. In the meantime there was work to do. The army of the South was slowly but surely shaping itself into a formidable engine of war.

The master mind at the helm of the new Government had laid the foundations of one of the most efficient forces ever sent into the arena of battle. It was as yet only a foundation but one which inspired in his mind not only a profound respect for his judgment, but a feeling of deep foreboding for the future.

Jefferson Davis had received a training of peculiar fitness for his task. The first work before the South was the organization, equipment and handling of its army of defense. The President they had called to the leadership had spent four years at West Point and seven years in the army on our frontiers, pushing the boundaries of the Republic into the West. He had led a regiment of volunteers in the conquest of Mexico, and in the battle of Buena Vista, not only saved the day in the moment of supreme crisis, but had given evidence of the highest order of military genius. On his return from the Mexican War he had been appointed a Brigadier General by the President of the United States but had declined the honor.

For four years as Secretary of War in the Cabinet of Franklin Pierce he had proven himself a master of military administration, had reorganized and placed on a modern basis of the highest efficiency the army of the Union and in this work has proven himself a terror to weakness, tradition and corruption.

He knew personally every officer of the first rank in the United States Army. His judgment of these men and their ability as commanders was marvelous in its accuracy. His genius as an army administrator undoubtedly gave to the South her first advantage in the opening of the conflict.

From the men who had resigned from the old army to cast their fortunes with the South his keen eye selected without hesitation the three men for supreme command whose abilities had no equal in America for the positions to which they were assigned. And these three men were patriots of such singleness of purpose, breadth of vision and greatness of soul that neither of them knew he was being considered for the highest command until handed his commission.

Samuel Cooper had been Adjutant General of the United States Army since 1852. Davis knew his record of stern discipline and uncompromising efficiency, and although a man of Northern birth, he appointed him Adjutant General of the Confederate Army without a moment's hesitation.

Albert Sidney Johnston was his second appointment to the rank of full General and Robert E. Lee his third—each destined to immortality.

His fourth nomination for the rank of full General he made with hesitation. Joseph E. Johnston under the terms of the law passed by the Provisional Congress of the Confederacy was entitled to a position in the first rank as acting Commissary General of the old army. The keen intuition of the President had perceived from the first the evidences of hesitation and of timidity in crisis which was the chief characteristic of Joseph E. Johnston. His sense of fairness under the terms of the law required that this man be given his chance. With misgivings but with high hopes the appointment was made.

Robert E. Lee he made military chieftain of the Government with headquarters in Richmond.

From four points the Northern forces were threatening the South. From the West by a flanking movement which might open the Mississippi River; from the mountains of Western Virginia whose people were in part opposed to secession; from Washington by a direct movement on Richmond; and from Fortress Monroe on the Virginia Peninsula.

The first skirmish before Fortress Monroe, led by B. F. Butler, had been repulsed with such ease no serious danger was felt in that quarter. The ten thousand men under Holmes and McGruder could hold Butler indefinitely.

Davis had seen from the first that one of the supreme dangers of the South lay in the long line of exposed frontier in the West. If a commander of military genius should succeed in turning his flank here the heart of the lower South would be pierced.

For this important command he reserved Albert Sidney Johnston.

The Northern army under George B. McClellan and Rosecrans had defeated the troops in Western Virginia. In a series of small fights they had lost a thousand men and all their artillery. General Lee was dispatched from Richmond to repair if possible this disaster.

The first two clashes had been a draw. The South had won first blood on the Peninsula—the North in Western Virginia. The main army of the South was now concentrated to oppose the main army of the North from Washington.

Brigadier General Beauregard, the widely acclaimed hero of Fort Sumter, was in command of this army near Manassas Station on the road to Alexandria.

Beauregard's position was in a measure an accident of fortune. The first shot had been fired by him at Sumter. He was the first paper-made hero of the war. He had led the first regiment into Virginia to defend her from invasion.

He was the man of the hour. His training and record, too, gave promise of high achievements. He had graduated from West Point in 1838, second in a class of forty-five men. His family was of high French extraction, having settled in Louisiana in the reign of Louis XV. He had entered the Mexican War a lieutenant and emerged from the campaign a major. He was now forty-five years old, in the prime of life. His ability had been recognized by the National Government in the beginning of the year by his appointment as Superintendent of the Military Academy at West Point. His commission had been revoked at the last moment by the vacillating Buchanan because his brother-in-law, Senator Slidell of Louisiana, had made a secession speech in Washington.

Jefferson Davis was not enthusiastic in his confidence in the new hero. He was too much given to outbursts of a public kind to please the ascetic mind of the Southern leader. He had written some silly letters to the public deriding the power of the North. No one could know better than Davis how silly these utterances were. He "hated and despised the Yankees." Davis feared and recognized their power. Beauregard's assertion that the South could whip the North even if her only arms were flintlocks and pitchforks had been often and loudly repeated.

Of the army marshaling in front of him under the command of the venerable Winfield Scott he wrote with the utmost contempt.

"The enemies of the South," he declared, "are little more than an armed rabble, gathered together hastily on a false pretense and for an unholy purpose, with an octogenarian at its head!"

In spite of his small stature, Beauregard was a man of striking personal appearance—small, dark, thin, hair prematurely gray, his manners distinguished and severe.

It was natural that, with the fame of his first victory, itself the provoking cause of the conflict, his distinguished foreign name and courtly manners, he should have become the toast of the ladies in these early days of the pomp and glory of war. He was the center of an ever widening circle of fair admirers who lavished their attentions on him in letters, in flags, and a thousand gay compliments. His camp table was filled with exquisite flowers which flanked and sometimes covered his maps and plans. He used his bouquets for paper weights.

It was not to be wondered at, therefore, that the cold intellectual standard by which Davis weighed men should have found Beauregard wanting in the qualifications of supreme command.

The President turned his eye to the flower-decked tent of his general with grave misgivings. Yet he was the man of the hour. It was fair that he should have his chance.



CHAPTER XVII

THE FATAL VICTORY

On the banks of the Potomac General Scott had massed against Beauregard the most formidable army which had ever marched under the flag of the Union. Its preparation was considered thorough, its numbers all that could he handled, and its artillery was the best in the world. All the regular army east of the Rockies, seasoned veterans of Indian campaigns, were joined with the immense force of volunteers from the Northern States—fifty full regiments of volunteers, eight companies of regular infantry, four companies of marines, nine companies of regular cavalry and twelve batteries of artillery with forty-nine big guns.

In command of this army of invasion was General McDowell, held to be the most scientific general in the North.

To supplement Beauregard's weakness as a commanding General in case of emergency, Joseph E. Johnston was placed at Harper's Ferry to guard the entrance of the Shenandoah Valley, secure the removal of the invaluable machinery saved from the Arsenal, and form a junction with Beauregard the moment he should be threatened.

The movement of General Patterson's army against Harper's Ferry had been too obviously a feint to deceive either Davis or Lee, his chief military adviser. Johnston was given ten thousand men and able assistants including General Jackson.

On the tenth of July Beauregard, anxiously awaiting information of the Federal advance, received an important message from an accomplished Southern woman, Mrs. Rose O'Neal Greenhow. She had remained in Washington as Miss Van Lew had in Richmond, to lay her life on the altar of her country. During the administration of Buchanan she had been a leader of Washington society. She was now a widow, noted for her wealth, beauty, wit and forceful personality. Her home was the meeting place of the most brilliant men and women of the old regime. Buchanan was her personal friend, as was William H. Seward. Her niece, a granddaughter of Dolly Madison, was the wife of the Little Giant of the West, Stephen A. Douglas.

Before leaving Washington to become the Adjutant General of Beauregard's army Colonel Thomas Jordan had given her the cipher code of the South and arranged to make her house the Northern headquarters of the Southern secret service.

Her first messenger was a girl carefully disguised as a farmer's daughter returning from the sale of her vegetables in the Washington market. She passed the lines without challenge and delivered her message into Beauregard's hands.

With quick decision Beauregard called his aide and dispatched the news to the President at Richmond:

"I have positive information direct from Washington that the enemy will move in force across the Potomac on Manassas via Fairfax Court House and Centreville. I urge the immediate concentration of all available forces on my lines."

The Southern commander began his preparations to receive the attack.

The house on Church Hill had not been idle. Richmond swarmed with Federal spies under the skillful guidance of Socola.

General Scott knew in Washington within twenty-four hours that Beauregard was planting his men behind the Bull Run River in a position of great strength and that the formation of the ground was such with Bull Run on his front that his dislodgment would be a tremendous task.

The advance of the Federal army was delayed—delayed until the last gun and scrap of machinery from Harper's Ferry had been safely housed in Richmond and Fayetteville and Johnston had withdrawn his army to Winchester in closer touch with Beauregard.

And still the Union army did not move. Beauregard sent a trusted scout into Washington to Mrs. Greenhow with a scrap of paper on which was written in cipher the two words:

"Trust Bearer—"

He arrived at the moment she had received the long sought information of the date of the army's march. She glanced at the stolid masked face of the messenger and hesitated a moment.

"You are a Southerner?"

Donellan smiled.

"I've spent most of my life in Washington, Madam," he said frankly. "I was a clerk in the Department of the Interior. I cast my fortunes with the South."

It was enough. Her keen intuitions had scented danger in the man's manner, his walk and personality. He was not a typical Southerner. The officials of the Secret Service Bureau had already given her evidence of their suspicions. She could not be too careful.

She seized her pen and hastily wrote in cipher:

"Order issued for McDowell to move on Manassas to-night."

She handed the tiny scrap of paper to Donellan.

"My agents will take you in a buggy with relays of horses down the Potomac to a ferry near Dumfries. You will be ferried across."

The man touched his hat.

"I'll know the way from there, Madam."

The scout delivered his message into Beauregard's hands that night before eight o'clock.

At noon the next day Colonel Jordan had placed in her hands his answer:

"Yours received at eight o'clock. Let them come. We are ready. We rely upon you for precise information. Be particular as to description and destination of forces and quantity of artillery."

She had not been idle. She was able to write a message of almost equal importance to the one she had dispatched the day before. With quick nervous hand she wrote on another tiny scrap of paper:

"The Federal commander has ordered the Manassas railroad to be cut to prevent the junction of Johnston with Beauregard."

The moment the first authentic information reached President Davis of the purpose to attack Beauregard he immediately urged General Johnston to make his preparations for the juncture of their forces.

And at once the President received confirmation of his fears of his General-in-Chief. Johnston delayed and began a correspondence of voluminous objections.

July 17, on receipt of the dispatch to Beauregard announcing the plan to cut the railroad, the President was forced to send Johnston a positive order to move his army to Manassas. The order was obeyed with a hesitation which imperiled the issue of battle. And while on the march, Beauregard's pickets exchanging shots with McDowell's skirmish line, Johnston began the first of his messages of complaint and haggling to his Chief at Richmond. Jealous of Beauregard's popularity and fearful of his possible insubordination, Johnston telegraphed Davis demanding that his relative rank to Beauregard should be clearly defined before the juncture of their armies.

The question was utterly unnecessary. The promotion of Johnston to the full grade of general could leave no conceivable doubt on such a point. The President realized with a sickening certainty the beginning of a quarrel between the two men, dangerous to the cause of the South. Their failure to act in harmony would make certain the defeat of the raw recruits on their first field of battle.

He decided at the earliest possible moment to go in person and prevent this threatened quarrel. Already blood had flowed. With a strong column of infantry, artillery and cavalry McDowell had attempted to force the approaches to one of the fords of Bull Run. They were twice driven back and withdrew from the field. Longstreet's brigade had lost fifteen killed and fifty-three wounded in holding his position.

The President hastened to telegraph his sulking general the explicit definition of rank he had demanded:

Richmond, July 20, 1861.

"General J. E. Johnston,

"Manassas Junction, Virginia.

"You are a General of the Confederate Army possessed of the power attached to that rank. You will know how to make the exact knowledge of Brigadier General Beauregard, as well of the ground as of the troops and preparation avail for the success of the object for which you cooeperate. The zeal of both assures me of harmonious action.

"Jefferson Davis."

As a matter of fact the President was consumed with painful anxiety lest there should not be harmonious action if Johnston should reach the field in time for the fight. His own presence was required by law at Richmond on July 20, for the delivery of his message to the assembled Congress. It was impossible for him to leave for the front before Sunday morning the 21st.

The battle began at eight o'clock.

General McDowell's army had moved to this attack hounded by the clamor of demagogues for the immediate capture of Richmond by his "Grand Army."

Every Northern newspaper had dinned into his ears and the ears of an impatient public but one cry for months:

"On to Richmond!"

At last the news was spread in Washington that the army would move and bivouac in Richmond's public square within ten days. The march was to be a triumphal procession. The Washington politicians filled wagons and carriages with champagne to celebrate the victory. Tickets were actually printed and distributed for a ball in Richmond. The army was accompanied by long lines of excited spectators to witness the one grand struggle of the war—Congressmen, toughs from the saloons, gaudy ladies from questionable resorts, a clamoring, perspiring rabble bent on witnessing scenes of blood.

The Union General's information as to Beauregard's position and army was accurate and full. He knew that Johnston's command of ten thousand men had begun to arrive the day before. He did not know that half of them were still tangled up somewhere on the railroad waiting for transportation. Even with Johnston's entire command on the ground his army outnumbered the Southerners and his divisions of seasoned veterans from the old army and his matchless artillery gave him an enormous advantage.

With consummate skill he planned the battle and began its successful execution.

His scouts had informed him that the Southern line was weak on its left wing resting on the Stone Bridge across the river. Here the long drawn line of Beauregard's army thinned to a single regiment supported at some distance by a battalion. Here the skillful Union General determined to strike.

At two-thirty before daylight his dense lines of enthusiastic men swung into the dusty moonlit road for their movement to flank the Confederate left.

Swiftly and silently the flower of McDowell's army, eighteen thousand picked men, moved under the cover of the night to their chosen crossing at Sudley's Ford, two miles beyond the farthest gray picket of Beauregard's left.

Tyler's division was halted at the Stone Bridge on which the lone regiment of Col. Evans lay beyond the stream. He was ordered to feign an attack on that point while the second and third divisions should creep cautiously along a circuitous road two miles above, cross unopposed and slip into the rear of Beauregard's long-drawn left wing, roll it up in a mighty scroll of flame, join Tyler's division as it should sweep across the Stone Bridge and together the three divisions in one solid mass could crush the ten-mile battle line into hopeless confusion.

The plan was skillfully and daringly conceived.

Tyler's division halted at the Stone Bridge and silently formed as the first glow of dawn tinged the eastern hills.

The dull red of the July sun was just coloring the sky with its flame when the second and third divisions crossed Bull Run at Sudley's Ford and began their swift descent upon the rear of the unsuspecting Southern army.

As the sun burst above the hills, a circle of white smoke suddenly curled away from a cannon's mouth above the Stone Bridge and slowly rose in the still, clear morning air. Its sullen roar echoed over the valley. The gray figures on the hill beyond leaped to their feet and looked. Only the artillery was engaged and their shots were falling short.

The Confederates appeared indifferent. The action was too obviously a feint. Colonel Evans was holding his regiment for a clearer plan of battle to develop. From the hilltop on which his men lay he scanned with increasing uneasiness the horizon toward the west. In the far distance against the bright Southern sky loomed the dark outline of the Blue Ridge. The heavy background brought out in vivid contrast the woods and fields, hollows and hills of the great Manassas plain in the foreground.

Suddenly he saw it—a thin cloud of dust rising in the distance. As the rushing wall of sixteen thousand men emerged from the "Big Forest," through which they had worked their way along the crooked track of a rarely used road, the dust cloud flared in the sky with ominous menace.

Colonel Evans knew its meaning. Beauregard's army had been flanked and the long thin lines of his left wing were caught in a trap. When the first rush of the circling host had swept his little band back from the Stone Bridge Tyler's army would then cross and the three divisions swoop down on the doomed men.

Evans suddenly swung his regiment and two field pieces into a new line of battle facing the onrushing host and sent his courier flying to General Bee to ask that his brigade be moved instantly to his support.

When the shock came there were five regiments and six little field pieces in the Southern ranks to meet McDowell's sixteen thousand troops.

With deafening roar their artillery opened. The long dense lines of closely packed infantry began their steady firing in volleys. It sounded as if some giant hand had grasped the hot Southern skies and was tearing their blue canvas into strips and shreds.

For an hour Bee's brigade withstood the onslaught of the two Federal divisions—and then began to slowly fall back before the resistless wall of fire. The Union army charged and drove the broken lines a half mile before they rallied.

Tyler's division now swept across the Stone Bridge and the shattered Confederate left wing was practically surrounded by overwhelming odds. Again the storm burst on the unsupported lines of Bee and drove them three quarters of a mile before they paused.

The charging Federal army had struck something they were destined to feel again on many a field of blood.

General T. J. Jackson had suddenly swung his brigade of five regiments into the breach and stopped the wave of fire.

Bee rushed to Jackson's side.

"General," he cried pathetically, "they are beating us back!"

The somber blue eyes of the Virginian gleamed beneath the heavy lashes:

"Then sir, we will give them the bayonet!"

Bee turned to his hard-pressed men and shouted:

"See Jackson and his Virginians standing like a stone wall! Let us conquer or die!"

The words had scarcely passed his lips when Bee fell, mortally wounded.

Four miles away on the top of a lonely hill sat Beauregard and Johnston befogged in a series of pitiable blunders.

The flanking of the Southern army was a complete and overwhelming surprise. Johnston, unacquainted with the ground, had yielded the execution of the battle to his subordinate.

While the two puzzled generals were waiting on their hill top for their orders of battle to be developed on the right they looked to the left and the whole valley was a boiling hell of smoke and dust and flame. Their left flank had been turned and the triumphant enemy was rolling their long line up in a shroud of flame and death.

The two Generals put spurs to their horses and dashed to the scene of action, sending their couriers flying to countermand their first orders. They reached the scene at the moment Bee's and Evans' shattered lines were taking refuge in a wooded ravine and Jackson had moved his men into a position to breast the shock of the enemy's avalanche.

In his excitement Johnston seized the colors of the fourth Alabama regiment and offered to lead them in a charge.

Beauregard leaped from his horse, faced the troops and shouted:

"I have come to die with you!"

The first of the reserves were rushing to the front in a desperate effort to save the day. But in spite of the presence of the two Commanding Generals, in spite of the living stone wall Jackson had thrown in the path of the Union hosts, a large part of the crushed left wing could not be stopped and in mad panic broke for the rear toward Manassas Junction.

The fate of the Southern army hung on the problem of holding the hill behind Jackson's brigade. On its bloody slopes his men crouched with rifles leveled and from them poured a steady flame into the ranks of the charging Union columns.

Beauregard led the right wing of his newly formed battle line and Jackson the center in a desperate charge. The Union ranks were pierced and driven, only to re-form instantly and hurl their assailants back to their former position. Charge and counter-charge followed in rapid and terrible succession.

The Confederates were being slowly overwhelmed. The combined Union divisions now consisted of an enveloping battle line of twenty thousand infantry, seven companies of cavalry and twenty-four pieces of artillery, while behind them yet hung ten thousand reserves eager to rush into action.

Beauregard's combined forces defending the hill were scarcely seven thousand men. At two o'clock the desperate Southern commander succeeded in bringing up additional regiments from his right wing. Two brigades at last were thrown into the storm center and a shout rose from the hard-pressed Confederates. Again they charged, drove the Union hosts back and captured a battery of artillery.

The hill was saved and the enemy driven across the turnpike into the woods.

McDowell now hurried in a division of his reserves and re-formed his battle line for the final grand assault. Once more he demonstrated his skill by throwing his right wing into a wide circling movement to envelop the Confederate position on its left flank.

The scene was magnificent. As far as the eye could reach the glittering bayonets of the Union infantry could be seen sweeping steadily through field and wood flanked by its cavalry. Beauregard watched the cordon of steel draw around his hard-pressed men and planted his regiments with desperate determination to hurl them back.

Far off in the distance rose a new cloud of dust in the direction of the Manassas railroad. At their head was lifted a flag whose folds drooped in the hot, blistering July air. They were moving directly on the rear of McDowell's circling right wing.

If they were Union reserves the day was lost.

The Southerner lifted his field glasses and watched the drooping flag now shrouded in dust—now emerging in the blazing sun. His glasses were not strong enough. He could not make out its colors.

Beauregard turned to Colonel Evans, whose little regiment had fought with sullen desperation since sunrise.

"I can't make out that flag. If it's Patterson's army from the valley—God help us—"

"It may be Elzey and Kirby Smith's regiments," Evans replied. "They're lost somewhere along the road from Winchester."

Again Beauregard strained his eyes on the steadily advancing flag. It was a moment of crushing agony.

"I'm afraid it's Patterson's men. We must fall back on our last reserve—"

He quickly lowered his glasses.

"I haven't a courier left, Colonel. You must help me—"

"Certainly, General."

"Find Johnston, and ask him to at once mass the reserves to support and protect our retreat—"

Evans started immediately to execute the order.

"Wait!" Beauregard shouted.

His glasses were again fixed on the advancing flag. A gust of wind suddenly flung its folds into the bright Southern sky line—the Stars and Bars of the Confederacy!

"Glory to God!" the commander exclaimed. "They're our men!"

The dark face of the little General flashed with excitement as he turned to Evans:

"Ride, Colonel—ride with all your might and order General Kirby Smith to press his command forward at double quick and strike that circling line in the flank and rear!"

There were but two thousand in the advancing column but the moral effect of their sudden assault on the rear of the advancing victorious men, unconscious of their presence, would be tremendous. A charge at the same moment by his entire army confronting the enemy might snatch victory out of the jaws of defeat.

Beauregard placed himself at the head of his hard-pressed front, and waited the thrilling cry of Smith's men. At last it came, the heaven-piercing, hell-quivering, Rebel yell—the triumphant cry of the Southern hunter in sight of his game!

Jackson, Longstreet and Early with sudden rush of tigers sprang at the throats of the Union lines in front.

The men had scarcely gripped their guns to receive the assault when from the rear rose the unearthly yell of the new army swooping down on their unprotected flank.

It was too much for the raw recruits of the North. They had marched and fought with dogged courage since two o'clock before day—without pause for food or drink. It was now four in the afternoon and the blazing sun of July was pouring its merciless rays down on their dust-covered and smoke-grimed faces without mercy.

McDowell's right wing was crumpled like an eggshell between the combined charges front and rear. It broke and rushed back in confusion on his center. The whole army floundered a moment in tangled mass. In vain their officers shouted themselves hoarse proclaiming their victory and ordering them to rally.

Wild, hopeless, senseless, unreasoning panic had seized the Union army. They threw down their guns in thousands and started at breakneck speed for Washington. With every jump they cursed their idiotic commanders for leading them blindfolded into the jaws of hell. At least they had common sense enough left to save what was left.

The fields were covered with black swarms of flying soldiers. They cut the horses from the gun carriages, mounted them and dashed forward trampling down the crazed mobs on foot.

As the shouting, screaming throng rushed at the Cub Run bridge, a well directed shot from Kemper's battery smashed a team of horses that were crossing. The wagon was upset and the bridge choked.

In mad efforts to force a passage mob piled on mob until the panic enveloped every division of the army that thirty minutes before was sweeping with swift, sure tread to its final victorious charge.

Across every bridge and ford of Bull Run the panic-stricken thousands rushed pellmell, horse, foot, artillery, wagons, ambulances, excursion carriages, red-jowled politicians mingling with screaming women whose faces showed death white through the rouge on their lips and cheeks.

For three miles rolled the dark tide of ruin and confusion—with not one Confederate soldier in sight.

It was three o'clock before the train bearing the anxious Confederate President and his staff drew into Manassas Junction. He had heard no news from the front and feared the worst. The long deep boom of the great guns told him that the battle was raging.

From the car window he saw rising an ominous cloud of dust rapidly approaching the Junction. To his trained eye it could mean but one thing—retreat.

He sprang from the car and asked its meaning of a pale trembling youth in disheveled, torn gray uniform.

Billy Barton turned his bloodshot eyes on the President. His teeth were chattering.

"M-m-eaning of w-what?" he stammered.

"That cloud of dust coming toward the station?"

Billy stared in the direction the President pointed.

"Why, that's the—the—w-w-wagoners—they're trying to save the pieces I reckon—"

"The army has been pushed back?" the President asked.

"No, sir—they—they never p-p-ushed 'em back! They—they just jumped right on top of 'em and made hash out of 'em where they stood! Thank God a few of us got away."

The President turned with a gesture of impatience to an older man, dust-covered and smoke-smeared.

"Can you direct me to General Beauregard's headquarters?"

"Beauregard's dead!" he shouted, rushing toward the train to board it for home. "Johnston's dead. Bee's dead. Bartow's dead. They're all dead—piled in heaps—fur ez ye eye kin see. Take my advice and get out of here quick."

Without waiting for an answer he scrambled into the coach from which the President had alighted.

The station swarmed now with shouting, gesticulating, panic-stricken men from the front. They crowded around the conductor.

"Pull out of this!"

"Crowd on steam!"

"Save your engine and your train, man!"

"And take us with you for God's sake!"

The President pushed his way through the crowd.

"I must go on, Conductor—the train is the only way to reach the field—"

"I'm sorry, sir," the conductor demurred. "I'm responsible for the property of the railroad—"

The panic-stricken men backed him up.

"What's the use?"

"The battle's lost!"

"The whole army's wiped off the earth."

"There's not a grease spot left!"

The President confronted the trembling conductor:

"Will you move your train?"

"I can't do it, sir—"

"Will you lend me your engine?"

The conductor's face brightened.

"I might do that."

The engine was detached to the disgust of the panic-stricken men and the cool-headed engineer nodded to the President, pulled his lever and the locomotive shot out of the station and in five minutes Davis alighted with his staff near the battle field. By the guidance of stragglers they found headquarters.

Adjutant General Jordan sent for horses and volunteered to conduct the President to the front.

While they were waiting he turned to Mr. Davis anxiously:

"I think it extremely unwise, sir, for you to take this risk."

The thin lips smiled:

"I'll take the responsibility, General."

The President and his staff mounted and galloped toward the front.

The stragglers came now in droves. They were generous in their warnings.

"Say, men, do ye want to die?"

"You're ridin' straight inter the jaws er death."

"Don't do it, I tell ye!"

The President began to rally the men. As they neared the front he was recognized and the wounded began to cheer.

A big strapping soldier was carrying a slender wounded boy to the rear.

The boy put his trembling hand on the man's shoulder, snatched off his cap and shouted: "Three cheers for the President! Look, boys, he's here—we'll lick 'em yet!"

The President lifted his hat to the stripling, crying:

"To a hero of the South!"

The storm of battle was now rolling swiftly to the west—its roar growing fainter with each cannon's throb.

The President, sitting his horse with erect tense figure, dashed up the hill to General Johnston:

"How goes the battle, General?"

"We have won, sir," was the sharp curt answer.



The President wheeled his horse and rode rapidly into the front lines until stopped by the captain of a command of cavalry.

"You are too near the front, sir, without an escort—"

The President rode beside the captain and watched him form his men for their last charge on the enemy. He inspected the field with growing amazement. For miles the earth was strewn with the wreck of the Northern army—guns, knapsacks, blankets, canteens—and Brooklyn-made handcuffs!

Their defeat had been so sudden, so complete, so overwhelming, it was impossible at first to grasp its meaning.

He passed the rugged figure of Jackson who had won his immortal title of "Stonewall." An aide was binding a cloth about his wounded arm.

The grim General pushed aside his surgeon, raised his battered cap and shouted:

"Hurrah for the President! Ten thousand fresh men and I will be in Washington to-night!"

The President lifted his hat and congratulated him.

The victory of the South was complete and overwhelming. Jefferson Davis breathed a sigh of relief for deliverance. Within two hours he knew that this victory had not been won by superior generalship of his commanding officers. They had been outwitted at every turn and overwhelmed by the plan of battle their wily foe had forced upon them. It had not been won by the superior courage of his men in the battle which raged from sunrise until four o'clock. The broken and disorganized lines of the South and the panic-stricken mob he had met on the way were eloquent witnesses of Northern valor.

His army had been saved from annihilation by the quick wit and daring courage of a single Brigadier General who had moved his five regiments on his own initiative in the nick of time and saved the Confederates from utter rout.

Victory had been snatched at last from the jaws of defeat by an accident. The misfortune of a delayed regiment of Johnston's army was suddenly turned into an astounding piece of luck. The sudden charge of those two thousand men on the flank of the victorious army had produced a panic among tired raw recruits. McDowell was at this moment master of the field. In a moment of insane madness his unseasoned men had thrown down their guns and fled.

The little dark General in his flower-decked tent had made good his boasts. And worse—the Northern army had proven his wildest assertions true. They were a rabble. The star of Beauregard rose in the Southern sky, and with its rise Disaster stalked grim and silent toward the hilarious Confederacy.

The South had won a victory destined to prove itself the most fatal calamity that ever befell a nation.



CHAPTER XVIII

THE AFTERMATH

Socola dismissed his hope of a speedy end of the war and devoted himself with new enthusiasm to his work. His eyes were sleepless—his ear to the ground. The information on conditions and public sentiment in Richmond and the South which he had dispatched to Washington were of incalculable service to his government. One of the immediate effects of the battle was the return of Jennie Barton to the Capital. Her mother was improving and Jimmie had been wounded. Her coming was most fortunate. It was of the utmost importance that he secure a position in the Civil Service of the Confederacy. It could be done through her father's influence.

Socola watched the first division of Northern prisoners march through the streets amid the shouts and laughter of a crowd of urchins black and white. A feeling of blind rage surged within him. That the tables would be shortly turned, he was sure. He would play his part now without a scruple. He would use pretty Jennie Barton as any other pawn on the chessboard of Life and Death over which he bent.

Jefferson Davis watched the effects of the battle on the North with breathless interest and increasing dismay.

His worst fears were confirmed.

He had hoped that a decisive victory would place his Government in a position to make overtures for a peaceful adjustment of the conflict.

The victory had been too decisive. The disgraceful rout of the Northern army had stung twenty-three million people to the quick. Defeat so overwhelming and surprising had roused the last drop of fighting blood in their veins.

Boasting and loud talk suddenly ceased. There was no lying about the results. In all their bald hideous reality the Northern mind faced them and began with steady purpose their vast preparations to wipe that disgrace out in blood.

Abraham Lincoln suddenly found himself relieved of all embarrassment in the conduct of the war. His critics had threatened to wreck his administration unless he forced their "Grand Army" to march on Richmond and take it without a day's delay.

In obedience to this idiotic clamor he was forced to order the army to march. They came home by a shorter route than they marched and they came quicker.

They returned without baggage.

Incompetent men and hungry demagogues had clamored for high positions in the army. Their influence had been so great he had been forced to find berths for many incompetent officers.

He had suddenly become the actual Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy and his word was law. Fools and incompetents were relegated to the rear. Men who knew how to fight and how to organize armies marched to the front.

His administration had been embarrassed for funds. It was found next to impossible to float a loan of a paltry seven million dollars for war purposes. He borrowed one hundred and fifty million dollars next day at a fraction above the legal rate of interest in New York. He asked Congress for 400,000 more men and $400,000,000 to support them. Congress voted a half million men and five hundred millions of dollars—a hundred million more than he had asked.

While Washington's streets were thronged with the mud-smeared, panic-stricken rabble that was once an army, the Federal Congress eagerly began the task of repairing the disaster. When they had done all and much more than their President had asked, they calmly and unanimously passed this resolution:

"Resolved, That the maintenance of the Constitution, the preservation of the Union, and the enforcement of the laws, are sacred trusts which must be executed; that no disaster shall discourage us from the most ample performance of this high duty; and that we pledge to the Country and the world the employment of every resource, national and individual, for the suppression, overthrow and punishment of rebels in arms."

To the dismay of the far-seeing Southern leader in Richmond the press and people of the South received this resolution with shouts of derision. In vain did he warn his own Congress that the North was multiplying its armies, and building two navies with furious energy.

The people of the South went mad over their amazing victory. Davis saw their deliverance suddenly develop into the most appalling disaster.

The decisive battle of the war was fought and won. The European powers must immediately recognize the new Nation. In this hope their President could reasonably share. Their other delusions he knew to be madness.

The Southern press without a dissenting voice proclaimed that the question of manhood between the North and South was settled and settled forever. From the hustings the demagogue shouted:

"One Southerner is the equal anywhere of five Yankees."

Manassas, with its insignificant record of killed and wounded, was compared with the decisive battles of the world. The war was over. There might still be fought a few insignificant skirmishes before peace was proclaimed but that auspicious event could not be long delayed.

The fatal victory was followed by a period of fancied security and deadly inactivity. Exertions ceased. Volunteers were few. The volatile, sanguine people laughed at the fears of their croaking President.

So firmly had they established the new Nation that politicians began to plot and scheme for control of the Confederate Government on the expiration of the Davis term of office.

R. M. T. Hunter, the foremost statesman of Virginia, resigned his position in the Cabinet to be unembarrassed in his fight for the presidency.

Beauregard had been promoted to the full rank of general and his tent was now a bower of roses. Around the figure of the little fiery, impulsive, boastful South Carolinian gathered a group of ambitious schemers who determined to make him President. They filled the newspapers with such fulsome praise that the popular nominee for an honor six years in the distance, and shrouded in the smoke of battle, sought to add fuel to the flame by waving the Crown aside! In a weak bombastic letter which deceived no one, dated,

"Within Hearing of the Enemies' Guns," he emphatically declared:

"I am not a candidate, nor do I desire to be a candidate, for any civil office in the gift of the people or Executive!"

Controversies began between different Southern States, as to the location of the permanent Capital of the Confederacy. The contest developed so rapidly and went so far, that the Municipal Council of the City of Nashville, Tennessee, voted an appropriation of $750,000 for a residence for the President as an inducement to remove the Capital.

A furious controversy broke out in the yellow journals of the South as to why the Southern army had not pursued the panic-stricken mob into the City of Washington, captured Lincoln and his Congress and ended the war next day in a blaze of glory.

It was inconceivable that it was the fault of the two heroes of the battle, Joseph E. Johnston and Peter G. T. Beauregard. The President had rushed to the battlefield for some purpose. The champions of the heroes insinuated that his purpose was not to prevent their quarreling, but to take command of the field and rob them of their glory.

They made haste to find a scapegoat on whose shoulders to lay the failure to pursue. They seized on Jefferson Davis as the man. They declared in the most positive terms that Johnston and Beauregard, flushed with victory, were marshaling their hosts to sweep into Washington when they were stopped by the Confederate Chief and had no choice but to bivouac for the night.

Three men alone knew the truth: Davis, Beauregard and Johnston. The two victorious generals remained silent while their friends made this remarkable accusation against the President.

The President remained silent to save his generals from the wrath of a fickle public which might end their usefulness to the country.

As a matter of fact, Davis' trained eye had seen the enormous advantage of quick merciless pursuit the moment he was convinced that McDowell's army had fled in panic.

He had finally written a positive order commanding pursuit but was persuaded by the continued pleas of both commanders not to press it.

The reptile press of the South began on the President a bitter, malignant and unceasing vilification for this, his first fatal and inexcusable blunder!

Defeat had freed Abraham Lincoln of fools and incompetents and armed him with dictatorial powers. Victory had saddled on the Confederacy two heroes destined to cripple its efficiency with interminable controversy, sulking bitterness and personal ambitions. The halo of supreme military genius which encircled the brows of Johnston and Beauregard with the lifting of the smoke from the field of Bull Run grew quickly into two storm clouds which threatened the life of the new Republic.

Johnston's contempt for Beauregard had from the beginning been outspoken to his intimate friends. The battle had raised this little upstart to his equal in rank! He claimed that the President had robbed him of his true position in the Southern army through favoritism in the appointment of Albert Sidney Johnston and Robert E. Lee to positions of seniority to which they were not entitled.

Johnston began a series of bitter insulting letters to the Confederate President, complaining of his injustice and demanding his rights. Not content with his letters to the Executive, Johnston poured his complaints into the ears of his friends and admirers in the Confederate Congress and began a systematic and determined personal campaign to discredit and ruin the administration.

Among his first recruits in his campaign against Jefferson Davis was the fiery, original Secessionist, Roger Barton. Barton had never liked Davis. Their temperaments were incompatible. He resigned his position on the staff of the President, allied himself openly with Johnston and became one of the bitterest and most uncompromising enemies of the government. His position in the Confederate Senate would be a powerful weapon with which to strike.

The substance of Johnston's claim on which was founded this malignant clique in Richmond was the merest quibble about the date of his commission to the rank of full general. Because its date was later than that of Robert E. Lee he felt himself insulted and degraded.

When the President mildly and good naturedly informed him that his position of Quartermaster General in the old army did not entitle him to a field command and that Lee's rank as field commander was higher, he replied in a letter which became the text of his champions. Its high-flown language and bombastic claims showed only too plainly that a consuming ambition had destroyed all sense of proportion in his mind.

With uncontrolled passion he wrote to the President:

"Human power cannot efface the past. Congress may vacate my commission and reduce me to the ranks. It cannot make it true that I was not a general before July 4, 1861.

"The effect of the course pursued is this:

"It transforms me from the position first in rank to that of fourth. The relative rank of the others among themselves (Cooper, Albert Sidney Johnston and Robert E. Lee) is unaltered. It is plain that this is a blow aimed at me only. It reduces my rank in the grade I hold. This has never been done heretofore in the regular service in America but by the sentence of a court-martial as a punishment and as a disgrace for some military offense.

"It seeks to tarnish my fair name as a soldier and as a man, earned by more than thirty years of laborious and perilous service. I have but this—the scars of many wounds all honestly taken in my front and in the front of battle, and my father's revolutionary sword. It was delivered to me from his venerable hand without stain of dishonor. Its blade is still unblemished as when it passed from his hand to mine. I drew it in the war not for rank or fame (sic!), but to defend the sacred soil, the homes and hearths, the women and children, aye, and the men of my mother, Virginia—my native South. It may hereafter be the sword of a general leading armies, or of a private volunteer. But while I live and have an arm to wield it, it shall never be sheathed until the freedom, independence, and full rights of the South are achieved. When that is done, it then will be a matter of small concern to the Government, to Congress, or to the Country, what my rank or lot may be.

"What has the aspect of a studied indignity is offered me. My noble associate with me in the battle has his preferment connected with the victory won by our common trials and dangers. His commission bears the date of July 21, 1861, but care seems to be taken to exclude the idea that I had any part in winning that triumph.

"My commission is made to bear such a date that my once inferiors in the service of the United States and of the Confederate States (Cooper, Albert Sidney Johnston and Robert E. Lee) shall be above me. But it must not be dated as of July 21, nor be suggestive of the victory of Manassas!

"If the action against which I have protested is legal, it is not for me to question the expediency of degrading one who has served laboriously from the commencement of the war on this frontier, and borne a prominent part in the only great event of that war, for the benefit of persons, neither of whom has yet struck a blow for this Confederacy.

"These views and the freedom with which they are presented may be unusual, so likewise is the occasion which calls them forth.

"I have the honor to be, most respectfully, Your obedient servant, J. E. Johnston, General."

With a curve of his thin lips and a look of mortal weariness on his haggard face, the man on whose shoulders rested the burden of the lives of millions of his people seized his pen and wrote this brief note:

"Richmond, Va., September 14, 1861.

"General J. E. Johnston:

"Sir:

"I have just received and read your letter of the 12 instant. Its language is, as you say, unusual; its arguments and statements utterly one-sided, and its insinuations as unfounded as they are unbecoming.

"I am, etc., Jefferson Davis."

While the Commander of the victorious Confederacy was sulking in his tent on the field of Manassas, playing this pitiful farce about the date of a commission, and allowing his army to go to pieces, George B. McClellan with tireless energy and matchless genius as an organizer was whipping into shape Lincoln's new levy of five hundred thousand determined Northern men.

To further add to his embarrassment and cripple his work the Vice President of the Confederacy, Alexander H. Stephens, developed early into a chronic opponent of the administration. Much of this opposition was due to dyspepsia but it was none the less effective in undermining the influence of the Executive. Mr. Stephens' theories were the outgrowth of the most radical application of the dogma of States' Rights.

Before secession he had bitterly opposed the withdrawal of Georgia from the Union. His extreme advocacy of the Sovereignty of the States now threatened the unity and integrity of the Confederacy as a Republic.

He proclaimed the remarkable doctrine that as the war was one in which the people had led the politicians into a struggle for their rights, therefore the people could be absolutely relied on by the administrators of the Government to properly conduct the war. The people could always be depended on when a battle was to be fought. When no fighting was to be done they should be at home attending to their families and their business. The people were intelligent. They were patriotic. And they were as good judges of the necessity of their presence with the colors as the commanders of the armies. The generals were professional soldiers. They fought for rank and pay and most of them had no property in the South!

In the face of such doctrines proclaimed from so high a source it was not to be wondered at if thousands of men obtained furloughs on long leaves of absence. In the judgment of the intelligent and patriotic people of the South the war was practically over. Why should they swell the ranks of great armies to augment the power of military lords?

While these comfortable doctrines were being proclaimed in the South, the North was drilling five hundred thousand soldiers who had enlisted for three years.

The soreheads, theorists, and chronic kickers now had their supreme opportunity to harass the President. They rallied behind the sulking General and his friends and established a vigilant and malignant opposition to Jefferson Davis in the Confederate Congress.

They centered their criticism naturally on the weakest spot in the new Government—the weakest spot in all new nations—its financial policy.

They demanded the immediate purchase of all the cotton in the South and its exportation to England as a basis of credit. They blithely ignored two facts—that the Government had no money with which to purchase this enormous quantity of the property of its people and the still more important fact that the ports of the South had been blockaded, that this blockade was becoming more and more effective and that blockade-runners could not be found with sufficient tonnage to move one-tenth of the crop if they were willing to risk capture and confiscation.

If the President could have met the members of his Congress in daily social intercourse much of the opposition could have been cleared by his close reasoning and the magnetism of his powerful personality. But under the strain of his official life his health forbade the attempt at social amenities.

He ceased to entertain except at formal receptions, gave himself body and soul to his duties as President and allowed his critics full swing with their tongues.

The Richmond Examiner early developed into the leader of the reptile press of the South which sought by all means fair or foul to break down and destroy the President. This sheet was made the organ of all the bickering, backbiting, complaining and sulking in the army and the civil life of the new Republic.

Because the President could not spare the time for social entertainments, he was soundly abused for the stinginess of his administration. Because the young people of Richmond could not be received at the White House of the Confederacy on every evening in the week The Examiner sneered at the assumption of "superior dignity by the satraps."

This scurrilous newspaper at last made the infamous charge that Davis was getting rich on his savings from a salary of twenty-five thousand dollars in Confederate money! Every politician who had been overlooked rushed into these friendly columns and aired his grievances. The old secession leaders who had been thrust aside for the presidency by the people who had forced the office on Jefferson Davis now pressed forward to put their knives into the sensitive soul of the man they envied. Wm. L. Yancey, Barnwell Rhett and Robert Toombs joined his foes in a chorus of criticism and abuse. Every man who had been slighted in high positions bestowed on rivals rushed now to the attack.

Davis was never a man who could hedge and trim and lie and be all things to all men. He was totally lacking in the patience that can flatter a fool. He was too sincere, too downright in his honesty for such demagoguery.

He was abused for a thousand things for which he was in no sense responsible and made no effort to defend himself. He merely took refuge in dignified silence. And when his enemies could not provoke him into angry outbursts they accused him of contempt for public opinion.

In this hour of his sore trial he lacked the sense of broad humor which saved Abraham Lincoln. His rival in Washington was abused with far more savage cruelty—but it always reminded him of a funny story. He told the story, roared with laughter himself, and turned again to his work.

Not so with Jefferson Davis. He was keenly and painfully sensitive to the approval or condemnation of the people about him. The thoughtless word of a child could cut him to the quick. To have explained many of the difficulties on which he was attacked would have been to endanger the usefulness of one of his generals or expose the army to danger.

He steadfastly remained silent and accepted as inevitable the accusation that his manner was cold and repellent.

But once did his soul completely break down under the strain.

An officer whom he loved had been censured by one of his commanding generals who demanded his removal. This censure was conveyed to the President in a letter marked "Private."

The officer was removed. Hard as the duty was, he felt that as the servant of his country he had no other choice.

Flushed and indignant, his old friend called.

"You know me, Mr. President," he cried passionately. "How can I ever hold my head up again under censure from you—one of my oldest and best friends?"

The muscles of the drawn face twitched with nervous agony. He could not with his high sense of honor as President tell this man that he loved him and found no fault with him. To make his acceptance of the situation easier, his only course was to roust his friend's anger.

He turned and said curtly:

"You have, I believe, received your orders. I can suggest nothing but obedience."

Too angry to ask an explanation, he strode from the room without a word.

The President closed his desk, climbed the steep hill of the Capitol Square, walked home in brooding silence, and locked himself in his room without eating his dinner.

Alarmed at his absence, Mrs. Davis at last gently rapped on his door. With tender tact she drew from his reluctant lips the story.

Turning his dimmed eyes on hers, he burst out in tones of quivering anguish:

"Oh, my Winnie dear, how could any man with a soul write a letter like that, mark it private and force me to plunge a knife into the heart of my best friend and leave it there without a word—"

"You should have told your friend the whole truth!"

"No—he could have made trouble in the army. His commander knew that I could bear it best."

"You must try to mingle more with those men, dear," his wife pleaded. "Use your brains and personality to win them. You can do it."

"At the cost of precious hours I can give to better service for my country. No. I've given my life to the South. I'll eat my heart out in silence if I must—"

He paused and looked at her tenderly.

"Only your friendly eyes shall see, my dear. After all, what does it matter what men think of me now? If we succeed, we shall hear no more of malcontents. If we do not succeed, I shall be held accountable by both friend and foe. It's written so in the book of life. I must accept it. I'll just do my best and God will give me strength to bear what comes."

And so while the South was gayly celebrating the end of the war and every crow was busy pecking at the sensitive heart of their leader, the ominous shadow of five hundred thousand Northern soldiers, armed with the best weapons and drilled by the masters of military science, was slowly but surely drawing near.



CHAPTER XIX

SOCOLA'S PROBLEM

Socola found his conquest of Jennie beset with unforeseen difficulties. His vanity received a shock. His success with girls at home had slightly turned his head.

His mother was largely responsible for his conceit. She honestly believed that he was the handsomest man in America. For more than six years—in fact, since his eighteenth birthday—his mother's favorite pet name was "Handsome." He had heard this repeated so often he had finally accepted it philosophically as one of the fixed phenomena of nature.

From the moment he made up his mind to win Jennie he considered the work done—until he had set seriously about it.

The first difficulty he encountered was the discovery that a large number of Southern boys apparently considered the chief business of life going to see the girls—this girl in particular.

The first day he called he found five young men who had lingered beyond their appointed hours and were encroaching on his time without the slightest desire to apologize. He could see that she was trying to get rid of them but they hung on with a dogged, quiet persistence that was annoying beyond measure.

War seemed to have precipitated an epidemic of furious love-making. He watched Jennie twist these enterprising young Southerners around her slender fingers with an ease that was alarming. They were fine-looking, wholesome fellows, too—a little given to boyish boasting of military prowess, but for all that genuine, serious, big-hearted boys.

The matter-of-fact way in which she ruled them, as if she were a queen born to the royal purple and they were so many lackeys, was something new under the sun.

For a moment the thought was cheering. Perhaps it was her way of serving notice on his rivals that her real interests lay in another direction. But the disconcerting thing about it was that it seemed to be a habit of mind.

For the life of him he couldn't make out her real attitude. The one encouraging feature was that she certainly treated him with more seriousness than these home boys. It might be, of course, because she thought him a foreigner. And yet he didn't believe it. She had a way of looking frankly and inquiringly into his eyes with a deep, serious expression. Such a look could not mean idle curiosity.

And yet the problem he could not solve was how far he dared as yet to presume on that interest. A single false step might imperil his enterprise. His plan was of double importance since the break between her impulsive father and the President of the Confederacy. Barton was now the spokesman for the Opposition. His tongue was one that knew no restraint. An engagement with his daughter might mean the possession of invaluable secrets of the Richmond Government. Barton's championship of the quarrelsome commanders, who, in the first flood tide of their popularity as the heroes of Manassas, gave them the position of military dictators, would also place in his hands information of the army which would be priceless. The Confederate Congress sat behind closed doors. On the right footing in the Barton household he could put himself in possession of every scheme of the Southern law-makers from the moment of its conception.

The trait of the girl's character which astounded him was the sudden merging of every thought in the cause of the South. Even the time she spent laughing and flirting with those soldier boys was a sort of holy service she was rendering to her country. The devotion of these Southern women to the Confederacy was remarkable.

It had already become an obsession.

From the moment blood had begun to flow, the soul and body of every Southern woman was laid a living offering on the altar of her country. He watched this development with awe and admiration. It was an ominous sign. It meant a reserve power in the South on which statesmen had not counted. It might set at nought the weight of armies.

The moment he began to carefully approach the inner citadel of the girl's heart he found the figure of a gray soldier clad in steel on guard. What he said didn't interest her. He was a foreigner. She listened politely and attentively but her real thoughts were not there. He had not believed it possible that patriotism could so obsess the soul of a beautiful girl of nineteen. The devotion of the Southern women, young and old, to the cause of the South was fast developing into a mania.

They were displaying a wisdom, too, which Southern men apparently did not possess. While the hot-headed, fiery masters of men were busy quarreling with one another, criticising and crippling the administration of their Government, the women were supporting the President with a unanimity and enthusiasm that was amazing.

Jennie Barton refused to listen to her father's abuse.

Socola found them in the middle of a family quarrel on the subject so intense he could not help hearing the conversation from the adjoining room before Jennie entered.

"The President hates Johnston, I tell you," stormed the Senator. "He doesn't like Beauregard either. He's jealous of him!"

"Father dear, how can you be so absurd!" the girl protested. "A few months ago Beauregard was a captain of artillery. The President has made him a general of equal rank with Lee and Johnston—"

"He's doing all he can now to spite him!"

"So General Beauregard says—the conceit of it! This little general but yesterday a captain to dare to say that the President who had honored him with such high command would sacrifice the country and injure himself just to spite the man he has promoted!"

"That will do, Jennie," the Senator commanded. "Women don't understand politics!"

"Thank God I don't understand that kind. I just know enough to be loyal to my Chief, when our life and his may depend on it—"

With a stamp of his heavy foot the Senator ended the discussion by leaving the room.

Jennie smiled sweetly as she extended her hand to Socola.

"I hope you were not alarmed, Signor. We never fight—"

"The President of the Confederacy is a very fortunate leader, Miss Jennie—"

"Why?"

"He has invincible champions—"

The girl blushed.

"I'm afraid we don't know much. We just feel things."

"I think sometimes we only know that way—"

He paused and looked at her hat with a gesture of dismay.

"You're not going out?"

"I must," she said apologetically. "I've bought a whole carriage load of peaches and grapes. I went to the Alabama hospital yesterday with a little basket full and made some poor fellows glad. They gave out too quickly. Those who got none looked so wistfully at me as I passed out. I couldn't sleep last night. For hours and hours their deep-sunken eyes followed and haunted me with their pleading. And so I've got a whole load to take to-day. You'll go with me—won't you?"

He had come to declare his love and make this beautiful girl his conquest. She was ending the day by making him her lackey and errand boy.

It couldn't be helped. There was no mistaking the tones of her voice. She would certainly go. The only way to be with her was to dance attendance on wounded Confederate soldiers.

It was all in the day's work. Many a scout engulfed in the ranks of his enemy must charge his own men to save his life. He would not only make the best of it, he would take advantage of it to press his way a step closer to her heart.

"Are all of the girls of the South like you, Miss Jennie?" he asked with a quizzical smile.

"You mean insulting to their fathers?" she laughed.

"If you care to put it so—I mean, is their loyalty to the Confederacy a mania?"

"Is mine a mania?"

"Perhaps I should say a divine passion—are all your Southern women thus inspired?"

"Yes."

"In the far South and the West?"

"Everywhere!"

"It's wonderful."

"Perhaps because we can't fight we try to make up for it."

He watched her keenly.

"It's something bigger than that. Somehow it's a prophecy to me of a new future—a new world. Maybe after all political wisdom shall not begin and end with man."

Jennie blushed again under the admiring gaze with which Socola held her.

The carriage stopped at the door of the Alabama hospital. Socola leaped to the ground and extended his hand for Jennie's. He allowed himself the slightest pressure of the slender fingers as he lifted her out. It was his right in just that moment to press her hand. He put the slightest bit more than was needed to firmly grasp it, and the blood flamed hotly in her cheeks.

He hastened to carry her baskets and boxes of peaches and grapes inside.

For an hour he followed her with faithful dog step in her ministry of love. His orderly Northern mind shuddered at the sight of the confusion incident to the sudden organization of this hospital work. He had heard it was equally bad in the North. Two armed mobs had rushed into battle with scarcely a thought of what might be done with the mangled men who would be borne from the field.

Jennie bent low over the cot of a dying boy from her home county. He clung to her hand piteously. The waters were too swift and deep for speech. Before she could slip her hand from his and pass on the man on the next cot died in convulsions.

Socola watched his agonized face with a strange sense of exaltation. It was the law of progress—this way of death and suffering. The voice within kept repeating the one big faith of his life:

"Not one drop of human blood shed in defense of truth and right is ever spilled in vain!"

Through all the scenes of death and suffering beautiful Southern women moved with soft tread and eager hands.

A pretty girl of sixteen, with wistful blue eyes, approached a rough, wounded soldier. She carried a towel and tin basin of water.

"Can't I do something for you?" she asked the man in gray.

He smiled through his black beard into her sweet young face:

"No'm, I reckon not—"

"Can't I wash your face?" the girl pleaded.

The wounded man softly laughed.

"Waal, hit's been washed fourteen times to-day, but I'll stand it again, if you say so!"

The girl laughed and blushed and passed quickly on.

When all the grapes and peaches had been distributed save in one basket Socola looked at these enquiringly.

"And these, Miss Jennie—they're the finest of the lot?"

The girl smiled tenderly.

"They're for revenge—"

"Revenge?"

"Yes. The next ward is full of Yankees. I'm going to heap coals of fire on their heads—come—"

The last luscious peach and bunch of grapes had been distributed and the last soldier in blue had murmured:

"God bless you, Miss!"

Jennie paused at the door and waved her hand in friendly adieu to the hungry, homesick eyes that still followed her.

She brushed a tear from her cheek and whispered:

"That's for my Big Brother. I'll tell him about it some day. He's still in the Union—but he's mine!"

She drew her lace handkerchief from her belt, dried her tears and looked up with a laugh.

"I'm not so loyal after all—am I?"

"No. But I've seen something bigger than loyalty," he breathed softly, "something divine—"

"Come," said the girl lightly. "I wish you to meet the most wonderful woman in Richmond. She's in charge of this hospital—"

Socola laughed skeptically.

"I've already seen the most wonderful woman in Richmond, Miss Jennie—"

"But she is—really—the most wonderful woman in all the South—I think in the world—Mrs. Arthur Hopkins—"

"Really?"

"She has done what no man ever has anyhow—sold all her property for two hundred thousand dollars and given it to the Confederacy. And not satisfied with giving all she had—she gave herself."

Socola followed the girl in silence into the little office of the hospital and found himself gasping with astonishment at the sight of the delicate woman who extended her hand in friendly greeting.

She was so perfect an image of his own mother it was uncanny—the same straight, firm mouth, the strong, intellectual forehead with the heavy, straight-lined eyebrows, the waving rich brown hair, with a strand of silver here and there—the somber dress of black, the white lace collar and the dainty white lace cap on the back of her beautiful hair—it took his breath.

The more he saw of these Southern people, men and women, the more absurd became the stuff he had read so often about the Puritan of New England and the Cavalier of the South. He was more and more overwhelmed with the conviction that the Americans were one people racially and temperamentally. The only difference on earth between them was that some settled in the bleak hills and rock-bound coast of the North and others in the sunlit fields and along the shining shores of the South.

He returned with Jennie Barton to her home with the deepening conviction that he was making no progress. He must use this girl's passionate devotion to her country as the lever by which to break into her heart or he would fail.

He paused on the doorstep and spoke with quick decision:

"Miss Jennie, your Southern women have fired my imagination. I'm going to resign my commission with the Sardinian Ministry and enter the service of the South—"

"You mean it?"

"I was never in more deadly earnest."

He looked straight into her brown eyes until she lowered them.

"I need not tell you that you have been my inspiration. You understand that without my saying it."

Before Jennie could answer he had turned and gone with quick, firm step.

She watched his slender, graceful figure with a new sense of exhilaration and tenderness.



CHAPTER XX

THE ANACONDA

While General Joseph E. Johnston was devoting his energies to a campaign to change the date of his commission and his friends organizing their opposition to the President at Richmond, Gideon Welles, the quiet, unassuming Secretary of the Navy at Washington, was slowly but surely drawing the mighty coil, the United States Navy, about the throat of the South. He made little noise but the work he did was destined to become the determining factor of the war.

The first blow was struck at North Carolina.

On August 26, 1861, at one o'clock the fleet quietly put to sea from Fortress Monroe. On Tuesday they arrived at Hatteras Inlet, opened fire on the two forts guarding its entrance and on the twenty-ninth a white flag was raised. Seven hundred and fifteen prisoners were surrendered, one thousand stand of arms, and thirty pieces of cannon. At a single blow the whole vast inland water coast of North Carolina on her Sounds was opened to the enemy with communications from Norfolk, Virginia, to Beaufort. A garrison of a thousand men could hold those forts for all time with the navy in command of the sea.

Burnside followed with his expedition into the Sounds, captured Roanoke Island and the fall of Newbern was inevitable. Every river-mouth and inlet of the entire coast of North Carolina was now in the hands of the Federal Government save the single port of Wilmington.

The moral effect of this blow by the navy was tremendous in the North. It was the first token of renewed power since the defeat at Bull Run. The navy had not only turned the tide of defeat in the imagination of the people, the achievement was one of vast importance to the North and the most sinister import to the South.

The Federal Government had gained the first important base on the Southern coast for her blockading squadron and given a foothold for the military invasion of North Carolina.

The President at Richmond was compelled to watch this tragedy in helpless sorrow. The South had no navy with which to dispute the command of the sea and yet she had three thousand miles of coast line!

With swift, remorseless sweep the navy struck Port Royal, South Carolina, and established the second secure base for the blockading squadrons.

The Beaufort district of South Carolina captured by this expedition was one of the richest and most thickly settled of the State, containing fifteen hundred square miles. It produced annually fifty million pounds of rice and fourteen thousand bales of cotton. And in its population were thirty thousand slaves suddenly brought under the power of the Federal Government.

The coast of Florida was next pierced. The blockade of the enormous coast line of the South was declared at first an impossibility. Within less than a year the United States Navy had established bases within striking distance of every port. New ships were being launched, purchased or chartered daily and the giant Anaconda was slowly winding its terrible coil about the commerce of the Confederacy.

Jefferson Davis was not the man to accept this ominous situation without a desperate struggle. The man who had substituted iron gun carriages for wood in the army consulted his Secretary of the Navy on the possibility of revolutionizing the naval-warfare of the world by the construction of an iron-clad ship of first-class power. In his report to the Confederate Naval Committee, Secretary Mallory had developed this possibility two months before the subject had been broached in the report of Gideon Welles in Washington.

"I regard the possession of an iron-armored ship," Mallory urged, "as a matter of the first necessity. Such a vessel at this time could traverse the entire coast of the United States, prevent all blockade, and encounter with a fine prospect of success their entire navy. Inequality of numbers may be overcome by invulnerability, and thus not only does economy but naval success dictate the wisdom and expediency of fighting with iron against wood, without regard to first cost."

The President of the Confederacy gave his hearty endorsement to this plan—and summoned the genius of the South to the task. At the bottom of the harbor of Norfolk lay the half-burned hull of the steam frigate Merrimac which the Government had set on fire and sunk on destroying the Navy Yard.

The Merrimac was raised. A board was appointed to draw plans and estimate the cost of the conversion of the vessel into a powerful, floating, iron-clad battery. In the crippled condition of the Norfolk Navy Yard the task was tremendous and the expense would be great.

The President ordered the work prosecuted with the utmost vigor. Day and night the ring of hammers on heavy iron echoed over the quiet harbor of Norfolk. Blacksmiths were forging the most terrible ship of war that ever sailed the seas. If the hopes of her builders should be realized, the navy of the North would be swept from the ocean and the proudest ships of the world be reduced to junk in a day.



CHAPTER XXI

THE GATHERING CLOUDS

Disaster followed disaster for the South now in swift succession. The United States Navy, not content with the supremacy of the high seas, set to work with determination to build a war fleet on the great rivers of the West which could pierce the heart of the lower South.

Before the South could possibly secure arms and ammunition with which to equip the army of Albert Sidney Johnston, these gunboats were steaming down the Ohio and Mississippi bearing thousands of troops armed, drilled and led by stark, game-fighting generals from the West.

By the end of November the Federal troops threatening Tennessee numbered fifty thousand and they were rapidly reenforced until they aggregated a hundred thousand.

General Albert Sidney Johnston sent the most urgent appeals for arms to the Governors of Georgia and Alabama, to General Bragg at Pensacola and to the Government at Richmond. He asked for thirty thousand muskets and got but one thousand. The guns were not in the South. They could not be manufactured. Fully one-half his men had no arms at all. Whole brigades remained without weapons for months. The entire force at his command never numbered more than twenty-two thousand during this perilous fall. And yet, by the masterly handling of his little army, its frequent and rapid expeditions, he kept his powerful opponents in constant expectations of an attack and produced the impression that he commanded an enormous force.

In the meantime the sensational newspapers were loud in their demands.

The Richmond yellow Journal shouted:

"Let Johnston muster his forces, advance into Kentucky, capture Louisville, push across the Ohio and carry the war into Africa."

Swift and terrible the blow fell.

And always the navy's smoke on the horizon. From the Ohio, the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers could be navigated for hundreds of miles into Tennessee and Alabama. But two forts guarded the rivers and protected these States.

Early in February, 1862, the gunboats under Admiral Foote slowly steamed up the Tennessee and attacked Fort Henry. The array they covered was commanded by General Grant. The Federal fleet and army hurled twenty thousand men and fifty-four cannon against the little fort of eleven guns. With but forty men General Tilghman fought this host and held them at bay for two hours and ten minutes, until the main body of his garrison of twenty-five hundred troops had marched out and were safely on their way to Fort Donelson, twelve miles across the country on the banks of the Cumberland. Fort Henry was of small importance. Fort Donelson commanded the approach to Nashville.

There was not a moment's delay. Grant telegraphed Halleck that he would capture Fort Donelson two days later. Admiral Foote sent three light gunboats up the Tennessee to clear the river into Alabama, swept down stream with his heavier craft to the Ohio and turned into the Cumberland. Grant pressed directly across the strip of twelve miles with his army bearing on Fort Donelson.

The commander at Fort Donelson had at first but six thousand men including the garrison from Fort Henry which had just arrived. Had Grant been able to strike on the eighth of February, the day he had wired to Halleck he would capture the fort, its fall would have been sure. But high water delayed him, and Albert Sidney Johnston hastened to pour in reenforcements. Every available soldier at his command was rushed to the rescue. He determined to fight for Nashville at Donelson. General Buckner's command of Kentuckians, General Pillow's Tennesseeans and General Floyd's brigade of Virginia troops were all poured into the fort before the thirteenth. This force, approximating twenty thousand men, properly commanded should hold Donelson indefinitely.

The fortification was magnificently placed on a bluff commanding the river for two miles. Its batteries consisted of eight thirty-two-pounders, three thirty-two-pound carronades, one ten-inch Columbiad and one thirty-two-pounder rifle. A line of entrenchments stretched for two miles around the fort enclosing it.

Into these trenches the newly arrived troops were thrown.

Dick Welford, with Floyd's Virginians, gripped his musket with eager enthusiasm for his first real battle. His separation from Jennie had been a bitter trial. In his eagerness to get to the front he had the misfortune to serve in the ill fated campaign in West Virginia, which preceded Bull Run. Beauregard and J. E. Johnston were in easy touch with Richmond. His unlucky brigade had been transferred to Albert Sidney Johnston's command.

The men had been in the trenches through the long miserable night expecting an attack at any moment.

Half waking, half dreaming, he lay on the cold ground wondering what Jennie was doing—and always with the nightmare of that foreign snake winding his way into her favor. Well, his chance would come in this battle. He would lead his men in a charge. He was a corporal now. He would come out of it with straps on his shoulders, he could see Jennie's eyes flash with tears of pride as she read the story of his heroism and his promotion.

"I'll show that reptile what a man can do!" he muttered.

The tired body relaxed and his big blond head sank on his arms.

A sudden crash of thunder and he sprang to his feet, his hand tight on his gun. There they were in the gray light of the chill February morning—the fleet of Federal gunboats under Foote, their big black funnels pouring clouds of smoke into the sky, darkening the dull red glow of the rising sun. He counted six of them—Carondalet, Pittsburgh, Louisville, St. Louis, Tyler and Conestoga.

A white breath of smoke flashed from the Carondalet's bow, and Dick watched the shell rise with a shriek and fall short of the fort.

The fleet moved closer and another shell screamed through the sky and again fell short. They moved again, found the range, and for four hours the earth trembled beneath the steady roar of their forty-six guns.

At eleven o'clock Dick saw the long lines of men in blue deploy for an assault on the entrenchments. They moved with quick sure step, these men under Grant. He was sorry for them. They were marching to certain death.

On the blue waves rolled, pouring volley after volley into the heaps of earth behind which the Southerners lay.

They were close enough now and the quick command rang along the trenches.

"Fire!"

A storm of death swept the ranks in the open fields. They stood their ground stubbornly, those dogged western fighters. Dazed and cut to pieces, they rallied and pressed forward again only to be mowed down in heaps.

They gave it up at last and sullenly withdrew, leaving the dead piled high and the wounded slowly freezing to death where they lay.

The artillery kept the earth quivering with the steady roar of their guns and the Federal sharpshooters harassed the trenches without a moment's respite. It was impossible to move for food or water until nightfall.

At dawn next day Dick once more gripped his gun and peered over the embankment. The morning passed without attack. What could it mean? They saw at last—another fleet. Clouds of black smoke on the river told the story. Reenforcements had arrived.

At half-past two o'clock the fleet formed in line of battle—threw their big flags to the breeze and dashed squarely on the fort.