The Confederate division commanders were gathering their hosts for the last charge at sunset. There was yet an hour of daylight in which to end the struggle with the complete annihilation of the Union army. Down under the steep banks of the river's edge the demoralized remnants of the shattered divisions were already stacking their arms to surrender. They had made their last stand.

General Bragg turned to his aide:

"Tell Major Stewart of the twenty-first Alabama to advance and drive the enemy into the river!"

The aide saluted.

"And carry that order along the whole line!"

The aide put spurs to his horse to execute the command, when a courier dashed up from General Beauregard's headquarters.

"Direct me to General Bragg!"

The aide pointed to the General and rode back with Beauregard's courier.

"General Beauregard orders that you cease fighting and rest your men to-night."

Bragg turned his rugged dark face on the messenger with a scowl.

"You have promulgated this order to the army?"

"I have, sir—"

"If you had not, I would not obey it—"

He paused and threw one hand high above his head.

"Our victory has been thrown to the winds!"

The sudden and inexplicable abandonment of this complete and overwhelming success was one of the most remarkable events in the history of modern warfare.

The men bivouacked on the field.

The blunder was fatal and irretrievable. Even while the order was being given to cease firing the advance guard of Buell's army was already approaching the other bank of the river. Twenty-five thousand fresh men under cover of the darkness began to pour their long lines into position to save Grant's shattered ranks.

As night fell another misfortune was on the way to obscure the star of Beauregard. His soldiers, elated with their wonderful victory, broke into disorderly plundering of the captured Federal camps. Except for a few thousand sternly disciplined troops under Bragg's command the whole Southern army suddenly degenerated into a mob of roving plunderers, mad with folly. In the rich stores of the Federal army thousands of gallons of wines and liquors were found. Hundreds of gray soldiers became intoxicated. While scenes of the wildest revelry and disorder were being enacted around the camp fires, Buell's army was silently crossing the river under cover of the night and forming in line of battle for to-morrow's baptism of blood.

Albert Sidney Johnston's body lay cold in death—and the army of the victorious South had no head. Better had there been no second general of full rank in the field. Either of Johnston's division commanders, Bragg, Hardee, Polk or Breckinridge, would have driven Grant's panic-stricken mob into the river within an hour if let alone.

But the little hero of Bull Run of the flower-decked tent halted his men to rest for the night at the very hour of the day when Napoleon ordered his first charge on one of his immortal battlefields.

Beauregard gave his foe ample time for breakfast next morning. The sun was an hour high in the heavens before the battle was joined.

The genius of Johnston had surprised Grant and rolled his army back on the river—never pausing for a moment to give him time to rally his broken ranks.

But when Beauregard leisurely led his disorganized army next morning against Grant's new lines, there was no shock, no surprise—the line was ready. His panic-stricken men had been reorganized and massed in strong defensive position and reenforced by the divisions of Generals Nelson, McCook, Crittenden, and Thomas of Buell's army—twenty-five thousand strong.

Lew Wallace's division had also effected the junction and the Federal front presented a solid wall of fifty-three thousand determined men against whom Beauregard must now throw his little army of thirty thousand effective fighters.

The assault was made with dash and courage. For four hours the battle raged with fury. The shattered regiments that had been surprised and crushed the day before, yielded at one time before the onslaughts of the Confederates. By noon Beauregard had sent into the shambles his last brigade and reserves and shortly afterwards gave his first order to withdraw his army.

Breckinridge's division covered the retreat and there was no attempt at pursuit. Grant was only too glad to save his army. The first great battle of the war had been fought and won by the genius of the South's commander and its results thrown away by the hero of Bull Run.

Never was the wisdom of a great leader more thoroughly vindicated than was Jefferson Davis in the record Albert Sidney Johnston made at Shiloh. The men who had been loudest in demanding his removal stood dumb before the story of his genius.

The death list of this battle sent a shiver of horror through the North and the South. All other battles of the war were but skirmishes to this.

The Confederate losses in killed, wounded and missing were ten thousand six hundred and ninety-nine. At Bull Run the combined armies of Joseph E. Johnston and Beauregard lost but one thousand nine hundred and sixty-four men.

Grant's army lost thirteen thousand one hundred and sixty-two in killed, wounded and prisoners. McDowell at Bull Run had lost but two thousand seven hundred, and yet was removed from his command.

The rage against Grant in the North was unbounded. The demand for his removal was so determined, so universal, so persistent, it was necessary for Abraham Lincoln to bow to it temporarily.

Lincoln positively refused to sacrifice his fighting General for his first error, but sent Halleck into the field as Commander-in-Chief and left Grant in command of his division.

The bulldog fighter of the North learned his lesson at Shiloh. The South never again caught him napping.

Great as the losses were to the North they were as nothing to the disaster which this bloody field brought to the Confederacy. Albert Sidney Johnston alive was equal to an army of a hundred thousand men—dead; his loss was irreparable.



CHAPTER XXVII

THE LIGHT THAT FAILED

The struggle which Jefferson Davis was making to parry the force of the mortal blows delivered by the United States Navy at last gave promise of startling success.

The fight to establish the right of the Confederacy to arm its allies under letters of marque and reprisal had been won by the Southern President. The first armed vessel sailing under the orders of Davis which was captured by the navy had brought the question to sharp issue. The Washington Government had proclaimed the vessels flying the Confederate flag under letters of marque to be pirates and subject to the treatment of felons.

The Captain and the crew of the Savannah when captured had been put in irons and condemned to death as pirates. If the Washington Government could make good this daring assumption, the power of the Confederacy to damage the commerce of the North would be practically destroyed at a blow.

Davis met the crisis with firmness. He selected an equal number of Federal prisoners of war in Richmond and threw them into a dungeon below Libby Prison. He dispatched a letter to Washington whose language could not be misunderstood.

"Dare to execute an officer or sailor of the Savannah, and I will put to death as felons an equal number of Federal officers and men. I have placed them in close confinement and ordered similar treatment to that accorded our prisoners from the captured vessel."

Socola received a message summoning him to the house on Church Hill. A courier had arrived from Washington. The Government must know immediately if this threat were idle or genuine. If Jefferson Davis should dare to execute these thirteen officers and men, the administration could not resist the storm of indignant protest which would overwhelm it from the North.

Socola read the cipher dispatch by the dim light of the candle in his attic and turned to Miss Van Lew.

"My information in the State Department is of the most positive kind. The prisoners have been put in the dungeon set apart for condemned felons and they but wait the word of the execution of the men from the Savannah, to be led to certain death. It may be talk. We must know. Apply for permission to visit the condemned men and minister to their comfort—"

"At once," was the prompt response. "I've made friends with Captain Todd, the Commandant of Libby Prison; I'll succeed."

Crazy Bet appeared at Libby Prison next morning with a basket of flowers for the condemned men. Captain Todd humored her mania. Poor old abolition fanatic, she could do no harm. She was too frank and outspoken to be dangerous. Besides, it was a war of brothers. His own sister was the wife of Abraham Lincoln. These condemned men were the best blood of the North. It was a pitiful tragedy.

Miss Van Lew, with a market basket on her arm, watched for Socola's appearance from the office of the Secretary of State. The young clerk was walking slowly down Main Street and turned into an unused narrow road at the foot of the hill.

Crazy Bet, swinging the basket and humming a song, passed him without turning her head.

"It's true," she whispered quickly, "all horribly true. Thirteen of the finest officers of the Union army have been condemned to death the moment the crew of the Savannah are executed—among them Colonel Cochrane of New York and Colonel Paul Revere of Massachusetts. The dispatch must go to-night."

"To-night," was the short answer.

Within an hour Socola's courier was on his way to Washington with a message which unlocked the prison doors of the condemned men on both sides of the line.

Abraham Lincoln stoutly opposed a repetition of the effort to treat Confederate prisoners as outlaws, no matter where taken by land or sea. Davis had established the legality of his letters of marque and reprisal beyond question.

The United States Navy in the first flood of its victories made another false step which brought to the South an hour of brilliant hope. Captain Wilkes overhauled a British steamer carrying the royal mail and took from her decks by force the Commissioners Mason and Slidell whom Davis had dispatched to Europe to plead for the recognition of the Confederacy. The North had gone wild with joy over the act and Congress voted Wilkes the thanks of the nation as its hero.

Great Britain demanded an apology and the restoration of the prisoners, put her navy on a war footing and dispatched a division of her army to Canada to strike the North by land as well as sea.

The hard common sense of Abraham Lincoln rescued the National Government from a delicate and dangerous situation. Lincoln apologized to Great Britain, restored the Confederate Commissioners and returned with redoubled energy to the prosecution of the war. In answer to the shouts of demagogues and the reproaches of both friend and foe, the homely rail-splitter from the West had a simple answer.

"One war at a time."

Jefferson Davis watched this threat of British invasion with breathless intensity. He saw the hope of thus breaking the power of the navy fade with sickening disappointment.

There was one more hope. The hull of the Merrimac had been raised from the bottom of the harbor of Norfolk and the work of transforming her into a giant iron-clad ship capable of carrying a fighting crew of three hundred men had been completed, though her engines were slow.

But the enthusiastic men set to this task by Davis had accomplished wonders. Their reports to him had raised high hopes of a sensation. If this new monster of the sea should succeed single handed in destroying the fleet of six vessels lying in Hampton Roads, the naval warfare of the world would be revolutionized in a day and overtures for peace might be within sight.

The Norfolk newspapers, under instructions from the Confederate Commandant, pronounced the experiment of the Merrimac a stupid and fearful failure. Her engines were useless. Her steering gear wouldn't work. Her armament was so heavy she couldn't be handled. These papers were easily circulated at Newport News and Old Point Comfort among the officers and men of the Federal fleet.

The men who had built the strange craft knew she was anything but a failure. With eager, excited hands her crew finished the last touch of her preparations and with her guns shotted she slowly steamed out of the harbor of Norfolk accompanied by two saucy little improvised gunboats, the Beaufort and the Raleigh.

Her speed was not more than five knots an hour and she steered so badly the Beaufort was compelled to pull her into the main current of the channel more than once.

The Federal squadron lay off Newport News, the Congress and the Cumberland well out in the stream, the Minnesota, Roanoke and St. Lawrence further down toward Fortress Monroe. The Congress, Cumberland and St. Lawrence mounted one hundred and twenty-four guns, twenty-two of them of nine-inch caliber. Their crews aggregated more than a thousand men.

The new crack steam frigates Minnesota and Roanoke had crews of six hundred men each and carried more than eighty guns of nine and eleven-inch caliber. That any single craft afloat would dare attack such a squadron was preposterous.

It was one o'clock before the strange black looking object swung into the channel and turned her nose up stream toward Newport News.

The crews of the Congress and the Cumberland were lounging on deck enjoying the balmy spring air. It was wash day and the clothes were fluttering in the breeze.

They couldn't make out the foolish-looking thing at first. It looked like the top of a long-hipped roof house that had been sawed off at the eaves and pushed into the water. The two little river steamers that accompanied the raft seemed to be towing it.

"What 'ell, Bill, is that thing?" a sailor asked his mate on the Congress.

Bill scanned the horizon.

"I give it up, sir," he admitted. "I been a sailin' the seas for forty years—but that's one on me!"

A battle signal suddenly flashed from the Cumberland and down came the wash lines.

The Beaufort with a single thirty-two-pounder rifle mounted in her bow was steaming alongside the port of the strange craft. A puff of white smoke flared from her single gun and its dull roar waked the still beautiful waters of the Virginia harbor.

The Merrimac flung her big battle flag into the sky and her tiny escorts dropped down stream to give her free play. The Congress and the Cumberland were surprised, but they slipped their anchors in a jiffy, swung their guns in haste and began pouring a storm of shot on the iron sides of the coming foe.

The Merrimac moved forward with slow, steady throb as though the shot that rained on her slanting sides were so many pebbles thrown by school boys. She passed the Congress and pointed her ugly prow for the Cumberland. The ship poured her broadside squarely into the face of the Merrimac without damage and the bow gun roared an answer that pierced her bulwarks.

Through the thick cloud of heavy smoke that hung low on the water the throbbing monster bore straight down on the Cumberland, struck her amidship and sent her to the bottom.

As the gallant ship sank in sickening lurches her brave crew cheered her to her grave and continued firing her useless guns until the waves engulfed the decks. When her keel touched the bottom her flag was still flying from her masthead. She rolled over on her beam's end and carried the flag beneath the waves.

The Confederate mosquito fleet, consisting of the little gunboats Patrick Henry, Teaser and Jamestown, swung down from the river now, ran boldly past the flaming shore batteries and joined in the attack on the Federal squadron.

The Congress had set one of her sails and with the aid of a tug was desperately working to reach shoal water before she could be sunk. Her captain succeeded in beaching her directly under the guns of the shore batteries. At four o'clock she gave up the bloody unequal contest and hauled down her colors.

The Minnesota, Roanoke and St. Lawrence, in trying to reach the scene of the battle, had all been grounded. The Minnesota was still lying helpless in the mud as the sun set and the new monarch of the seas slowly withdrew to Sewell's Point to overhaul her machinery and prepare to finish her work next day.

The Merrimac had lost twenty-one killed and wounded—among the wounded was her gallant flag officer, Franklin Buchanan. The Patrick Henry had lost fourteen, the Beaufort eight, the Raleigh seven, including two officers.

The Federal squadron had lost two ships and four hundred men.

But by far the greatest loss to the United States Navy was the supremacy of the seas. The power of her fleets had been smashed at a blow. The ugly, black, powder-stained, iron thing lying under the guns of Sewell's Point had won the crown of the world's naval supremacy. The fleets of the United States were practically out of commission while she was afloat. The panic at the North which followed the startling news from Hampton Roads was indescribable. Abraham Lincoln hastily called a Cabinet meeting to consider what action it was necessary to take to meet the now appalling situation. Never before had any man in authority at Washington realized how absolute was their dependence on the United States Navy—how impossible it would be to maintain the Government without its power.

Edwin M. Stanton, the indefatigable Secretary of War, completely lost his nerve at this Cabinet meeting. He paced the floor with quick excited tread, glancing out of the window of the White House toward the waters of the Potomac with undisguised fear.

"I am sure, gentlemen," he said to the Cabinet, "that monster is now on her way to Washington. In my opinion we will have a shell from one of her big guns in the White House before we leave this room!"

Lincoln was profoundly depressed but refused to believe the cause of the Union could thus be completely lost at a single blow from a nondescript, iron raft. Yet it was only too easy to see that the moral effect of this victory would be crushing on public opinion.

The wires to Washington were hot with frantic calls for help. New York was ready to surrender at the first demand. So utter was the demoralization at Fortress Monroe, the one absolutely impregnable fort on the Atlantic coast, that the commander had already determined to surrender in answer to the first shot the Merrimac should fire.

The preparations for moving McClellan's army to the Virginia Peninsula for the campaign to capture Richmond were suddenly halted. Two hundred thousand men must rest on their arms until this crisis should pass. All orders issued to the Army of the Potomac were now made contingent on the destruction of the iron monster lying in Hampton Roads.

By one of the strangest coincidences in history the United States Navy had completed an experiment in floating iron at precisely the same moment.

While the guns of the battle were yet echoing over the waters of the harbor, this strange little craft, a floating iron cheese box, was slowly steaming into the Virginia capes.

At nine o'clock that night Ericsson's Monitor was beside the panic-stricken Roanoke.

When C. S. Bushnell took the model of this strange craft to Washington, he was referred to Commander C. H. Davis by the Naval Board. When Davis had examined it he handed it back to Bushnell with a pitying smile:

"Take the little thing home, and worship it. It would not be idolatry, because it's made in the image of nothing in the heaven above or the earth beneath or in the waters under the earth."

Wiser councils had prevailed, and the floating cheese box was completed and arrived in Hampton Roads in time to put its powers to supreme test.

The Merrimac's crew ate their breakfast at their leisure and prepared to drive their ugly duckling into the battle line again and finish the work of destroying the battered Federal squadron.

The Merrimac had fought the battle of the day before under the constant pounding of more than one hundred guns bearing on her iron sides. Her armor was intact. Two of her guns were disabled by having their muzzles shot off. Her nose had been torn off and sank with the Cumberland. One anchor, her smoke stacks and steam pipes were shot away. Every scrap of her railing, stanchions, and boat davits had been swept clean. Her flag staff was gone and a boarding pike had been set up in its place.

With stern faces, and absolutely sure of victory, her crew swung her into the stream, crowded on full steam and moved down on the Minnesota.

Close under the ship's side they saw for the first time the cheese box. They had heard of the experiment of her building but knew nothing of her arrival.

Her insignificant size was a surprise and the big Merrimac dashed at her with a sullen furious growl of her big guns. The game little bulldog swung out from the Minnesota and made straight for the onrushing monster.

The flotilla of gunboats had been signaled to retire and watch the duel.

From the big eleven-inch guns of the Monitor shot after shot was hurled against the slanting armored walls of the Merrimac.

Broadside after broadside poured from her guns against the iron-clad tower of the Monitor.

The Merrimac, drawing twenty feet of water, was slow and difficult to handle. The game little Monitor drew but twelve feet and required no maneuvering. Her tower revolved. She could stand and fight in one spot all day.

The big black hull of the Merrimac bore down on the Monitor now to ram and sink her at a blow. The nimble craft side stepped the avalanche of iron, turned quickly and attempted to jamb her nose into the steering gear of the Southerner—but in vain.

For two solid hours the iron-clads pounded and hammered each other. The shots made no impression on either boat.

Again the Merrimac tried to ram her antagonist and run her aground. The nimble foe avoided the blow, though struck a grinding, crushing side-swipe.

The little Monitor now stuck her nose squarely against the side of the Merrimac, held it there, and fired both her eleven-inch guns against the walls of the Southerner.

The charge of powder was not heavy enough. No harm was done. The impact of the shots had merely forced the sloping sides an inch or two.

The captain of the Merrimac turned to his men in sharp command.

"All hands on deck. Board and capture her!"

The smoke-smeared crew swarmed to the portholes and were just in the act of springing on the decks of the Monitor, when she backed quickly and dropped down stream.

After six hours of thunder in each other's faces the Monitor drew away into the shoal waters guarding the Minnesota.

The Merrimac could not follow her in the shallows and at two o'clock turned her prow again toward Sewell's Point.

The battle was a drawn conflict. But the plucky little Monitor had won a tremendous moral victory. She had rescued the navy in the nick of time. The Government at Washington once more breathed.

From the heights of rejoicing the South sank again to the bitterness of failure. For twenty-four hours her flag had been mistress of the seas. Jefferson Davis saw the hope of peace fade into the certainty of a struggle for the possession of Richmond.

The way had been cleared. McClellan's two hundred thousand men were rushing on their transports for the Virginia peninsula.



CHAPTER XXVIII

THE SNARE OF THE FOWLER

Long before Jennie Barton arrived in Richmond Socola had waked to the realization of the fact that he had been caught in the trap he had set for another. He had laughed at his growing interest in the slender dark little Southerner. He imagined that he had hypnotized himself into the idea that he really liked her. He had kept no account of the number of visits he had made. They were part of his programme. They had grown so swiftly into the habit of his thought and life he had not stopped to question the motive that prompted his zeal in pressing his attentions.

In fact his mind had become so evenly adjusted to hers, his happiness had been so quietly perfect, he had lost sight of the fact that he was pressing his attentions at all.

The day she was suddenly called South and he said good-by with her brown eyes looking so frankly into his he was brought sharply up against the fact that he was in love.

When he took her warm hand in his to press it for the last time, he felt an almost resistless impulse to bend and kiss her. From that moment he realized that he was in love—madly, hopelessly, desperately.

He had left the car and hurried back to his post in the State Department, his heart beating like a trip hammer. It was a novel experience. He had never taken girls seriously before. The last girl on earth he had ever meant to take seriously was this slip of a Southern enthusiast. For a moment he was furious at the certainty of his abject surrender. He lifted his eyes to the big columns of the Confederate Capitol and laughed:

"Come, come, man—common sense—this is a joke! Forget it all. To your work—your country calls!"

Somehow the country refused to issue but one call—the old eternal cry of love. Wherever he turned, Jennie's brown eyes were smiling into his. He looked at the Confederate Capitol to inspire him to deeds of daring and all he could remember was that she was a glorious little rebel with three brothers fighting for the flag that floated there. All he could get out of the supreme emblem of the "Rebellion" was that it was her Capitol and her flag and he loved her.

And then he laughed for sheer joy that love had come into his heart and made the world beautiful. He surrendered himself body and soul to the madness and wonder of it all.

If he could only see his mother and tell her, she could understand. He couldn't talk to the bundle of nerves Miss Van Lew had become. Her eyes burned each day with a deeper and deeper light of fanatical patriotism. He had yielded none of his own enthusiasm. But this secret of his heart was too sweet to be shared by a comrade in arms.

Only God's eye, or the soul of the mother who bore him, could understand what he felt. The realization of his love for Jennie brought a new fear into his heart. His nerve was put daily to supreme test in the dangerous work in which he was engaged. A single mistake would start an investigation sure to end with a rope around his neck. Love had given life a new meaning. The chatter of the squirrels in the Capitol Square was all about their homes and babies in the tree tops. The song of birds in the old flower garden on Church Hill made his heart thump with a joy that was agony. The flowers were just bursting into full bloom and their perfume filled the air with the lazy dreaming of the southern spring.

He must speak his love. His heart would burst with its beating. His mate must know. And she had returned to Richmond with a bitterness against the North that was something new in the development of her character.

The newspapers of Richmond had published an elaborate account of the sacking of her father's house, the smashing of its furniture and theft of its valuables. It had created a profound sensation. There was no mistaking the passion with which she had told this story.

He had laughed at first over the fun of winning the fairest little rebel in the South and carrying his bride away a prize of war, against the combined efforts of his Southern rivals. His love and pride had not doubted for a moment that her heart would yield to the man she loved no matter what uniform he might wear at the end of this war.

He couldn't make up his mind to ask her to marry him until she should know his real name and his true principles.

What would she do if the truth were revealed? His heart fairly stopped its beating at the thought. The fall of Richmond he now regarded as a practical certainty. The Merrimac had proven a vain hope to the Confederacy.

McClellan was landing his magnificent army on the Peninsula and preparing to sweep all before him. McDowell's forty thousand men were moving on his old line of march straight from Washington. Their two armies would unite before the city and circle it with an invincible wall of fire and steel. Fremont, Milroy and Banks were sweeping through the valley of the Shenandoah. Their armies would unite, break the connections of the Confederacy at Lynchburg and the South would be crushed.

That this would all be accomplished within thirty days he had the most positive assurances from Washington. So sure was Miss Van Lew of McClellan's triumphant entry into Richmond she had put her house in order for his reception. Her parlor had been scrupulously cleaned. Its blinds were drawn and the room dark, but a flag staff was ready and a Union standard concealed in one of her feather beds. Over the old house on Church Hill the emblem of the Nation would first be flung to the breeze in the conquered Capital of the Confederacy.

The certainty of his discovery in the rush of the Union army into the city was now the nightmare which haunted his imagination.

He could fight the Confederate Government on even terms. He asked no odds. His life was on the hazard. Something more than the life of a Union spy was at stake in his affair with Jennie. Her life and happiness were bound in his. He felt this by an unerring instinct.

If this proud, sensitive, embittered girl should stumble on even a suspicion of the truth, she would tear her heart out of her body if necessary to put him out of her life.

For a moment he was tempted to give up his work and return to the North. It was the one sure way to avoid discovery when Richmond fell. The war over, he would have his even chance with other men when its bitterness had been softened. His work in Richmond was practically done. His men could finish it. The number of soldiers in the Southern armies had been accurately counted and reported to Washington. Why should he risk the happiness of the woman he loved and his own happiness for life by remaining another day?

The thought had no sooner taken shape than he put it out of his mind.

"Bah! I've set my hand to a great task. I'm not a quitter. I'll stand by my guns. No true woman ever loved a coward!"

He would take his chances and tell her his love.

He lifted the old-fashioned brass knocker on Senator Barton's door and banged it with such force he laughed at his own foolish eagerness:

"At least I needn't smash my way in!" he muttered.

"Yassah, des walk right in de parlor, sah," Jennie's maid said, with her teeth shining in a knowing smile.

Senator Barton had recovered from his illness. There could be no doubt about it. He was in the library holding forth in eloquent tones to a group of Confederate Congressmen who made his house their rendezvous. He was enjoying the martyrdom which the outrage on his home and the death of his aged mother and father had brought. He was using it to inveigh with new bitterness against the imbecility of Jefferson Davis and his administration. He held Davis personally responsible for every defeat of the South. He was the one man who had caused the fall of New Orleans, the loss of Fort Donelson and the failure to reap the victory at Shiloh.

"But you must remember, Senator," one of his henchmen mildly protested, "that Davis did save Albert Sidney Johnston to us and that alone made a victory possible."

"And what of it, if he threw it away by appointing a fool second in Command?"

There was a good answer to this—too good for the henchman to dare use it. He had sent Beauregard west to join Albert Sidney Johnston's command because Barton's junta, supporting Joseph E. Johnston against the administration, would no longer tolerate Beauregard in the same camp with their chief. They had demanded a free field for Joseph E. Johnston in the conflict with McClellan or they had threatened his resignation and the disruption of the Confederate army.

The President, sick unto death over the wrangling of these two generals, had separated them and sent Beauregard west where the genius of Albert Sidney Johnston could use his personal popularity, and his own more powerful mind would neutralize in any council of war the little man's feeble generalship.

Socola listened to Barton's fierce, unreasoning invective with a sense of dread. It was impossible to realize that this big-mouthed, bitter, vindictive, ridiculous politician was the father of the gentle girl he loved. There must be something of his power of malignant hatred somewhere in Jennie's nature. He had caught just a glimpse of it in the story she had told the Richmond papers.

She stood in the doorway at last, a smiling vision of modest beauty. Her dress of fine old lace seemed woven of the tender smiles that played about the sensitive mouth.

He sprang to his feet and took her hand, his heart thumping with joy. She felt it tremble and laughed outright.

"So you have returned a fiercer rebel than ever, Miss Jennie?" he said hesitatingly.

He tried to say something purely conventional but it popped out when he opened his mouth—the ugly thought that was gnawing at his happiness.

"Yes," she answered thoughtfully, "I never realized before what it meant to be with my own people. I could have burned New Orleans and laughed at its ruins to have smoked Ben Butler out of it—"

"President Davis has proclaimed him an outlaw I see," Socola added.

"If he can only capture and hang him, the people of Louisiana would be perfectly willing to lose all—"

"But your brother, the Judge, is still loyal to the Union—you can't hate him you know?"

Jennie's eyes flashed into Socola's.

Why had he asked the one question that opened the wound in her heart? Perhaps her mind had suggested it. She had scarcely spoken the bitter words before she saw the vision of his serious face and regretted it.

"Strange you should have mentioned my brother's name at the very moment his image was before me," the girl thoughtfully replied.

"Clairvoyance perhaps—"

"You believe in such things?" Jennie asked.

"Yes. My mother leaped from her bed with a scream one night and told me that she had seen my father's spirit, felt him bend over her and touch her lips. He had died at exactly that moment."

"Wonderful, isn't it," Jennie murmured softly, "the vision of love!"

She was dreaming of the moments of her distress in the sacking of her home when the vision of this man's smiling face had suddenly set her to laughing.

"Yes," Socola answered. "I asked you about your older brother because I don't like the idea of you poisoning your beautiful young life with hatred. Such thoughts kill—they can't bring health and strength, Miss Jennie."

"Of course," the girl responded tenderly, "you can see things more calmly. You can't understand how deep the knife has entered our hearts in the South."

"That's just what I do understand. It's that against which I'm warning you. This war can't last always you know. There must be a readjustment—"

"Between the North and South?"

"Of course—"

"Never!"

With sudden emotion she leaped to her feet her little fists clinched. She stood trembling in silence for a moment and her face paled.

"No, Signor," she went on in cold tones. "There can be no readjustment of this war. It's to the death now. I confess myself a rebel body and soul—Confess? I glory in it! I'm proud of being one. I thought my father extravagant at first. Ben Butler has changed my views. The South can't look back now. It's forward—forward—always forward to death—or independence!"

She paused overcome with emotion.

"Yes," she went on in quick tones, "I thank God we're two different tribes! I'm proud of the South and her old-fashioned, out-of-date chivalry. The South respects and honors women. God never made the Southern white man who could issue Butler's orders in New Orleans or insult the heart-broken women who are forced to enter his office with the vile motto he has placed over his desk—"

Socola lifted his hand in gentle smiling protest.

"But you must remember, Miss Jennie, that General Butler is a peculiar individual. He probably does not represent the best that's in New England—"

"God knows I hope not for their sakes," was the answer. "I only wish I could fight in the ranks with our boys. If I can't fight at least I'm going to help our men in other ways. I'll work with my hands as a slave. I'll sew and knit and nurse. I'll breathe my soul into the souls of our men. I sing Dixie when I rise in the morning. I hum it all day. I sing it with my last thoughts as I go to sleep."

Socola moved uneasily.

She looked at him a moment with an expression of sudden tenderness.

"I can't tell you how proud and happy I am in the thought that I may have helped you to give your brilliant mind to the service of the South. It's my offering to my country and her cause!"

It was impossible to resist the glow of love in her shining face. Socola felt his soul dissolve.

With a little gesture of resignation she dropped to a seat on the lounge beside the window, her young face outlined against a mass of early roses in full bloom. Their perfume poured through the window and filled the room.

Socola seated himself deliberately by her side and held her gaze with direct purpose. She saw and understood and her heart beat in quick response.

"You realize that you are the incarnate Cause of the South for me?"

She smiled triumphantly.

"I have always known it."

There was no silly boasting in her tones, no trace of the Southern girl's light mood with one of her numerous beaux. Her words were spoken with deliberate tenderness.

"And yet how deeply and wonderfully you could not know—"

"I have guessed perhaps—"

He took her hand in his.

"I love you, Jennie—"

Her voice was the tenderest whisper.

"And I love you, my sweetheart—"

He clasped her in his arms and held her in silence.

She pushed him at arm's length and looked wistfully into his face.

"For the past month my heart has been singing. Through all the shame and misery of the sacking of our home, I could laugh and be happy—foolishly happy, because I knew that you loved me—"

"How did you know?"

"You told me—"

"When?"

"With the last little touch of your hand when I went South."

He pressed it with desperate tenderness.

"It shall be forever?"

"Forever!"

"Neither life nor death, nor height nor depth can separate us?"

"What could separate us, my lover? You are mine. I am yours. You have given your life to our cause—"

"I am but a soldier of fortune—"

"You are my soldier—you have given your life because I asked it. I give you mine in return—"

"Swear to me that you'll love me always!"

She answered with a kiss.

"I swear it."

Again he clasped her in his arms and hurried from the house. The twilight was falling. Artillery wagons were rumbling through the streets. A troop train had arrived from the South. Its regiments were rushing across the city to reenforce McGruder's thin lines on the Peninsula. McClellan's guns were already thundering on the shores.

He hurried to the house on Church Hill, his dark face flushed with happiness, his heart beating a reveille of fear and joy.



CHAPTER XXIX

THE PANIC IN RICHMOND

Richmond now entered the shadows of her darkest hour. Three armies were threatening from the west commanded by Fremont, Milroy, and Banks, whose forces were ordered to unite. McDowell with forty thousand men lay at Fredericksburg and threatened a junction with McClellan, who was moving up the Peninsula with an effective army of 105,000.

Joseph E. Johnston had under his command more than fifty thousand with which to oppose McClellan's advance. It was the opinion of Davis and Lee that the stand for battle should be made on the narrow neck of the Peninsula which lent itself naturally to defense.

To retreat toward Richmond would not only prove discouraging to the army, and precipitate a panic in the city, it meant the abandonment of Norfolk, the loss of the navy yard, the destruction of the famous iron-clad, and the opening of the James River to the gunboats of the enemy to Drury's Bluff within twelve miles of the Confederate Capital.

In this crisis Johnston gave confirmation to the worst fears of the President. He displayed the constitutional timidity and hesitation to fight which marked every step of his military career to its tragic end.

With the greatest army under his command which the Confederacy had ever brought together—with Longstreet, McGruder and G. W. Smith as his lieutenants, he was preparing to retreat without a battle.

The President called in council of war General Lee, Randolph, the Secretary of War, and General Johnston. Johnston asked that Longstreet and Smith be invited. The President consented.

After full consultation, Davis decided, with Lee's approval to hold the Peninsula, save the navy yard and keep command of the James. And Johnston received orders accordingly.

With characteristic stubbornness the Field Commander persisted in his determination to retreat without a battle.

With aching heart Davis sent him a telegram.

"Richmond, Va., May 1st, 1861.

"General Joseph E. Johnston,

"Yorktown, Va.

"Accepting your conclusion that you must soon retire, arrangements are commenced for the abandonment of the navy yard and removal of public property from Norfolk and the Peninsula.

"Your announcement to-day that you would withdraw to-morrow night, takes us by surprise and must involve enormous losses, including unfinished gunboats. Will the safety of your army allow more time?

"Jefferson Davis."

Johnston had retreated from his base at Manassas with absurd haste, burning enormous stores and supplies of which the Confederacy was in desperate need. The losses now occasioned by his hasty withdrawal from Yorktown were even more serious.

The destruction of the iron-clad which had smashed the Federal fleet in Hampton Roads sent a shiver of horror throughout the South.

* * * * *

The fiery trial through which Davis was passing brought out the finest traits of his strong character.

He had received ample warning that one of the first places marked for destruction by the Federal fleet passing up the Mississippi River was his home "Briarfield." He refused to send troops to defend it. His house was sacked, his valuable library destroyed, the place swept bare of his fine blooded stock and the negroes deported by force.

To his wife he wrote:

"You will see the notice of the destruction of our home. If our cause succeeds we shall not mourn our personal deprivation; if it should not, why—'the deluge.' I hope I shall be able to provide for the comfort of the old negroes."

Uncle Bob and Aunt Rhinah had been roughly handled by Butler's men. The foragers utterly refused to believe them when they told of their master's kindness in giving them piles of blankets. They were roughly informed that they had stolen them from the house and their treasures were confiscated amid the lamentations of the aged couple. The two precious rocking chairs were left them but of blankets and linens they were stripped bare.

* * * * *

With Johnston's army in retreat toward Richmond, his rear guard of but twelve thousand men under General McGruder had demonstrated the wisdom of Davis' position that the Peninsula could be successfully defended. McGruder's little army held McClellan at bay for nearly thirty days. He was dislodged from his position with terrible slaughter of the Union forces. McClellan's army lost two thousand two hundred and seventy-five men in this encounter, McGruder less than a thousand. Had Johnston concentrated his fifty thousand men on this line McClellan would never have taken it, and the only iron-clad the South possessed might have been saved.

The daring Commander of the Merrimac, while McClellan was encamped before Yorktown, had appeared in Hampton Roads and challenged the whole Federal fleet again to fight. The Monitor had taken refuge under the guns of Fortress Monroe and refused to come out. The ugly duckling of the Confederacy, in plain view of the whole Federal fleet and witnessed by French and English vessels, captured three schooners and carried them into port as prizes of war.

When Norfolk was abandoned, the iron-clad drew so much water she could only ascend the James by lightening her until her wooden sides showed above the water line. She was therefore set on fire and blown up on Johnston's retreat uncovering the banks of the James to the artillery of McClellan.

The Federal fleet could now dash up the James.

They did this immediately on the news of the destruction of the Confederate iron-clad.

On May fifteenth, the Galena, the Aroostook, the Monitor, the Port Royal, and the Stevens steamed up the river without opposition to Drury's Bluff within twelve miles of the Capital of the South. A half-finished fort mounting four guns guarded this point. The river was also obstructed by a double row of piles and sunken vessels.

If the eleven-inch guns of the Monitor could be brought to bear on this fort, it was a problem how long the batteries could be held in action.

The wildest alarm swept Richmond. The railroads were jammed with frantic people trying to get out. The depots were piled with mountains of baggage it was impossible to move. A mass meeting was held on the night the fleet ascended the river which was addressed by Governor Letcher and Mayor Mayo.

The Governor ended his speech with a sentence that set the crowd wild with enthusiasm.

"Sooner than see our beloved city conquered to-day by our enemies we will lay it in ashes with our own hands!"

The Legislature of Virginia showed its grit by passing a resolution practically inviting the President of the Confederacy to lay the city in ruins if he deemed wise:

"Resolved, That the General Assembly hereby expresses its desire that the Capital of the State be defended to the last extremity, if such defense is in accordance with the views of the President of the Confederate States, and that the President be assured that whatever destruction and loss of property of the State or of individuals shall thereby result, will be cheerfully submitted to."

When the Committee handed this document to Jefferson Davis, he faced them with a look of resolution:

"Richmond will not be abandoned, gentlemen, until McClellan marches over the dead bodies of our army. Not for one moment have I considered the idea of surrendering the Capital—"

"Good!"

"Thank God!"

"Hurrah for the President!"

The Committee grasped his hand, convinced that no base surrender of their Capital would be tolerated by their leader.

"Rest assured, gentlemen," he continued earnestly, "if blood must be shed, it shall be here. No soil of the Confederacy could drink it more acceptably and none hold it more gratefully. We shall stake all on this one glorious hour for our Republic. Life, death, and wounds are nothing if we shall be saved from the fate of a captured Capital and a humiliated Confederacy—"

The Government and the city had need of grim resolution. The Federal fleet moved up into range and opened fire on the batteries at Drury's Bluff. The little Confederate gunboat Patrick Henry which had won fame in the first engagement of the Merrimac steamed down into line and joined her fire with the fort.

General Lee had planted light batteries on the banks of the river to sweep the decks of the fleet with grape and cannister.

The little Monitor, the Galena, and the Stevens steamed straight up to within six hundred yards of the battery of the fort and opened with their eleven-inch guns. The Galena and the Stevens were iron-clad steamers with thin armor.

For four hours the guns thundered. The batteries poured a hail of shot on the Monitor. They bounded off her round-tower and her water-washed decks like pebbles. The rifled gun on the Stevens burst and disabled her. The Galena was pierced by heavy shot and severely crippled, losing thirty-seven of her men. As the Monitor was built, it was impossible to make effective her guns at close range against the high bluff on which the Confederate battery was placed.

At eleven o'clock the crippled fleet slowly moved down the river and Richmond was saved.

* * * * *

When Johnston in his retreat up the Peninsula reached the high ground near the Chickahominy river, he threw out his lines and prepared to give McClellan battle. He dispatched a messenger to the President at Richmond informing him of this fact. The Cabinet was in session. A spirited discussion ensued. The Secretary of War and the whole council were alarmed at the prospect of battle on such an ill chosen position. His rear would rest on an enormous swamp through which the treacherous river flowed. There were no roads or bridges of sufficient capacity to take his army rapidly if he should be compelled to retreat.

"I suggest, Mr. President," said the Secretary of War, "that you call General Johnston's attention to this fact."

Davis shook his head emphatically.

"No, gentlemen. We have entrusted the command to General Johnston. It is his business with all the facts before him to know what is best. It would be utterly unfair and very dangerous to attempt to control his operations by advice from the Capital."

Davis was too great a general and too generous and just to deny Johnston his opportunity for supreme service to his country. It was the fixed policy of the President to select the best man for the position to which he assigned him and leave the responsibility of action on the field to his judgment.

On the following morning instead of a report of battle the President received a dispatch announcing that his General had decided to cross the Chickahominy River and use its swamps and dangerous crossings as his line of defense.

The Cabinet expressed its sense of profound relief and Davis watched his commander with an increase of confidence in his judgment. If the narrow roads and weak bridges across the river were guarded, an army of half his size could hold McClellan for months. The nearest crossing was twenty-five miles from Richmond.

General Reagan of the Cabinet rode down that night to see Hood at the head of his Texas brigade.

At noon next day on returning to the city he saw the President coming out of his office.

The long arm of the Chief was lifted and Reagan halted.

"Wait a minute—"

"At your service, Mr. President."

"Get your dinner and ride down to the Chickahominy with me. I want to see General Johnston."

Reagan shouted an answer which the President failed to catch:

"You won't have to go to the Chickahominy to see Johnston!"

Joining Reagan after dinner the President rode rapidly through the suburban district called "The Rockets," and had reached the high ground beyond. A half mile away stretched a vast field of white tents.

"Whose camp is that?" Davis asked in surprise.

"Hood's brigade," Reagan replied.

"Why Hood's on the Chickahominy twenty-odd miles from here—"

"I camped here with them last night, sir—"

"Impossible!"

Reagan watched the thin face of the Confederate Chieftain grow deadly pale.

"If you wish to see General Johnston, Mr. President, you'll find him in that red brick house on the right—"

Reagan pointed in the direction of the house.

The President looked at his friend a moment, a quizzical expression relieving his anxiety.

"Of course—it's a joke, Reagan."

"It's true, sir!"

Davis shook his head:

"General Johnston is on the Chickahominy guarding the crossings. I sent my aide with a dispatch to him last night."

"He hadn't returned when you left the office—"

"No—"

"I thought not. There can be no mistake, sir. I saw General Johnston and his staff enter that house and establish his headquarters there—"

"Here in the suburbs of Richmond?"

"Right here, sir—"

Davis put spurs to his horse, and waved to his aide:

"Colonel Ives—come!"

Reagan turned and rode again into Hood's camp.

The President rode straight to Johnston's headquarters. He sprang to the ground with a quick decisive leap.

The ceremony between the two men was scant. No words were wasted.

"You have moved your army into the suburbs of Richmond, General Johnston?"

"I have—"

"Why?"

"I consider this better ground—"

"You have left no rear guard to contest McClellan's crossing?"

"No."

"May I ask why you chose to give up the defenses of such a river without a blow?"

"My army was out of provisions—"

"They could have been rushed to you—"

"The ground near the Chickahominy is low and marshy. The water is bad—"

"And you have come to the very gates of the city?"

"Because the ground is dry, the water good, and we are near our supplies—"

The President's lips trembled with rage.

"And McClellan can now plant his guns within six miles and his soldiers hear our church bells on Sunday—"

"Possibly—"

The President's eye pierced his General.

"Richmond is to be surrendered without a battle?"

"That depends, sir, upon conditions—"

The Confederate Chief suddenly threw his thin hands above his head and faced his stubborn sulking Commander.

"If you are not going to give battle, I'll appoint a man in your place who will—"

Before Johnston could reply the President turned on his heel, waved to Colonel Ives, mounted his horse and dashed into the city.

His Cabinet was called in hasty consultation with General Lee.

Davis turned to his counselors.

"Gentlemen, I have just held a most amazing conference with General Johnston. You were afraid he would fight beyond the Chickahominy. He has crossed the river, left its natural defenses unguarded, and has run all the way to town without pause. I have told him to fight or get out of the saddle. In my judgment he intends to back straight through the city and abandon it without a blow. We must face the situation."

He turned to Lee. The question he was going to put to the man in whom he had supreme confidence would test both his judgment and his character. On his answer would hang his career. If it should be what the Confederate Chief believed, Lee was the man of destiny and his hour had struck.

"In case Johnston abandons Richmond," the President slowly began, "where in your opinion, General Lee, is the next best line of defense?"

Lee's fine mouth was set for a moment. He spoke at first with deliberation.

"As a military engineer, my answer is simple. The next best line of defense would be at Staten River—but—"

He suddenly leaped to his feet, his eyes streaming with tears.

"Richmond must not be given up—it shall not be given up!"

Davis sprang to his side and clasped Lee's hand.

"So say I, General!"

From that moment the President and his chief military adviser lived on Johnston's battle line, Lee ready at a moment's notice to spring into the saddle and hurl his men against McClellan the moment Johnston should falter.

The Commander was forced to a decision for battle. He could not allow his arch enemy to remove him without a fight.

The retreat across the Chickahominy had given McClellan an enormous advantage which his skillful eye saw at once. He threw two grand divisions of his army across the river and pushed his siege guns up within six miles of Richmond. His engineers immediately built substantial bridges across the stream over which he could move in safety his heaviest guns in any emergency, either for reenforcements or retreat.

He swung his right wing far to the north in a wide circling movement until he was in easy touch with McDowell's forty thousand men at Fredericksburg.

McClellan was within sight of the consummation of his hopes. When this wide movement of his army had been successfully made without an arm lifted to oppose, he climbed a tall tree within sight of Richmond from which he could view the magnificent panorama.

A solid wall of living blue with glittering bayonets and black-fanged batteries of artillery, his army spread for ten miles. Beyond them here and there only he saw patches of crouching gray in the underbrush or crawling through the marshes.

The Northern Commander came down from his perch and threw his arms around his aide:

"We've got them, boy!" he cried enthusiastically. "We've got them!"

It was not to be wondered at that the boastful oratorical Confederate Congress should have taken to their heels. They ran in such haste, the people of Richmond began to laugh and in their laughter took fresh courage.

A paper printed in double leads on its first page a remarkable account of the stampede:

"For fear of accident on the railroad, the stampeded Congress left in a number of the strongest and swiftest of our new canal-boats. The boats were drawn by mules of established sweetness of temper. To protect our law-makers from snakes and bullfrogs that infest the line of the canal, General Winder detailed a regiment of ladies to march in advance of the mules, and clear the tow-path of these troublesome pirates. The ladies are ordered to accompany the Confederate Congress to a secluded cave in the mountains of Hepsidan, and leave them there in charge of the children of that vicinity until McClellan thinks proper to let them come forth. The ladies will at once return to the defense of their country."

The President for a brief time was free of his critics.

On May thirty-first, Johnston's army, under the direct eye of Davis and Lee on the field, gave battle to McClellan's left wing—comprising the two grand divisions that had been pushed across the Chickahominy to the environs of Richmond.

The opening attack was delayed by the failure of General Holmes to strike McClellan's rear as planned. A terrific rain storm the night before had flooded a stream and it was impossible for him to cross.

Late in the afternoon Longstreet and Hill hurled their divisions through the thick woods and marshes on McClellan.

Longstreet's men drove before them the clouds of blue skirmishers, plunged into the marshes with water two feet deep and dashed on the fortified lines of the enemy. The Southerners crept through the dense underbrush to the very muzzles of the guns in the redoubts, charged, cleared them, grappling hand to hand with the desperate men who fought like demons.

Line after line was thus carried until at nightfall McClellan's left wing had been pushed back over two miles through swamp and waters red with blood.

The slaughter had been frightful in the few hours in which the battle had raged. On the Confederate left where Johnston commanded in person the Union army held its position until dark, unbroken.

Johnston fell from his horse wounded and Davis on the field immediately appointed General Lee to command.

The appointment of Lee to be Commander-in-Chief not only intensified the hatred of Johnston for the President, it made G. W. Smith, the man who was Johnston's second, his implacable enemy for life. Technically G. W. Smith would have succeeded to the command of the army had not Davis exercised his power on the field of battle to appoint the man of his choice.

In no act of his long, eventful life did Davis evince such clearness of vision and quick decision, under trying conditions. Lee had failed in Western Virginia and McClellan had out-generaled him, the yellow journals had declared. They called Lee "Old Spade." So intense was the opposition to Lee that Davis had sent him to erect the coast defenses of South Carolina. The Governor of the State protested against the appointment of so incompetent a man to this important work. Davis sent the Governor an emphatic message in reply:

"If Robert E. Lee is not a general I have none to send you."

Davis now called the man whom McClellan had defeated to the supreme command against McClellan at the head of his grand army in sight of the housetops of Richmond. Only a leader of the highest genius could have dared to make such a decision in such a crisis.

Davis made it without a moment's hesitation and in that act of individual will gave to the world the greatest commander of the age.



CHAPTER XXX

THE DELIVERANCE

From the moment Davis placed Lee in the saddle order slowly emerged from chaotic conditions and the first rays of light began to illumine the fortunes of the Confederacy.

Modest and unassuming in his personality, he demonstrated from the first his skill as an organizer and his power in the conception and execution of far-reaching strategy.

From the moment he breathed his spirit into the army he made it a rapid, compact, accurate and terrible engine of war. The contemptible assault of the Richmond Examiner fell harmless from the armor of his genius. Davis was bitterly denounced for his favoritism in passing G. W. Smith and appointing Governor Letcher's pet. He was accused of playing a game of low politics to make "a spawn of West Point" the next Governor of Virginia. But events moved with a pace too swift to give the yellow journals or the demagogues time to get their breath.

Lee had sent Jackson into the Valley of the Shenandoah to make a diversion which might hold the armies moving on the Capital from the west and at the same time puzzle McDowell at Fredericksburg.

Lee, Jackson and Davis were three men who worked in perfect harmony from the moment they met in their first council of war at the White House of the Confederacy. So perfect was Lee's confidence in Jackson, he was sent into the Valley unhampered by instructions which would interfere with the execution of any movement his genius might suggest.

Left thus to his own initiative, Jackson conceived the most brilliant series of engagements in the history of modern war. He determined to use his infantry by forced marches to cover in a day the ground usually made by cavalry and fall on the armies of his opponents one by one before they could form a juncture.

On May 23, by a swift, silent march of his little army of fifteen thousand men, he took Banks completely by surprise, crushed and captured his advance guard at Fort Royal, struck him in the flank and drove him back into Strassburg, through Winchester, and hurled his shattered army in confusion and panic across the Potomac on its Washington base.

Desperate alarm swept the Capital of the Union. Stanton, the Secretary of War, issued a frantic appeal to the Governors of the Northern States for militia to defend Washington. Panic reigned in the cities of the North. Governors and mayors issued the most urgent appeals for enlistments.

Fremont was ordered to move with all possible haste and form a juncture with a division of McDowell's army and cut off Jackson's line of retreat.

The wily Confederate General wheeled suddenly and rushed on Fremont before Shields could reach him. On June 8, at Cross Keys, he crushed Fremont, turned with sudden eagle swoop and defeated Shields at Port Republic.

Washington believed that Jackson commanded an enormous army, and that the National Capital was in danger of his invading host. The defeated armies of Milroy, Banks, Fremont and Shields were all drawn in to defend the city.

In this campaign of a few weeks Jackson had marched his infantry six hundred miles, fought four pitched battles and seven minor engagements. He had defeated four armies, each greater than his own, captured seven pieces of artillery, ten thousand stands of arms, four thousand prisoners and enormous stores of provisions and ammunition. It required a train of wagons twelve miles long to transport his treasures—every pound of which he saved for his Government.

He was never surprised, never defeated, never lost a train or an organized piece of his army, put out of commission sixty thousand Northern soldiers under four distinguished generals and in obedience to Lee's command was now sweeping through the mountain passes to the relief of Richmond.

While Jackson was thus moving to join his forces with Lee, Washington was shivering in fear of his attack.

On the day Jackson was scheduled to fall on the flank of McClellan's besieging army Lee moved his men to the assault. The first battle which Johnston had joined at Seven Pines had only checked McClellan's advance.

The Grand Army of the Potomac still lay on its original lines, and McClellan had used every day in strengthening his entrenchments. Lee had built defensive works to enable a part of his army to defend the city while he should throw the flower of his gray soldiers on his enemy in a desperate flank assault in cooeperation with Jackson.

On the arrival of his triumphant lieutenant from the Shenandoah Valley Lee suddenly sprang on McClellan with the leap of a lion. The Northern Commander fought with terrible courage, amazed and uneasy over the discovery that Jackson had suddenly appeared on his flank.

Within thirty-six hours McClellan's right wing was crushed and in retreat. Within seven days Lee drove his Grand Army of more than a hundred thousand men from the gates of Richmond thirty-five miles and hurled them on the banks of the James at Harrison's Landing under the shelter of the Federal gunboats.

Instead of marching in triumph through the streets of the Confederate Capital, McClellan congratulated himself and his Government on his good fortune in saving his army from annihilation. His broken columns had reached a place of safety after a series of defeats which had demoralized his command and resulted in the loss of ten thousand prisoners and ten thousand more in killed and wounded. He had been compelled to abandon or burn stores valued at millions. The South had captured thirty-five thousand stand of arms and fifty-two pieces of artillery.

Lee in his report modestly expressed his disappointment that greater results had not been achieved.

"Under ordinary circumstances," he wrote, "the Federal army should have been destroyed. Its escape was due to causes already stated. Prominent among them was the want of correct and timely information. The first, attributable chiefly to the character of the country, enabled General McClellan skillfully to conceal his retreat and to add much to the obstructions with which nature had beset the way of our pursuing column. But regret that more was not accomplished gives way to gratitude to the Sovereign Ruler of the Universe for the results achieved."

Jackson, the grim soldier, whose habit was to pray all night before battle, wrote with the fervor of the religious enthusiast.

"Undying gratitude is due to God for this great victory—by which despondency increases in the North, hope brightens in the South and the Capital of Virginia and the Confederacy is saved."

A wave of exultation swept the South—while Death stalked through the streets of Richmond.

Instead of the tramp of victorious hosts, their bayonets glittering in the sunlight, which Socola had confidently expected, he watched from the windows of the Department of State the interminable lines of ambulances bearing the wounded from the fields of McClellan's seven-days' battle.

The darkened room on Church Hill was opened. Miss Van Lew had watched the glass rattle under the thunder of McClellan's guns, and then with sinking heart heard their roar fade in the distance until only the rumble of the ambulances through the streets told that he had been there. She burned the flag. It was too dangerous a piece of bunting to risk in her house now. It would be many weary months before she would need another.

Through every hour of the day and night since Lee sprang on McClellan, those never-ending lines of ambulances had wound their way through the streets. Every store and every home and every public building had been converted into a hospital. The counters of trade were moved aside and through the plate glass along the crowded streets could be seen the long rows of pallets on which the mangled bodies of the wounded lay. Every home set aside at least one room for the wounded boys of the South.

The heart-rending cries of the men from the wagons as they jolted over the cobble stones rose day and night—a sad, weird requiem of agony, half-groan, half-chant, to which the ear of pity could never grow indifferent.

Death was the one figure now with which every man, woman and child was familiar. The rattle of the dead-wagons could be heard at every turn. They piled them high, these uncoffined bodies of the brave, and hurried them under the burning sun to the trenches outside the city. They piled them in long heaps to await the slow work of the tired grave-diggers. The frail board coffins in which they were placed at last would often burst from the swelling corpse. The air was filled with poisonous odors.

The hospitals were jammed with swollen, disfigured bodies of the wounded and the dying. Gangrene and erysipelas did their work each hour in the weltering heat of mid-summer.

But the South received her dead and mangled boys with a majesty of grief that gave no cry to the ear of the world. Mothers lifted their eyes from the faces of their dead and firmly spoke the words of resignation:

"Thy will, O Lord, be done!"

Her houses were filled with the wounded, the dying and the dead, but Richmond lifted up her head. The fields about her were covered with imperishable glory.

The Confederacy had won immortality.

The women of the South resolved to wear no mourning for their dead. Their boys had laid their lives a joyous offering on their country's altar. They would make no cry.

Johnston had lost six thousand and eighty-four men, dead, wounded and missing at Seven Pines, and Lee had lost seventeen thousand five hundred and eighty-three in seven days of continuous battle. But the South was thrilled with the joy of a great deliverance.

Jefferson Davis in his address to the army expressed the universal feeling of his people:

"Richmond, July 5, 1862.

"To the Army of Eastern Virginia:

"Soldiers:

"I congratulate you upon the series of brilliant victories which, under the favor of Divine Providence, you have lately won; and as President of the Confederate States, hereby tender to you the thanks of the country, whose just cause you have so skillfuly and heroically saved.

"Ten days ago an invading army, vastly superior to yours in numbers and the material of war, closely beleaguered your Capital and vauntingly proclaimed our speedy conquest. You marched to attack the enemy in his entrenchments. With well-directed movements and death-defying valor you charged upon him in his strong positions, drove him from field to field over a distance of more than thirty-five miles, and, despite his reenforcements, compelled him to seek safety under the cover of his gunboats, where he now lies cowering before the army so lately despised and threatened with utter subjugation.

"The fortitude with which you have borne trial and privation, the gallantry with which you have entered into each successive battle, must have been witnessed to be fully appreciated. A grateful people will not fail to recognize you and to bear you in loved remembrance. Well may it be said of you that you have 'done enough for glory,' but duty to a suffering country and to the cause of Constitutional liberty claims for you yet further effort. Let it be your pride to relax in nothing which can promote your future efficiency; your one great object being to drive the invader from your soil, and, carrying your standards beyond the outer borders of the Confederacy, to wring from an unscrupulous foe the recognition of your birthright and independence."

Within the year from the fatal victory at Bull Run the South had through bitterness, tears and defeat at last found herself. Under the firm and wise leadership of Davis, her disasters had been repaired and her army brought to the highest standard of efficiency.

At the head of her armies now stood Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. Their fame filled the world. In the west, Braxton Bragg, a brilliant and efficient commander, was marshaling his army to drive the Union lines into Kentucky.

From the depths of despair the South rose to the heights of daring assurance. For the moment the junta of politicians led by Senator Barton were compelled to halt in their assaults on the President. The people of the South had forgotten the issue of the date on Joseph E. Johnston's commission as general.

With characteristic foolhardiness, however, Barton determined that they should not forget it. He opened a series of bitter attacks on Davis for the appalling lack of management which had permitted McClellan to save what was left of his army. He boldly proclaimed the amazing doctrine that the wounding of Johnston at Seven Pines was an irreparable disaster to the South.

"Had Johnston remained in command," he loudly contended, "there can be no doubt that he would have annihilated or captured McClellan's whole army and ended the war."

On this platform he gave a banquet to General Johnston on the occasion of his departure from Richmond for his new command in the west. The Senator determined to hold his faction together for future assaults. Lee's record was yet too recent to permit the politicians to surrender without a fight.

The banquet was to be a love feast at which all factions opposed to Davis should be united behind the banner of Johnston. Henry S. Foote had quarreled with William L. Yancey. These two fire-eaters were enthusiastic partisans of his General.

Major Barbour, Johnston's chief quartermaster, presided at the head of the banquet table in Old Tom Griffin's place on Main Street. Foote was seated on his right, Governor Milledge T. Bonham of South Carolina next. Then came Gustavus W. Smith, whose hatred of Davis was implacable for daring to advance Robert E. Lee over his head. Next sat John U. Daniel, the editor of Richmond's yellow journal, the Examiner. Daniel's arm was in a sling. He had been by Johnston's side when wounded at Seven Pines.

At the other end of the table sat Major Moore, the assistant quartermaster, and by his side on the left, General Joseph E. Johnston, full of wounds in the flesh and grievances of soul. On his right was John B. Floyd of Fort Donelson fame whom Davis had relieved of his command. And next William L. Yancey, the matchless orator of secession, whose hatred of Davis was greater than this old hatred of Abolition.

The feast was such as only Tom Griffin knew how to prepare.

Johnston as usual was grave and taciturn, still suffering from his unhealed wound. Yancey and Foote, the reconciled friends who had shaken hands in a common cause, were the life of the party.

Daniel, the editor of the organ of the Soreheads and Irreconcilables, was even more taciturn than his beloved Chief. General Bonham sang a love song. Yancey and Foote vied with each other in the brilliancy of their wit.

When the banquet had lasted for two hours, Yancey turned to Old Tom Griffin and said:

"Fresh glasses now and bumpers of champagne!"

When the glasses were filled the Alabama orator lifted his glass.

"This toast is to be drunk standing, gentlemen!"

Every man save Johnston sprang to his feet. Yancey looked straight into the eye of the General and shouted:

"Gentlemen! We drink to the health of the only man who can save the Southern Confederacy—General Joseph E. Johnston!"

The glasses were emptied and a shout of applause rang from every banqueter save one. The General had not yet touched his glass.

Without rising, Johnston lifted his eyes and said in grave tones:

"Mr. Yancey, the man you describe is now in the field—his name is Robert E. Lee. I drink to his health."

Yancey's quick wit answered in a flash:

"I can only reply to you, sir, as the Speaker of the House of Burgesses did to General Washington—'Your modesty is only equaled by your valor!'"

Johnston's tribute to Lee was genuine, and yet nursing his grudge against the President with malignant intensity he left for the west, encouraging his friends to fight the Chieftain of the Confederacy with tooth and nail and that to the last ditch.



CHAPTER XXXI

LOVE AND WAR

Captain Richard Welford reached Richmond from the Western army two days after Lee had driven McClellan under the shelter of the navy. He had been wounded in battle, promoted to the rank of Captain for gallantry on the field and sent home on furlough for two months.

He used his left hand to raise the knocker on Jennie's door. His right arm was yet in a sling. His heart was beating a wild march as he rushed from the hotel to the Senator's house. He had not heard from Jennie in two months but the communications of the Western army had been cut more than once and he thought nothing of the long silence. It had only made his hunger to see the girl he loved the more acute. He had fairly shouted his joy when a piece of shell broke his right arm and hurled him from his horse. He never thought of promotion for gallantry. It came as a surprise. The one hope that leaped when he scrambled to his feet and felt the helpless arm hanging by his side was to see the girl he had left behind.

"Glory to God!" he murmured fervently, "I'll go to her now!"

He was just a little proud of that broken arm as he waited for her entrance. The shoulder straps he wore looked well, too. She would be surprised. It had all happened so quickly, no account had yet reached the Richmond papers.

Jennie bounded into the room with a cry of joy.

"Oh, Dick, I'm so glad to see you!"

He smiled and extended his left hand.

"Jennie!" was all he could say.

"You are wounded?" she whispered.

Dick nodded.

"Yep—a shell toppled me over but I was on my feet in a minute laughing—and I'll bet you couldn't guess what about?"

"No—"

"Laughed because I knew I'd get to see you—"

"I'm so proud of you!" she cried through her tears.

"Are you?" he asked tenderly.

"Of course I am—don't you think I know what those shoulder straps mean?"

"Well, I just care because you care, Jennie—"

"You're a brave Southern boy fighting for our rights—you care for that, too."

"Oh yes, of course, but that's not the big thing after all, little girl—"

He paused and seized her hand.

She blushed and drew it gently away.

"Please—not that now—"

"Why—not now?"

He asked the question in tones so low they were almost a gasp. He felt his doom in the way she had withdrawn her hand.

"Because—" she hesitated just a moment to strike the blow she knew would hurt so pitifully and then went on firmly, "I've met my fate, Dick—and pledged him my heart."

The Captain lifted his shoulders with a little movement of soldierly pride, held himself firmly, mastered the first rush of despair and then spoke with assumed indifference:

"Socola?"

Jennie smiled faintly.

"Yes."

He rose awkwardly and started to the door. Jennie placed her hand on his wounded arm with a gesture of pathetic protest.

"Dick!"

"I can't help it, I must go—"

"Not like this!"

"I can't smile and lie to you. It means too much. I hate that man. He's a scoundrel, if God ever made one—"

Jennie's hand slipped from his arm.

"That will do now—not another word—"

"I beg your pardon, Jennie," he stammered. "I didn't think what I was saying, honey. It just popped out because it was inside. You'll forgive me?"

The anger died in her eyes and she took his outstretched hand.

"Of course, I understand—and I'm sorry. I appreciate the love you've given me. I wish in my heart I could have returned it. You deserve it—"

The Captain lifted his left hand.

"No pity, please. I'm man enough to fight—and I'm going to fight. You're not yet Signora Socola—"

The girl laughed.

"That's more like a soldier!"

"We'll be friends anyhow, Jennie?"

"Always."

The Captain left the Senator's house with a grim smile playing about his strong mouth. He had made up his mind to fight for love and country on the same base. He would ask for his transfer to the Secret Service of the Confederacy.



CHAPTER XXXII

THE PATH OF GLORY

Jefferson Davis had created the most compact and terrible engine of war set in motion since Napoleon founded the Empire of France. It had been done under conditions of incredible difficulty, but it had been done. The smashing of McClellan's army brought to the North the painful realization of this fact. Abraham Lincoln must call for another half million soldiers and no man could foresee the end.

Davis had begun in April, 1861, without an arsenal, laboratory or powder mill of any capacity, and with no foundry or rolling mill for iron except the little Tredegar works in Richmond.

He had supplied them.

Harassed by an army of half a million men in blue led by able generals and throttled by a cable of steel which the navy had drawn about his coast line, he had done this work and at the same time held his own defiantly and successfully. Crippled by a depreciated currency, assaulted daily by a powerful conspiracy of sore-head politicians and quarreling generals, strangled by a blockade that deprived him of nearly all means of foreign aid—he had still succeeded in raising the needed money. Unable to use the labor of slaves except in the unskilled work of farms, hampered by lack of transportation even of food for the army, with no stock of war material on hand,—steel, copper, leather or iron with which to build his establishments—yet with quiet persistence he set himself to solve these problems and succeeded.

He had created, apparently out of nothing, foundries and rolling mills at Selma, Richmond, Atlanta and Macon, smelting works at Petersburg, a chemical laboratory at Charlotte, a powder mill superior to any of the United States and unsurpassed by any in Europe,—a mighty chain of arsenals, armories, and laboratories equal in their capacity and appointments to the best of those in the North, stretching link by link from Virginia to Alabama.

He established artificial niter beds at Richmond, Columbus, Charleston, Savannah, Mobile and Selma of sufficient capacity to supply the niter needed in the powder mills.

Mines for iron, lead and copper were opened and operated. Manufactories for the production of sulphuric and nitric acid were established and successfully operated.

Minor articles were supplied by devices hitherto unheard of in the equipment of armies. Leather was scarce and its supply impossible in the quantities demanded.

Knapsacks were abolished and haversacks of cloth made by patriotic women with their needles took their places. The scant supply of leather was divided between the makers of shoes for the soldiers and saddles and harness for the horses. Shoes for the soldiers were the prime necessity. To save leather the waist and cartridge-box belts were made of heavy cotton cloth stitched in three or four thicknesses. Bridle reins were made of cotton in the same way. Cartridge boxes were finally made thus—with a single piece of leather for the flap. Even saddle skirts for the cavalry were made of heavy cotton strongly stitched.

Men to work the meager tanneries were exempt from military services and transportation for hides and leather supplies was free.

A fishery was established on the Cape Fear River in North Carolina from which oil was manufactured. Every wayside blacksmith shop was utilized as a government factory for the production of horseshoes for the cavalry.

To meet the demands for articles of prime necessity which could not be made in the South, a line of blockade runners was established between the port of Wilmington, North Carolina, and Bermuda. Vessels capable of storing in their hold six hundred bales of cotton were purchased in England and put into this service. They were long, low, narrow craft built for speed. They could show their heels to any ship of the United States Navy. Painted a pale grayish-blue color, and lying low on the water they were sighted with difficulty in the day and they carried no lights at night. The moment one was trapped and sunk by the blockading fleet, another was ready to take her place.

Depots and stores were established and drawn on by these fleet ships both at Nassau and Havana.

By the fall of 1862, through the port of Wilmington, from the arsenals at Richmond and Fayetteville, and from the victorious fields of Manassas and the Seven Days' Battle around Richmond, sufficient arms had been obtained to equip two hundred thousand soldiers and supply their batteries with serviceable artillery.

On April 16, 1862, Davis asked of his Congress that every white man in the South between the ages of 18 and 35 be called to the colors and all short term volunteer contracts annulled. The law was promptly passed in spite of the conspirators who fought him at every turn. Camps of instruction were established in every State, and a commandant sent from Richmond to take charge of the new levies.

Solidity was thus given to the military system of the Confederacy and its organization centralized and freed from the bickerings of State politicians.

With her loins thus girded for the conflict the South entered the second phase of the war—the path of glory from the shattered army of McClellan on the James to Hooker's crushed and bleeding lines at Chancellorsville.

The fiercest clamor for the removal of McClellan from his command swept the North. The position of the Northern General was one of peculiar weakness politically. He was an avowed Democrat. His head had been turned by flattery and he had at one time dallied with the idea of deposing Abraham Lincoln by the assumption of a military dictatorship. Lincoln knew this. The demand for his removal would have swayed a President of less balance.

Lincoln refused to deprive McClellan of his command but yielded sufficiently to the clamor of the radicals of his own party to appoint John Pope of the Western army to the command of a new division of troops designed to advance on Richmond.

The generals under McClellan who did not agree with his slow methods were detached with their men and assigned to service under Pope.

McClellan did not hesitate to denounce Pope as an upstart and a braggart who had won his position by the lowest tricks of the demagogue. He declared that the new commander was a military impostor, a tool of the radical wing of the Republican party, a man who mistook brutality in warfare for power and sought to increase the horrors of war by arming slaves, legalizing plunder and making the people of the South irreconcilable to a restored Union by atrocities whose memory could never be effaced.

Pope's first acts on assuming command did much to justify McClellan's savage criticism. He issued a bombastic address to his army which brought tears to Lincoln's eyes and roars of laughter from Little Mac's loyal friends.

He issued a series of silly general orders making war on the noncombatant population of Virginia within his line. If citizens refused to take an oath of allegiance which he prescribed they were to be driven from their homes and if they dared to return, were to be arrested and treated as spies.

His soldiers were given license to plunder. Houses were robbed and cattle shot in the fields. Against these practices McClellan had set his face with grim resolution. He fought only organized armies. He protected the aged, and all noncombatants. It was not surprising, therefore, when Lincoln ordered him to march his army to the support of Pope, McClellan was in no hurry to get there.

Pope had boldly advanced across the Rappahannock and a portion of his army had reached Culpeper Court House. He had determined to make good the proclamation with which he had assumed command.

In this remarkable document he said:

"By special assignment of the President of the United States, I have assumed command of this army. I have come to you from the West where we have always seen the backs of our enemies—from an army whose business it has been to seek the adversary and to beat him when found, whose policy has been attack not defense. Let us study the probable lines of retreat of our opponents and leave ours to take care of themselves. Let us look before us and not behind."

While his eyes were steadily fixed before him Jackson, moving with the stealthy tread of a tiger, slipped in behind his advance guard, sprang on it and tore his lines to pieces before he could move reenforcements to their rescue.

When his reenforcements reached the ground Jackson had just finished burying the dead, picking up the valuable arms left on the field and sending his prisoners to the rear.