There is a halt, the rebel left gives way and scatters over the field, the rest stand fast and fire. More infantry comes up. Burnside is outnumbered; flanked, compelled to yield the hill he took so bravely. His position is no longer one of attack; he defends himself with unfaltering firmness, but he sends to McClellan for help. McClellan's glass for the last half hour has seldom been turned away from tho left.

He sees clearly enough that Burnside is pressed-needs no messenger to tell him that. His face grows darker with anxious thought. Looking down into the valley where fifteen thousand troops are lying, he turns a half-questioning look on Fitz John Porter, who stands by his side, gravely scanning the field. They are Porter's troops below, are fresh and only impatient to share in this fight. But Porter slowly shakes his head, and one may believe that the same thought is passing through the minds of both Generals: "They are the only reserves of the army; they can not be spared."

McClellan remounts his horse, and with Porter and a dozen officers of his staff rides away to the left in Burnside's direction. Sykes meets them on the road-a good soldier, whose opinion is worth taking. The three Generals talk briefly together. It is easy to sco that the moment has come when every thing may turn on one order given or withheld, when the history of the battle is only to be written in thoughts and purposes and words of the General.

Burnside's messenger rides up. His message is: "I want troops and guns. If you do not send them I can not hold my position for half an hour." McClellan's only answer for the moment is a glance at the western sky. Then he turns and speaks very slowly: "Tell General Burnside that this is the battle of the war. He must hold his ground till dark at any cost. I will send him Miller's battery. I can do nothing more. I have no infantry." Then, as the messenger was riding away he called him back. "Tell him if he can not hold his ground, then the bridge, to the last man! always the bridge! If the bridge is lost, all is lost."

The sun is already down; not an half-hour of daylight is left. Till Burnside's message came it had seemed plain to every one that the battle could not be finished to day. None suspected how near was the peril of defeat, of sudden attack on exhausted forces-how vital to the safety of the army and the nation were those fifteen thousand waiting troops of Fitz John Porter in the hollow. But the rebels halted instead of pushing on, their vindictive cannonade died away as the light faded. Before it was quite dark the battle was over. Only a solitary gun of Burnside's thundered against the enemy, and presently this also ceased, and the field was still.

The conflict was not renewed by McClellan on the 18th. The General in his report gives various reasons for the failure to press his advantage on the rebel right and left. His men had done a good thing, and he seemed content to let them rest for a day. Of course they needed rest, but not more than the enemy-they needed rations, but so did the enemy-they needed re-enforcements, and the enemy, by waiting a day, received them; so it would appear that McClellan made nothing, but lost much, by his day's delay. The Confederates construed the failure to fight on Thursday as an evidence that the Federals were whipped. Lee seized the moment to recuperate for a night's flight. On Thursday afternoon, finding no prospect of battle, he commenced to "retire" into Virginia, crossing by Williamsport and Harper's Ferry. Friday morning McClellan learned of the retreat and ordered pursuit; but, as after the battle of Sharpsburg, so slow a pursuit as to give the enemy no trouble. Fitz John Porter's fresh corps alone "hurried on," but did not cross the Potomac until the night of Saturday the 19th, when the enemy had so fully effected their escape as to ren der pursuit, by a single corps, a mere waste of time. On the 22d, Sumner's corps took possession of Harper's Ferry. Lee did not move off in a hurry, but hung around Winchester and Martinsburg at his pleasure, demonstrating with infantry and cavalry in various directions. On the 10th of October-three weeks after his retreat from Antietam-Stuart made a powerful raid into Pennsylvania, passing through Mercersburg, Chambersburg, Emmittsburg, Liberty, New Market, Hyattstown and Barnesville, returning in safety to Winchester, then Lee's headquarters. His destruction of property was very heavy. Chambersburg was almost ruined by the incendiary torch. September 19th McClellan telegraphed :

"I have the honor to report that Maryland is entirely freed from the presence of the enemy, who has been driven across the Potomac No fears need now be entertained for Pennsylvania. I shall at once occupy Harper's Ferry."

He occupied Harper's Ferry "at once" on the 22d, Jeb Stuart destroyed Chambersburg, Pa., on the 11th of October; and Lee, "driven across the Potomac" on the 19th, remained in force at Winchester-until he got ready to leave; the bulk of McClellan's force remained on the north side of the Potomac. He was importuned, ordered, imperatively commanded, to advance; but one day his men wanted shoes, another day breeches, another day somebody wanted a horse; then the rebels were dangerously demonstrating for another advance higher up; and so the record ran. It was not until in November that the General got his army to moving again—but so slowly did he move, and so indifferent did he seem to every opportunity for dash and success, that the President confessed his faith in the man utterly gone. Therefore McClellan was relieved of his command November 7th, and retired from the service, for he never again was called to the field, notwithstanding the tremendous pressure upon the President, brought to bear after Burnside's and Hooker's reverses, to return the old commander to his lost station. It was singular that McClellan left his army disposed nearly as Pope's army was found by Jackson-only McClellan, having about four times more men than Pope, could occupy more points than his unfortunate predecessor on the line of the Rappahannock.

47

XXXVI.

THE NEW DISPENSATION.

Ir was a painful yet sublime spectacle to witness the throes in which slavery was gradually undergoing its dissolution. During those days when the Federal cause seemed darkest, the cause of Freedom and Emancipation progressed in proportion as the fortunes of war seemed unpropitious. Every triumph of rebel arms gave new stability to the cause of the slave, and strengthened the President's purpose to shiver the "corner stone" of the Southern temple of which Jefferson Davis and Alexander II. Stevens were high priests. True, the President had reprimanded those of his Generals in the field who proclaimed freedom to the slave as a war measure; for, as stated in his repudiation of General IIunter's Procla mation of Freedom to the slaves in South Carolina, Georgia and Florida, the Executive alone reserved the right of such decrees. He exercised it only when the public mind was prepared for it-when, through reverses, the most "conserv ative" were made to see the necessity of wounding the Confederacy in its vital point by decreeing the death of slavery. On the 22d of September, A. D. 1862, the country was startled by the publication of the following preparatory decrce of emancipation:

A PROCLAMATION

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.

I, ABRAHAM LINCOLN, President of the United States of America, and Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy thereof, do hereby PROCLAIM and DECLARE that hereafter, as heretofore, the war will be prosecuted for the object of practically restoring the Constitutional relation between the United States and the people thereof, in which States that relation is, or may be, suspended or disturbed; that it is my purpose upon the next meeting of Congress, to again recommend the adoption of a practical measure tendering pecuniary aid to

the free acceptance or rejection of all the Slave States so called, the people whereof may not then be in rebellion against the United States, and which States may then have voluntarily adopted or thereafter may voluntarily adopt the immediate or gradual abolishment of Slavery within their respective limits; and that the effort to colonize persons of African descent with their consent upon this continent or elsewhere with the previously obtained consent of the Governments existing there, will be continued; that on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State, or any designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be thenceforward and forever free, and the Executivo Government of the United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons, and will do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom; that the Executive will, on the first day of January aforesaid, by proclamation. designate the States and parts of States, if any, in which the people thereof respectively shall then be in rebellion against the United States, and the fact that any State, and the people thereof shall on that day be in good faith represented in the Congress of the United States by members chosen thereto at elections wherein a majority of the qualified voters of such State shall have participated, shall, in the absence of strong countervailing testimony, be deemed conclusive evidence that such State and the people thereof have not been in rebellion against the United States.

That attention is hereby called to an act of Congress entitled “ An act to make an additional article of war," approved March 13, 1862, and which act is in the words and figures following:

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled: That hereafter the following shall be promulgated as an additional article of war, for the government of the army of the United States, and shall be obeyed and observed as such:

Article. All officers or persons in the military or naval service of the United States are prohibited from employing any of the forces under their respectivo commands for the purpose of returning fugitives from service or labor, who may have escaped from any persons to whom such labor is claimed to be due, and any officer who shall be found guilty by a court-martial of violating this articlǝ shall be dismissed from the service.

SEC. 2. And be itfurther enacted, That this act shall take effect from and after its passage.

Also, to the ninth and tenth sections of an act entitled "An act to suppress insurrection, to punish treason and rebellion, to seize and confiscate the property of rebels, and for other purposes," approved