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appeared to me that, whatever it might be, they did not know how to get about it. Finally, they advanced.

One brigade of the Second Division was selected to dislodge the enemy from the nearest hill-top. That brigade was one commanded by one of the political generals recently sent to the army, and, naturally, he did not know the first thing about his new profession. An aid came to bring him the order to form his regiments in double column on the centre, to ascend the hill, and to deploy them in line of battle on approaching the summit. The improvised general repeated the order to himself, but did not understand it any better. "Very well; double column - yes on the centre." He repeated the words to himself, looking for some one to help him out, when he saw, a few paces distant, Colonel Brewster of the Seventy-third New York. Brewster was a brave soldier and a good officer supplanted in the command of the brigade by this chief, who knew less than the poorest of his corporals. "Colonel," said the general, calling him near, "you heard what the man said?" (He meant the aide-decamp). "Yes," replied Brewster. "Well! Do it, then, do it." On his part he saw it done, and, wishing to show that if he were ignorant he was not a coward, he followed the movement and went on caracoling his horse under fire. He returned with a ball in his foot and another in his hip, and we never saw him again.

A regiment of the Third Division was sent to me as a reënforcement. It was full in numbers, almost as large alone as my whole brigade; but it had never been under fire, and I believed it to be more prudent to leave it in reserve than to put it in line.

We continued to drive the enemy back out of the pass, but slowly and without engaging other troops than

a brigade and a line of skirmishers. The latter, seeing that there was only skirmishing going on, took things easily. One could see them, while keeping up their fire, regale themselves on blackberries, which the uncultivated fields yielded abundantly at that season of the year.

The sun went down at this state of affairs, and General French put off serious business until the morrow. Now, in the morning, the enemy's army had passed beyond Manassas Gap, and the few troops we had before us had gone on to join his rearguard. We went on to the mouth of the pass, from where we could enjoy for a short time a magnificent view of the valley; after which we made a half-wheel to the right, and returned to the point from which we had started.

A few days afterward, finding myself in command of the pickets, I had to receive my instructions directly from General French. I found a large man with a red nose, a flushed face, a bald forehead, a dull look. Near him, a glass and a bottle of whiskey appeared to be on the table en permanence. He made me sit down, said a few words to me on the official object of my visit, and, making continual grimaces, the effect of a nervous affection, began on a subject which he appeared to have at heart. The occasion lost by his unskilfulness at Manassas Gap had been the subject of comment not at all flattering, and the general commanding had been very much disappointed. French endeavored then to justify himself on all occasions. He began by complimenting me on what I had done at his extreme right, which seemed to me less flattering than surprising, seeing I had done nothing at all. The only regiment engaged on my side was the Twentieth Indiana, which did not belong to me, and, in my brigade, I had lost but one man, killed by chance. Without waiting my reply, he

were.

launched into a confused dissertation on the fine things he considered that he had accomplished on this occasion. His great argument consisted in this: that, except one brigade, he had used nothing but skirmishers. to sweep the pass, and that, by keeping his troops back, he had prevented the enemy from knowing where they He returned continually to this point, and interrupted himself at each instant to say to me, "Do you see the point? Do you understand the point?" What I understood very clearly was that his ideas were very much confused. He did not appear to suspect that his system of skirmishers was just the unskilfulness which, by causing us to lose precious time, prevented our cutting in two the long column of Lee, or, at least, of cutting off his rearguard. He kept me for a long time in order to go over the same things, and, as I put my foot in the stirrup at the entrance to his tent, he kept repeating, "You understand the point, do you not?”

Poor Third Corps! Your best days were over.

On the 26th, we arrived at Warrenton, where General Birney returned to take command of the division. The Confederates having halted at Culpeper, our army was again posted along the Rappahannock. On the 31st, the right of our position was assigned to the Third Corps, and Birney's division pitched its tents around White Sulphur Springs. The pursuit was over.

CHAPTER XXV.

OPERATIONS DURING THE LATTER PART OF 1863.

White Sulphur Springs- The Vallandigham affair - Plots of the Copperheads - Bloody riots in New York - Attitude of Governor Horatio Seymour - Western regiments sent to enforce the lawReenforcements hurried to Tennessee - Advance on Culpeper The Sharpshooters-Movement to the rear-The engagement at Auburn - Battle of Bristoe Station Remarks - Visit of General Sickles Battle at Rappahannock Station - Engagement at Kelly's Ford March in line of battle - Mr. John Minor Botts between two racks - Mine Run affair - Death labels Raid on Richmond.

WHITE SULPHUR SPRINGS is, as denoted by its name, a sulphur spring of great clearness. It is a few miles from Warrenton, in a beautiful country where the wooded hills, the green meadows, and the cultivated fields agreeably vary the landscape. Before the war, it was every summer one of the chosen rendezvous of Southern society. The planters liked to take their families and meet each other there, and, under pretext of taking the waters, to play heavily, drink hard, and get excited over politics. A large hotel offered them hospitality (well paid for), in the centre of a semicircle, formed by two rows of small cottages, for use of the families. All this in the midst of fine shade, in the centre of which the spring burst forth in a reservoir covered by a columned rotunda. But since that time the war had passed that way. Of the great architectural structure nothing remained but a heap of ruins, from the midst of which arose some columns blackened by the flames, and some pieces of walls half crumbled away. General Birney established his headquarters in

the garden. A short distance away, and near the Warrenton road, a clump of great oaks extends its shade in the midst of a field. There I pitched my tent, and for six weeks, except the usual drill, we were able to give ourselves up, without being disturbed, to the leisure life of the country.

It was not the government, it was the Copperhead party which gave us this leisure. In this way this. party, closely affiliated to the cause of the rebellion, had not ceased, since the commencement of the war, to contrive every possible hindrance to the government. Compelled, at first, to bend before the patriotic enthusiasm which had fired the free States, it had since become audacious, and by its manoeuvres it had obtained successes, much to be lamented, in the elections of the preceding autumn.

On

One of its most violent and unscrupulous leaders was a certain Vallandigham, representative of one of the Ohio districts. He had, in Congress, constantly opposed every war measure, and, when the session had closed, he went into the country, to continue his seditious diatribes against the national government. the 1st of May, 1863, he ventured on a public speech, in which, after having heaped up beyond measure every injurious and lying accusation which he could invent against the administration, he finished by calling on the people directly to disobedience and sedition, in reference to an order of General Burnside, directed against those who aided and assisted the enemy.

General Burnside, who then commanded that mili'tary department, caused the arrest of Vallandigham, and brought him before a court-martial at Cincinnati. A writ of habeas corpus was immediately produced in favor of the prisoner. But this privilege had been suspended by a proclamation of the President, in the