plainly that his forces and Halleck's should have been concentrated as far up the Tennessee as possible in an endeavour to seize upon the main railway system of the Confederacy in the West. Halleck preferred, it would seem, to concentrate upon nothing and to scatter his forces upon minor enterprises, provided he did not risk any important engagement. An important engagement with the hope of destroying an army of the enemy was the very thing which, as Johnston's forces now stood, he should have sought, but he appears to have been contented by the temporary retirement of an unscathed enemy who would return again reinforced. Buell was an unlucky man, and Halleck got quite all he deserved, so it is possible that events have been described to us without enough regard to Halleck's case as against Buell. But at any rate, while much should have been happening, nothing very definite did happen till April 6, when Albert Johnston, now strongly reinforced from the extreme South, came upon Grant, who (it is not clear why) had lain encamped, without entrenching, and not expecting immediate attack, near Shiloh, far up the Tennessee River in the extreme south of Tennessee State. Buell at the time, though without clear information as to Grant's danger, was on his way to join him. There seems to have been negligence both on Halleck's part and on Grant's. The battle of Shiloh is said to have been highly characteristic of the combats of partly disciplined armies, in which the individual qualities, good or bad, of the troops play a conspicuous part. Direction on the part of Johnston or Grant was not conspicuously seen, but the latter, whose troops were surprised and driven back some distance, was intensely determined. In the course of that afternoon Albert Johnston was killed. Rightly or wrongly Jefferson Davis and his other friends regarded his death as the greatest of calamities to the South. After the manner of many battles, more especially in this war, the battle of Shiloh was the subject of long subsequent dispute between friends of Grant and of Buell, and far more bitter dispute between friends of

Albert Johnston and Beauregard. But it seems that the South was on the point of winning, till late on the 6th the approach of the first reinforcements from Buell made it useless to attempt more. By the following morning further large reinforcements had come up; Grant in his turn attacked, and Beauregard had difficulty in turning a precipitate retirement into an orderly retreat upon Corinth, forty miles away, a junction upon the principal railway line to be defended. The next day General Pope, who had some time before been detached by Halleck for this purpose, after arduous work in canal cutting, captured, with 7,000 prisoners, the northernmost forts held by the Confederacy on the Mississippi. But Halleck's plans required that his further advance should be stopped. Halleck himself, in his own time, arrived at the front. In his own time, after being joined by Pope, he advanced, carefully entrenching himself every night. He covered in something over a month the forty miles route to Corinth, which, to his surprise, was bloodlessly evacuated before him. He was an engineer, and like some other engineers in the Civil War, was overmuch set upon a methodical and cautious procedure. But his mere advance to Corinth caused the Confederates to abandon yet another fort on the Mississippi, and on June 6 the Northern troops were able to occupy Memphis, for which Lincoln had long wished, while the flotilla accompanying them destroyed a Confederate flotilla. Meanwhile, on May 1, Admiral Farragut, daringly running up the Mississippi, had captured New Orleans, and a Northern force under Butler was able to establish itself in Louisiana. The North had now gained the command of most of the Mississippi, for only the hundred miles. or so between Vicksburg far south and Port Hudson, between that and New Orleans, was still held by the South; and command by Northern gunboats of the chief tributaries of the great river was also established. The Confederate armies in the West were left intact, though with some severe losses, and would be able before long to strike northward in a well-chosen direction; for all that

these were great and permanent gains. Yet the North was not cheered. The great loss of life at Shiloh, the greatest battle in the war so far, created a horrible impression. Halleck, under whom all this progress had been made, properly enough received a credit, which critics later have found to be excessive, though it is plain that he had reorganised his army well; but Grant was felt to have been caught napping at Shiloh; there were other rumours about him, too, and he fell deep into general disfavour. The events of the Western war did not pause for long, but, till the end of this year 1862, the North made no further definite progress, and the South, though it was able to invade the North, achieved no important result. It will be well then here to take up the story of events in the East and to follow them continuously till May, 1863, when the dazzling fortune of the South in that theatre of the war reached its highest point.

3. The War in the East Up to May, 1863.

The interest of this part of the Civil War lies chiefly in the achievements of Lee and "Stonewall" Jackson. From the point of view of the North, it was not only disastrous but forms a dreary and controversial chapter. George McClellan came to Washington amid overwhelming demonstrations of public confidence. His comparative youth added to the interest taken in him; and he was spoken of as "the young Napoleon." This ridiculous name for a man already thirty-four was a sign that the people expected impossible things from him. Letters to his wife, which have been injudiciously published, show him to us delighting at first in the consideration paid to him by Lincoln and Scott, proudly confident in his own. powers, rather elated than otherwise by a sense that the safety of the country rested on him alone. "I shall carry the thing en grande, and crush the rebels in one campaign." He soon had a magnificent army; he may be said to have made it himself. Before, as he thought, the time had come to use it, he had fallen from favour,

and a dead set was being made against him in Washington. A little later, at the crisis of his great venture, when, as he claimed, the Confederate capital could have been taken, his expedition was recalled. Then at a moment of deadly peril to the country his services were again called in. He warded off the danger. Yet a little while and his services were discarded for ever. This summary, which is the truth, but not the whole truth, must enlist a certain sympathy for him. The chief fact of his later life should at once be added. In 1864, when a Presidential election was approaching and despondency prevailed widely in the North, he was selected as the champion of a great party. The Democrats adopted a platform" which expressed neither more nor less than a desire to end the war on any terms. In accordance with the invariable tradition of party opposition in war time, they chose a war hero as their candidate for the Presidency. McClellan publicly repudiated their principles, and no doubt he meant it, but he became their candidate their master or their servant as it might prove. That he was Lincoln's opponent in the election of that year ensured that his merits and his misfortunes would be long remembered, but his action then may suggest to any one the doubtful point in his career all along.

Some estimate of his curious yet by no means uncommon type of character is necessary, if Lincoln's relations with him are to be understood at all. The devotion to him shown by his troops proves that he had great titles to confidence, besides, what he also had, a certain faculty of parade, with his handsome charger, his imposing staff and the rest. He was a great trainer of soldiers, and with some strange lapses, a good organiser. He was careful for the welfare of his men; and his almost tender carefulness of their lives contrasted afterwards with what appeared the ruthless carelessness of Grant. Unlike some of his successors, he could never be called an incapable commander. His great opponent, Lee, who had known him of old, was wont to calculate on his extraor

dinary want of enterprise, but he spoke of him on the whole in terms of ample respect-also, by the way, he sympathised with him like a soldier when, as he naturally assumed, he became a victim to scheming politicians; and Lee confided this feeling to the ready ears of another great soldier, Wolseley. As he showed himself in civil life, McClellan was an attractive gentleman of genial address; it was voted that he was "magnetic," and his private life was so entirely irreproachable as to afford lively satisfaction. More than this, it may be conjectured that to a certain standard of honour, loyalty, and patriotism, which he set consciously before himself, he would always have been devotedly true. But if it be asked further whether, McClellan was the desired instrument for Lincoln's and the country's needs, and whether, as the saying is, he was a man to go tiger-hunting with, something very much against him, though hard to define, appears in every part of his record (except indeed, one performance in his Peninsular Campaign). Did he ever do his best to beat the enemy? Did he ever, except for a moment, concentrate himself singly upon any great object? Were even his preparations thorough? Was his information ever accurate? Was his purpose in the war ever definite, and, if so, made plain to his Government? Was he often betrayed into marked frankness, or into marked generosity? No one would be ready to answer yes to any of these questions. McClellan fills so memorable a place in American history that he demands such a label as can be given to him. In the most moving and the most authentic of all Visions of Judgment, men were not set on the right hand or the left according as they were of irreproachable or reproachable character; they were divided into those who did and those who did not. In the provisional judgment which men, if they make it modestly, should at times make with decision, McClellan's place is clear. The quality, "spiacente a Dio ed ai nemici suoi," of the men who did not, ran through and through him.

Lincoln required first a general who would make no