and detained under the fire of the forts by abattis; notwithstanding these obstructions, he continued to advance and formed two brigades of Texan and Louisiana troops for the assault of the most destructive of the forts that were playing on him. The brigades moved up the face of the hill on which stood Fort Robinette; the heavy guns made great gaps in their ranks, but steadily, and to the admiration even of their enemies, did the troops continue their advance. They reached the edge of the ditch; the Federals, amazed at their intrepidity, abated their fire; they paused before the final rush, and the defenders, regaining their courage, poured in a destructive volley. In vain Captain Rogers, revolver in hand, and holding the colours of his regiment, leapt into the ditch. He fell dead-his men hesitated; the Missouri and Ohio regiments garrisoning the work followed their volleys by a charge; and the Confederates were driven down the face of the hill followed by the victorious Federals through the woods and over the ground they had gained by such desperate courage. By noon the battle of Corinth was ended, and both sides completely exhausted; and, encumbered with wounded, paused ere they renewed the work of destruction. The Confederates had suffered fearfully: General Rosecrans reported their loss at 1,423 killed, about 5,000 wounded, and 2,248 prisoners; whilst he estimated his own at 315 killed, 1,812 wounded, and 232 prisoners. Even if the Confederate accounts of their loss are received as correct, those killed and wounded numbered 3,000, and the prisoners 15,000.

On both sides great courage had been shown, the Confederates failed by a want of combination in achiev

* Vide Pollard, Second Year of the War, p. 171.

ing victory, and, foiled successively in their assaults, were forced to retreat. The two divisions under Ord and Hurlbut from Bolivar were threatening their left flank, and were with difficulty held in check, whilst it was known that Rosecrans was preparing to sally forth from his entrenchments and take an offensive attitude; nothing therefore remained for Van Dorn but to withdraw to his former position, behind the lagoons and swamps of Mississippi, and this he accomplished in good order and with little loss; Rosecrans followed him forty miles with his infantry, and sixty with his cavalry, but subsequently retired to his old position at Corinth, where he remained until October 26th, when he was appointed to replace General Buell in command of the army of the Cumberland.

*

The Western Campaign of the year 1862 closed with the battle of Corinth. We have seen how, at its commencement, the Confederates had been successively driven back from Fort Donelson, had been forced from Kentucky, had made a bold stand at Pittsburg and a prolonged defence at Corinth; how, ultimately, the line of the Cumberland River and of the trunk rail through Kentucky had been replaced by the line of the Upper Tennessee River, and the Memphis, Chattanooga and Western Tennessee rail; how, taking advantage of the impulse given to the Confederate cause by the victories in Virginia, the Western army had resumed the offen

* General Rosecrans had been an engineer officer of the regular army. He was born in 1819, was educated at West Point, and served in the army until 1854, when he resigned and practised as an architect at Cincinnati. In Western Virginia he served with distinction at the commencement of the war, both under M'Clellan and in an independent command. He had since been moved to the army of the Mississippi. General Rosecrans is a Roman Catholic.

sive, had again threatened Kentucky, and had sought to recover its former strong position at Corinth, threatening in the South the Lower Mississippi and even New Orleans. We have followed out this short, brilliant, but in the main unsuccessful campaign, and, at the close of the autumn of 1862, we find that the opposing forces have almost resumed their former positions, excepting that the country between Nashville and Chattanooga had been reoccupied by the Confederate forces, the Federal out-pickets extending only for a short distance south of Nashville.

Notwithstanding the failure of the Western Campaign, the position of the Confederates in the autumn of 1862 was very different from what it had been in the spring. Then a succession of defeats in the West had tended to shake the confidence of even their warmest adherents, whilst the advance of the grand army of the Potomac almost to the gates of Richmond made men tremble for the safety of the capital. Now, on the contrary, the troops of the South-west had regained their morale, had forced their enemy to fight, not for conquest, but for existence; had carried the war from Chattanooga to Louisville, had caused the merchants of Cincinnati and the farmers of Ohio to arm for the defence of their own city and state; and, although forced ultimately to retire, had sufficiently proved that the subjugation of the West was a task far more difficult than, after the spring campaign, the Federals had been accustomed to regard it. In Virginia the change in events had been even more remarkable: army after army had been defeated by General Lee and his Lieutenants; and Washington, in the autumn of 1862, was in as great, if not greater, danger than had Richmond been in the summer of the same year. If, however, the success of the South

had raised the hopes of her friends; and the gallantry of her armies and the ability of her chiefs had gained for her the respect of even the most apathetic of European nations, so had her failure in offensive campaigns, and her weakness in men and material, as compared to her opponent, cast a doubt on her power to demand peace at the sword's point, and to do more than to wage a successful defensive war.

CHAPTER IX.

MINOR OPERATIONS OF THE WAR.

Ir is only by searching out the details of the American war that the real misery inflicted on so large a portion of the human race can be fully comprehended. The eye wearies as it seeks to mark on the map the various places where battles have been fought; the hand falters as it endeavours to narrate the details; and, above all, the heart grows sorrowful as the mind meditates on the accumulation of misery resulting from a war, so fearful in its character and accompaniments. Great campaigns, leading to bloody but indecisive battles, follow each other in rapid succession; cavalry raids and detached expeditions, having for their objects the destruction of all that makes life pleasant or endurable, fill up the necessary intervals between the movements of the larger armies; guerilla warfare on the frontiers of civilization equals in ferocity the battles of the but recently dispossessed Indians; whilst occasionally some deed of especial cruelty, or some crime peculiarly striking in its features, for the moment attracts observation, soon to be forgotten in the constant recurring horrors of the strife. Wars waged by opposing armies are indeed sufficiently productive of misery; but when the struggle is between whole populations,-when the lesser and weaker is so resolute in its spirit, so unbending in its courage, so self-sacrificing in its conduct, as to give up