1863.]

he could take it. An attempt to obtain possession of the place was made by the iron-clads, assisted by a military force, on the 9th of September; but it was not successful. Some of the crews who had landed were received by so hot a fire that the survivors speedily surrendered, and the vessels thereupon retired. This put a termination, for the time being, to the Federal successes before Charleston. The city and the remaining forts were occasionally bombarded; but it was not until the final days of the civil war that this stronghold of rebellion submitted to the authority of the Union.

The summer of 1863 was distinguished by several

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with equal spirit. The Confederates lost heavily in this desperate effort, and several of their number were taken prisoners while endeavouring to retreat. Helena is situated on the western bank of the Mississippi, and it was hoped, by acquiring possession of it, to draw off some of the Federal troops from before Vicksburg. But the attack was made on the very day when Vicksburg surrendered; and thenceforward the Confederates appear to have regarded the entire possession of the great river by the Federal armies as a misfortune beyond remedy. They were even obliged to give up the line of the Arkansas River, to relinquish Fort Smith and

Confederate movements in the Western States. General Taylor, son of the celebrated Mexican commander who was at one time President of the Union, conducted some bold operations in the semi-isolated tract of country lying to the west of New Orleans. At the head of a body of Texan cavalry-men inured to war by frequent encounters with the Indians, and themselves almost as wild and uncivilised as the red men whom they had vanquished in many a savage battle-he advanced against the towns of Plaquemine, Donaldsonville, and Thibodeauxville, which he successively captured. On the 23rd of June, he took Brashear City, lying to the south-west of the other places, but was compelled to abandon it after the surrender of Port Hudson. An attempt to surprise the fort and garrison of Helena, Arkansas, was made on the 4th of July, by a force under General Holmes. The attack was pressed with great vigour, and resisted

Little Rock, and to retire southwards in the direction of Louisiana.

These events took place in August and September; and during the ensuing autumn and winter the Confederates under General Price held possession of the barren country between the Ouachita and the Arkansas. Skirmishes of cavalry frequently occurred, and the scanty population of those regions suffered much from the miseries of war; but no events took place of a nature to affect the general objects for which the two sides were contending. The Federal cause was now prevailing in many directions, and Sherman added to his previous reputation by capturing the town of Jackson, situated to the east of Vicksburg, on the 16th of July. It was here that General Johnston was stationed, and, although it was altogether unlikely that that commander would at any time be in a position to wrest Vicksburg from the powerful hold

of Grant, he might have harassed the further proceedings of the Federals by desultory attacks on their rear. Sherman was therefore sent with four army-corps against the Southern General, who had fortified his position by a line of field-works. An attempt to carry those works by assault resulted in failure, and Sherman sat down before the lines, with the purpose of reducing them by his heavy artillery. Johnston, however, had no intention of making a permanent defence. Setting fire to his stores, he crossed the Pearl River, and retreated in an easterly direction to the town of Meridian. Jackson was then entered by Sherman; but it was now little more than a heap of ruins, nor was the surrounding country in any better condition. The writer of a letter published in one of the newspapers stated that the land between Vicksburg and Jackson was completely devastated; that no subsistence of any kind remained; that all growing crops had been destroyed when possible, and that live stock had been either used or brought away. Sherman is said to have asserted that the people must leave, be fed by the Government, or starve. Yazoo City was occupied by a combined naval and military force about the same time; and this brought the summer campaign in Mississippi to an end.

The guerilla chief, General Morgan, was now giving much trouble in the southern parts of Kentucky. A strong body of Federals was stationed near Jamestown, on the Cumberland River; but Morgan seized on Columbia, to the north-west of that city, and on the 4th of July marched thence on Greenbriar Bridge, where Colonel Moore was entrenched with a body of Federal troops. The position was so well defended that Morgan was forced to retreat. He then attacked Lebanon, where a savage encounter took place in the streets. The General's brother, in command of one of the leading regiments, was killed at the head of his men; and, to overcome the Federal resistance, Morgan set fire to the houses. The Union troops then surrendered, and the place was sacked by the enraged Southerners, who were exasperated by the opposition which it had taken them so much trouble to overcome. It was impossible, however, to hold the town now that it was won; for the Federal cavalry were advancing to its rescue. Morgan's troops therefore retreated through Northern Kentucky, plundering and devastating in every direction, and defying the efforts of their own commander to establish better discipline. The guerilla chief found no support amongst the people whose lands he was invading, and in the very spirit of desperation he crossed the Ohio, and entered Indiana, which had hitherto been almost

wholly exempt from the infliction of civil war. Pillage and ruin marked his course in this as in the more southern State; the local militia was quite inadequate to stop the tempest of destruction which threatened to sweep over the whole country; and even Ohio caught the fever of alarm. But Morgan had thrust himself into a position of greater peril than he perhaps anticipated. The Federal cavalry were following in his wake, and threatening to cut off his retreat, while neither in his front nor in his rear could he depend upon any assistance from the people. He accordingly turned towards the east, and, entering the State of Ohio, menaced the town of Cincinnati. His object was to escape, if possible, into Western Virginia; but the pursuit was too hot to allow him to effect this purpose. Troops were converging from all quarters; the fords over the Ohio were guarded by militia; gunboats paraded the river; the roads were obstructed by felled trees; and the guerillas soon found that they were enclosed within a trap. The men were laden with plunder, and unable to move with that celerity which could alone have given them the faintest chance. The whole country for miles around was roused against the invaders; yet Morgan still did his utmost to save the force under his command. He planted field-guns on the banks of the Ohio, near an island named Buffington, and thus endeavoured to cover the passage of his troops, who could only cross by swimming; but a Federal gunboat silenced the adverse artillery, and Morgan then tried to get over at another point, near Belleville. The second attempt was as unsuccessful as the first, and the guerillas fled in disorderly retreat. Being actively pursued, they were taken prisoners from time to time, and on the 26th of July, Morgan himself, a few of his officers, and some of his troopers, were surrounded by several detachments of the Federals, about three miles south of New Lisbon, Ohio, and compelled to surrender. Morgan, together with his superior officers, was sent to the Ohio Penitentiary for safe detention. It was probably considered that, as guerillas, these men were not entitled to the courtesies usually shown to prisoners of war; and there were also some questions of retaliation which affected their position. They had certainly been guilty of many crimes, and the desperate character of Morgan was such as to render it very advisable that he should be kept in close custody. He found means, nevertheless, several months later, to effect his escape. He and his companions were treated as felons, and considered themselves free to adopt any available means for regaining their liberty. The story of their escape is very remarkable. Working

at irregular intervals of time, so as to avoid the visits of the jailors, they excavated a tunnel beneath the floor of their cell, and under the walls of the prison. On the night of the 27th of November, Morgan and six other officers passed through this tunnel, armed with knives, and so got out into the open air. It was raining heavily, and the sentries had retired under shelter. This enabled the fugitives to scale the two exterior walls of the jail by means of a rope-ladder made of strips of bedding; and on gaining the outside of the penitentiary they separated, and went in different directions. General Morgan and Captain Hines started by train for Cincinnati, but, on nearing the town, feared that their flight had by that time been discovered. Dreading to run the risk of being re-arrested at the terminus, they slackened the progress of the train by putting on the brake, jumped out, hurried to the Ohio River, and, finding a boat at hand, crossed to the Kentucky shore. Morgan was there furnished with food, money, and a horse, and after much trouble succeeded in reaching the Confederate lines.* Such, at least, is in substance the narrative that was published at the time; but in several of its details it seems to pass the bounds of credibility. At any rate, it is not easy to believe in such an escape, unless upon the supposition that the jailors at the penitentiary, the guards of the railway-train, and perhaps some others, were connected with the plot. Still, it is certain that Morgan escaped; and it was not long before he raised a fresh body of cavalry, and once more became a name of terror in the West.

The operations of the spring and summer had undoubtedly been very favourable to the Northern cause. It was not without reason that President Lincoln, writing on the 26th of August to a political body in Illinois, observed that peace did not appear so distant as it had done. The committee to whom he addressed himself had invited him to attend a meeting of "unconditional Union" men, and it was in reply to their arguments in favour of peace that he expressed the opinion to which reference has been made. He remarked that there were three ways of obtaining peace: first, by suppressing the rebellion; secondly, by giving up the Union; thirdly, by adopting some compromise. Mr. Lincoln did not believe that any compromise embracing the maintenance of the Union was then possible. "A compromise, to be effective," he observed, "must be made either with those who

Colonel Fletcher's History of the American War, Vol. III., chap. 6, where the alleged facts are derived from a report in the Richmond Examiner, reprinted in the eighth volume of the Rebellion Record.

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control the rebel army, or with the people, first liberated from the domination of that army by the success of our own army." But no hint had come from the Confederates of a desire to enter into terms of compromise. The President assured his correspondents that, if a proposition of this nature should come, it would not be rejected; but as yet there was no sign of any such thing. The Union committee of Illinois appear to have been dissatisfied with the Government policy as regarded the negro. Mr. Lincoln therefore entered into that difficult question in replying to their arguments; but simply reiterated what he had often before affirmed that his partial emancipation of the slaves was prompted solely by the hope that he should be able in this way to get the better of the rebellion, and did not proceed from any desire to solve the problem of negro bondage, apart from that supreme consideration. It must be admitted that the President had a rather undignified way of canvassing opinions before all sorts of audiences; but his letter to the Illinois committee derived a certain value from its emphatic assertion of the writer's belief that the Union cause was steadily moving towards success.

About a month earlier, the rival President, Mr. Jefferson Davis, had come to the conclusion that it would no longer serve any purpose to retain the Confederate agent, Mr. Mason, in England. Mr. Mason was one of the two commissioners despatched to Europe in the latter part of 1861, and seized on board the Trent mail-steamer by Captain Wilkes. Neither he nor Mr. Slidell, who went to Paris, had been able to do the slightest service to the Southern Government; and on the 21st of September, Mr. Mason wrote to Earl Russell, the Foreign Secretary of State, to the effect that he had been instructed by his principals, in a despatch dated the 4th of August, to consider his commission to England at an end, and to withdraw at once from the country. "The reasons for terminating this mission," said Mr. Mason, "are set forth in an extract from the despatch, which I have the honour to communicate herewith. The President believes that the Government of her Majesty has determined to decline the overtures made through you for establishing, by treaty, friendly relations between the two Governments, and entertains no intention of receiving you as the accredited minister of this Government near the British Court. Under these circumstances, your continued residence in London is neither conducive to the interests nor consistent with the dignity of this Government, and the President therefore requests that you consider your mission at an end, and that you withdraw with your secretary from London.'" When Mr.