CHAPTER XXV.

THE CLOSING SCENES OF THE WAR.

The vast Combinations of the Lieutenant-General unfolding.-The Hollowness of the Confederacy.-General Sheridan's Successes.-General Thomas.-General Sherman's startling Campaign.-The Beginning of the New Year.-General Lee. Fort Steadman.-The closing Battles and Scenes of the Rebellion.General Lee's Flight.-The Pursuit.-The Surrender.-Sherman and Johnston. -Johnston surrenders.-The remaining Rebel Forces follow.

THE great net-work of armies General Grant was gathering around his foe, and which would soon be felt wherever he turned for escape, began to appear. The magnificent Thomas was waiting his hour to strike in Tennessee; General Sherman fixing his stern vision on the sea beyond Georgia; General Sheridan taking care of Early; and the Commander-in-Chief confronting confidently and calmly the rebel leader.

The great work in the extensive field during September and October was done in the Valley of the Shenandoah. The 19th of each of those months is among the forevermemorable days of the war.

The first, because General Sheridan won fairly a splendid victory over the boastful Early at Opequan Creek, followed by another not less brilliant at Fisher's Hill; the latter on account of the solitary glory of conquest snatched from defeat by the power of the chieftain's single re-enforcement the inspiration of his return to the scene of disaster.

The deeds of "Cavalry Sheridan" thrilled the popular heart afresh, and placed the victor's name next to that of the Lieutenant-General in the great arena of strife directly under his control. The President sent his letter of congratulation to General Sheridan; and, November 14th, upon General McClellan's resignation of his command, the hero of the Shenandoah Valley succeeded him to the

major-generalship in the Regular army, the appointment dating from the 8th of the same month. This was a high and substantial compliment to heroism and ability, whose last and unrivaled work was the triumph with a routed army on the 18th of October.

General Early's chagrin over his defeat was betrayed in an order to his troops, in which he bitterly reproaches them for their "misconduct."

In view of all these tokens of divine favor upon our arms, our Christian President issued the following call, and the first since the war opened, to national praise for Jehovah's blessing upon the national cause :—

It has pleased Almighty God to prolong our national life another year, defending us with His guardian care against unfriendly designs from abroad, and vouchsafing to us in His mercy many and signal victories over the enemy, who is of our own household. It has also pleased our Heavenly Father to favor as well our citizens in their homes as our soldiers in their camps, and our sailors on the rivers and seas, with unusual health. He has largely augmented our free population by emancipation and by immigra tion, while He has opened to us new sources of wealth, and has crowned the labor of our workingmen in every department of industry with abundant rewards. Moreover Ile has been pleased to animate and inspire our minds and hearts with fortitude, courage, and resolution sufficient for the great trial of civil war into which we have been brought by our adherence as a nation to the cause of freedom and humanity, and to afford to us reasonable hopes of an ultimate and happy deliverance from all our dangers and afflictions.

Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, do hereby appoint and set apart the last Thursday of November next as a day which I desire to be observed by all my fellow-citizens, wherever they may be, as a day of thanksgiving and praise to Almighty God, the beneficent Creator and Ruler of the universe. And I do further recommend to my fellow-citizens aforesaid, that on that occasion they do reverently humble themselves in the dust, and from thence offer up penitent and fervent prayers and supplications to the Great Disposer of events for a return of the inestimable blessings of peace, union, and harmony, throughout the land which it has pleased Him to assign as a dwelling-place for ourselves and for our posterity throughout all generations.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

The remaining weeks of the year 1864 were spent by the armies in the Shenandoah Valley in watching each other and skirmishing. Torbert's Cavalry had encounters

with the troops of Rosser and Lomax, sometimes of severity, which, on a smaller field of arms than our Republic, would have been called battles. But we soon learned to regard as unworthy that distinction any thing less than the meeting, in deadly conflict, several thousands of the half million of troops, and the slaughter of hundreds, at least, of the combatants.

General Early moved "uneasily up and down the Valley," seeking reprisals, an assailable point in the Union lines, or rest, and finding neither. His promenade-ground extended from New Market, situated a mile east of the north fork of the Shenandoah, near the southwest border of the county which bears the name of the stream, and Fisher's Hill. He did not venture near enough to the ever-ready "Phil." to turn the trooper's steed toward his depleted force. And then poor Lee, held by the inflexible Grant, and chafing in the grasp, must have all the available aid, and called for a portion of Early's troops in December.

Meanwhile tidings came to Sheridan that the guerrillas were infesting the beautiful valley of the Blue Ridge, and their bullets flying wherever a Unionist showed himself— the unpitied target of the murderous bandits. The indignant chieftain decided to burn out the beasts of prey, as he had done before. So he summoned his troopers to the work; and dashing away to the fearful duty of retribution, you might have followed them afar off by the columns of smoke by day, under which at night blazed a hundred fires of wrath upon the skulking homicides of treason.

Two expeditions resulted in the destruction or capture of property valued at more than seven millions of dollars. The droves of cattle, horses, mules, sheep, and swine, were almost endless, and seemed quite so when they moved along the forest paths. The guerrillas fled to the Upper Potomac, and other points more or less remote.

During the last month of the year the Sixth Corps was sent back to re-enforce the Army of the Potomac. Until late in February, the Army of the Shenandoah had but little fighting to do, but rested and kept a vigilant eye on the movements of the adversary. At this moment the war

was reaching a decisive crisis. General Sherman was marching triumphantly through the Carolinas. Truly "Sherman, Schofield, and Sheridan seemed to be the three S's of the hour."

Meanwhile, there had been important movements in the Army of the Potomac. General Ord had crossed the James, October 29th, and carried the enemy's works at Chapin's Farm and General Birney, advancing to Deep Bottom, took the New Market Road; while General Kautz made a cavalry reconnoissance within two miles of Richmond. The next day General Meade stormed the rebel line of intrenchments at Poplar Springs Church. Darkness settled with the fading glories of autumn upon the Confederacy, in every part of the horizon. Upon its last days, the Napoleonic Sherman "broke camp," and set his army-front toward the distant sea.

His army consisted of four corps of infantry, two divisions of cavalry, four brigades of artillery, and two horse-batteries. Brevet Major-General Jeff. C. Davis commanded the Fourteenth Corps; Brevet Major-General Osterhaus the Fifteenth Corps; Major-General Frank Blair the Seventeenth Corps; and Major-General Slocum the Twentieth Corps. Major-General Kilpatrick was in command of the cavalry.

General Thomas was left "to entice Hood westward and fight him, if he would fight in the neighborhood of Nashville." The disastrous defeat of Hood at Franklin, November 30th, succeeded by the greater one at Nashville December 15th, finished the valiant successor of Johnston.

The whole North was startled and half bewildered, when General Sherman's colors entered the Georgia forests, "pointing south," with the sublimely awful torchlight of burning Atlanta lighting his path, whose walls he had left November 16th, in company with the Fourteenth Corps. General Howard commanded the right wing, which was accompanied by Kilpatrick's cavalry, and reached Jackson on the 17th, and Gordon's Woods on the 23d.

General Slocum led the left wing to the vicinity of Milledgeville on the 21st of November. Along the paths

of the army, railways had been destroyed, and forage in abundance taken to supply the columns.

He now ordered General Howard to strike eastward from Gordonsville, tearing up the iron track toward Millen, as far as Tennille Station; General Slocum to march by two roads on Sandersonville, four miles north of the former place; and General Kilpatrick to move from Gorden to Milledgeville, and eastward, breaking up the railroad between Millen and Augusta, and, falling upon Millen, rescue, if possible, the Union prisoners starving there. But the poor victims of rebel hate were hurried away at the approach of their friends.

General Sherman took up his head-quarters with the Twentieth Corps, and the imposing cavalcades, stretching for scores of miles across the soil of Georgia, cut loose from the anxious North, to which they became for weeks, emphatically, "THE LOST ARMY."

Into funereal cypress swamps, and primeval pine woods, whispering to fancy's ear of war's desolations, and the tearful watchers at home-through cold rivers, and treacherous quicksands; then over sunny fields and by elegant mansions, around which were clustered slave cabins, whose humble tenants, when they dared to do so, hailed the "Yankee" army-the veteran and cheerful battalions of the peerless Sherman marched toward the

sea.

Leaving the record of the martial aspect of the unrivaled campaign to the pen of the daring leader, whose record will be given its fitting connection, we shall here chronicle some of the romantic incidents of the wonderful march.

The diary of Aid-de-camp Nichols, on General Sherman's staff, is full of both amusing and touching incidents of the march. He writes:

"The most pathetic scenes occur upon our line of march daily and hourly. Thousands of negro women join the column, some carrying household truck; others, and many of them there are, who bear the burden of children in their arms, while older boys and girls plod by their sides. All these women and children are ordered back,