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GENERAL GRANT ON HIS HORSE GOING ON BOARD THE STEAMER.

abandoned and the gunboats are on their way up the bay. Never before was there such consternation in Beaufort. There is running to and fro, wringing of hands, quick loading of wagons, shoutings to the slaves to go to the main - land; but instantly the negroes disappear in the woods or hide in their cabins. The planters and their families flee, leaving all behind. When the gunboats reach the town the negroes are having a saturnalia, making themselves at home in the stately mansions, drinking the costly wines, plundering and destroying property. The troops land and take possession of the town and restore order.

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The year closes with the border states-Kentucky, Missouri, East Tennessee, West Virginia, and Maryland-loyal to the Union, all the other Southern States joining the Confederacy. Midsummer opened with disaster to the Union at Bull Run, but autumn closes with victory for the old flag at Port Royal.

THE

CHAPTER VII.

THE BEGINNING OF 1862.

HE year 1862 opened with the Union armies, east and west, doing nothing. The Army of the Potomac in and around Washington numbered one hundred and thirty thousand men. Throughout the autumn there had been grand reviews, attended by the President and Cabinet, members of Congress, and great crowds of people. There had been much pomp and parade, and promise as to what the army would do; but 1861 closed with nothing accomplished, and no plan of a campaign on the part of General McClellan. New troops were constantly arriving, and by midwinter the army around Washington numbered nearly two hundred thousand. The inaction of General McClellan was producing discontent throughout the country. Everything he had asked for had been granted, but as nothing had been accomplished, the people were beginning to lose confidence in him. The "peace party," which was opposed to the war, applauded his inaction, and the natural result was that those who were earnest for its prosecution began to think that his heart was not in it. He had issued an order that no damage should be done to the property of the Confederates; slaves were not to be molested. When the Hutchinson family-three brothers and a sister, who had given many concerts throughout the country-visited the camps and sang songs to cheer the soldiers, they were ordered to leave because some of their songs were anti-slavery in sentiment. From the beginning of the war the Potomac River had been closed to navigation by Confederate batteries along its southern bank. General McClellan made no attempt to reopen the river. Every night the correspondents sent the despatch, "All quiet along the Potomac," until it became a byword.

Seeing no indications of any movement by the Army of the Potomac, I left Washington for Kentucky, where General Buell was in command.

Tennessee had joined the Confederacy; Kentucky had not. The Governor of Kentucky was hoping that the State would take no part in the

war.

Jefferson Davis planned otherwise. Several thousand Confederate troops, under Major-general Polk, had entered the State and planted cannon on the bluffs of Columbus. The Confederates hoped that the act would make the State decide to join the Confederacy, but instead it made the people more determined than ever to stand by the Union.

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Jefferson Davis appointed Albert Sydney Johnston, born in Kentucky, to command the Confederate troops in the West. Before he arrived, General Lovell laid out Fort Henry and Fort Donelson, on the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers. They were only twelve miles apart, close to the boundary of the two States. Five hundred slaves were set to work.

General Johnston, on the afternoon of his arrival at Nashville, sent General Buckner to take possession of Bowling Green with five thousand men, and ordered General Zollicoffer, with several thousand men, to advance from Knoxville, in Tennessee, through Cumberland Gap, and take position east of Bowling Green. Still farther east, General Humphrey Marshall, with three thousand troops, entered the State from Virginia and descended the valley of the Big Sandy River, which runs north to the

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