tracing the active prosecution of the campaign in Virginia, to direct the attention of the reader to the progress of events in the West.

We shall find many remarkable events to record in this direction. We shall see how it was that the evacuation of Corinth was determined upon; that the retreat was conducted with great order and precision; and that, despite the boasts of the North to the contrary, we lost no more prisoners than the enemy did himself, and abandoned to him in stores not more than would amount to one day's expense of our army.

We shall find in the defence of Vicksburg a splendid lesson of magnanimity and disinterested patriotism. We shall see how for several weeks this city resisted successfully the attack of the enemy's gunboats, mortar fleets, and heavy siege-guns; how it was threatened by powerful fleets above and below, and with what unexampled spirit the Queen City of the Bluffs sustained the iron storm that was rained upon her for weeks with continued fury.

New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Natchez, and Memphis were in the hands of the Yankees, and their possession by the enemy night have furnished to Vicksburg, in its exposed and desperate situation, the usual excuses of timidity and selfishness for its surrender. But the brave city resisted these vile and unmanly excuses, and gave to the world one of the proudest and most brilliant illustrations of the earnestness and devotion of the people of the South that had yet adorned the war.

The fact that but little hopes could be entertained of the eventual success of the defence of Vicksburg against the powerful concentration of the enemy's navy, heightened the nobility of the resistance she made. The resistance of an enemy in circumstances which afford but a feeble and uncertain prospect of victory, requires a great spirit; but it is more invaluable to us than a hundred easy victories; it teaches the enemy that we are invincible, and overcomes him with despair; it exhibits to the world the inspirations and moral grandeur of our cause; and it educates our people in chivalry and warlike virtues by the force of illustrious examples of self-devotion.

We shall have, however, the satisfaction of recording an unexpected issue of victory in the siege of Vicksburg, aud have occasion to point to another lesson that the history of all

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wars indicates, that the practical test of resistance affords the only sure determination whether a place is defensible or not. With a feeling of inexpressible pride did Vicksburg behold two immense fleets, each of which had been heretofore invincible, brought to bay, and, unable to cope with her, kept at a respectable distance, and compelled to essay the extraordinary task of digging a new channel for the Mississippi.

In following the track of detachments of our forces in the West, we shall refer to the brilliant movements across the Mississippi that drove the enemy from Arkansas, and harassed him on the Missouri border with ceaseless activity, and to the dashing expedition of the celebrated John Morgan into Kentucky. We shall see that the expedition of this cavalier was one of the most brilliant, rapid, and successful raids recorded in history. He left Tennessee with a thousand men, only a portion of whom were armed; penetrated two hundred and fifty miles into a country in full possession of the Yankees; captured a dozen towns and cities; met, fought, and captured a Yankee force superior to his own in numbers; captured three thousand stand of arms at Lebanon; and, from first to last, destroyed during his raid, military stores, railroad bridges, and other property to the value of eight or ten millions of dollars. He accomplished all this, besides putting the people of Cincinnati into a condition, described by one of their newspapers, as "bordering on frenzy," and returned to Tennessee with a loss in all his engagements of fifteen men killed, and forty wounded.

While some activity was shown in extreme portions of the West, we shall see that our military operations from Greenbrier county, Virginia, all the way down to Chattanooga, Tennessee, were conducted with but little vigor. On the boundaries of East Tennessee, southwestern Virginia, and Kentucky, we had a force in the aggregate of thirty thousand men, confronted by probably not half their number of Yankee troops; yet the southwestern counties of Virginia, and the valley of the Clinch, in Tennessee, were entered and mercilessly plundered by the enemy in the face of our troops.

Turning for a moment from the military events of this period, we shall notice the reassembling of the Confederate Congress on the 18th of August, 1862. We shall then find occasion to review the conduct of this branch of the government, and to observe how it fell below the spirit and virtue of the people; what servility to the Executive it displayed, and what a singular destitution of talents and ability was remarkable in this body. Not a single speech that has yet been made in it will live. It is true, that the regular Congress elected by the people was an improvement upon the ignorant and unsavory body known as the Provisional Congress, which was the creature of conventions, and which was disgraced in the character of some of its members; among whom were conspicuous, corrupt and senile politicians from Virginia, who had done all they could to sacrifice and disgrace their State, who had toadied in "society," as well as in politics, to notabilities of New England, and who had taken a prominent part in emasculating, and, in fact, annulling the Sequestration Law, in order to save the property of relatives who had sided with the North against the land that had borne them and honored their fathers.

But the regular Congress, although it had no taint of distoyalty or Yankee toadyism in it, was a weak, sycophantic, and trifling body. It has made no mark in the history of the government; it was utterly destitute of originality. Its measures were those which were recommended by the Executive or suggested by the newspapers. It produced no great financial measure; it made not one stroke of statesmanship; it uttered not a single fiery appeal to the popular heart, such as is customary in revolutions. The most of the little ability it had was eaten up by servility to the Executive; and the ignorance of the majority was illustrated by a trifling and undignified style of legislation, in which whole days were consumed with paltry questions, and the greatest measures-such as the Conscript Law*-embarrassed by demagogical speeches made for home effect.

It is difficult, indeed, for a legislative body to preserve ita independence, and to resist the tendency of the Executive t absorb power in a time of war, and this fact was well illus trated by the Confederate Congress. One of the greatest political scholars of America, Mr. Madison, noticed this dan ger in the political constitution of the country. He said :"War is in fact the true nurse of Executive aggrandizement. In war a physical force is to be created, and it is the Execпtive will which is to direct it. In war the public treasures are to be unlocked, and it is the Executive hand which is to dispense them. In war the honors and emoluments of office are to be multiplied, and it is the Executive patronage under which they are to be enjoyed. It is in war, finally, that laurels are to be gathered, and it is the Executive brow they are to encircle."

There was but little opposition in Congress to President Davis; but there was some which took a direction to his Cabinet, and this opposition was represented by Mr. Foote of Tennessee a man of acknowledged ability and many virtues of character, who had re-entered upon the political stage after a public life, which, however it lacked in the cheap merit of partisan consistency, had been adorned by displays of wonderful intellect and great political genius. Mr. Foote was not a man to be deterred from speaking the truth; his quickness to resentment and his chivalry, which, though somewhat Quixotic, was founded in the most noble and delicate sense of honor, made those who would have bullied or silenced a weaker person, stand in awe of him. A man of such temper was not likely to stint words in assailing an opponent; and his sharp declamations in Congress, his searching comments, and his great powers of sarcasm, used upon such men as Mallory, Benjamin, and Huger, were the only relief of the dulness of the Congress, and the only historical features of its debates.

Returning to the history of the campaign in Virginia, we shall have occasion to enumerate another briliant victory of our arms, achieved on that fortunate theatre of the war. We refer to the battle of Cedar Mountain. We shall find other topics to record in the events which, at the time of this wri ting, are developing themselves, and reaching to the most important consequences, both in Virginia and Tennessee. We shall see how the great army which McClellan had brought for the reduction of Richmond, and in sight of the church steeples of that city, was compelled to retire towards the Potomac, with its proud columns shattered, humiliated, and demoralized; how Pope, who had entered Virginia with a splendid army and the most insolent boasts, was ignominiously whipped on more than one occasion, and with what agony of cowardice he sought safety for his retreat; how considerable portions of Virginia and Tennessee were surrendered to the jurisdiction of the Confederacy; how the enemy in various quarters was pushed back to his old lines; and how intelligent men in the South saw for the first time certain and unmistakable indica tions of demoralization in the armies of the North, brought o by the remarkable train of victories in Virginia, extending from early June to September.

In these events we shall find bright and flattering prospects renewed to the South. Much of these we shall rind already realized in the events in the midst of which we write this im perfect sketch. We shall trace the painful steps by which our worn troops advanced to meet another invading army in Virginia, reinforced not only by the defeated army of McClellan, but by the fresh corps of Generals Burnside and Hunter. We shall tell what hardships were endured by our troops, and what exploits of valor were performed by them on this celebrated expedition; how they were compelled to toil their way with inadequate transportation; how they crossed streams swollen to unusual height, and bore all the fatigues and distresses of forced marches; how their spirit and endurance were tested by repeated combats with the enemy; how at last they succeeded in turning his position; and how, having formed a junction of their columns in the face of greatly superior forces on the historic and blood-stained plains of Manassas, they achieved there the ever-memorable victory of the thirteenth of Augus