the enemy, and were preparing the next day to assume the offensive. I remember the fact the better from General Grant's anecdote of his Donelson battle, which he told me then for the first time that, at a certain period of the battle, he saw that either side was ready to give way if the other showed a bold front, and he determined to do that very thing, to advance on the enemy, when, as he prognosticated, the enemy surrendered. At four P. M.of April 6th, he thought the appearances the same, and he judged, with Lew. Wallace's fresh division and such of our startled troops as had recovered their equilibrium, he would be justified in dropping the defensive and assuming the offensive in the morning. And, I repeat, I received such orders before I knew General Buell's troops were at the river. I admit that I was glad Buell was there, because I knew his troops were older than ours, and better systematized and drilled, and his arrival made that certain, which before was uncertain. I have heard this question much discussed, and must say, that the officers of Buell's army dwelt too much on the stampede of some of our raw troops, and gave us too little credit for the fact that for one whole day, weakened as we were by the absence of Buell's army, long expected, of Lew. Wallace's Division, only four miles off, and of the fugitives from our ranks, we had beaten off our assailants for the time. At the same time, our Army of the Tennessee have indulged in severe criticisms at the slow approach of that army which knew the danger that threatened us from the concentrated armies of Johnston, Beauregard, and Bragg, that lay at Corinth. In a war like this, where opportunities for personal prowess are as plenty as blackberries, to those who seek them at the front, all such criminations should be frowned down; and were it not for the military character of your journal, I would not venture to offer a correction to a very popular error. I will also avail myself of this occasion to correct another very common mistake in attributing to General Grant the selection of that battle-field. It was chosen by that veteran soldier, MajorGeneral Charles F. Smith, who ordered my division to disembark there, and strike for the Charleston Railroad. This order was subsequently modified, by his ordering Hurlbut's Division to disembark there, and mine higher up the Tennessee, to the mouth of Yellow Creek, to strike the railroad at Burnsville. But floods prevented our reaching the railroad, when General Smith ordered me in person also to disembark at Pittsburg Landing, and take post well out, so as to make plenty of room, with Snake and Lick Creeks the flanks of a camp for the grand army of invasion. It was General Smith who selected that field of battle, and it was well chosen. On any other we surely would have been overwhelmed, as both Lick and Snake Creeks forced the enemy to confine his movement to a direct front attack, which new troops are better qualified to resist than where the flanks are exposed to a real or chimerical danger. Even the divisions of that army were arranged in that camp by General Smith's order, my division forming, as it were, the outlying picket, whilst Mc. Clernand and Prentiss's were the real line of battle, with W. H. L. Wallace in support of the right wing, and Hurlbut of the left; Lew. Wallace's Division being detached. All these subordinate dispositions were made by the order of General Smith, before General Grant succeeded him to the command of all the forces up the Tennessee-head-quarters, Savannah. If there were any error in putting that army on the west side of the Tennessee, exposed to the superior force of the enemy also assembling at Corinth, the mistake was not General Grant's; but there was no mistake. It was necessary that a combat, fierce and bitter, to test the manhood of the two armies, should come off, and that was as good a place as any. It was not then a question of military skill and strategy, but of courage and pluck, and I am convinced that every life lost that day to us was necessary, for otherwise at Corinth, at Memphis, at Vicksburg, we would have found harder resistance, had we not shown our enemies that, rude and untutored as we then were, we could fight as well as they. Excuse so long a letter, which is very unusual from me; but of course my life is liable to cease at any moment, and I happen to be a witness to certain truths which are now beginning to pass out of memory, and form what is called history. I also take great pleasure in adding, that nearly all the new troops that at Shiloh drew from me official censure, have more than redeemed their good name; among them, that very regiment which first broke, the 53d Ohio, Colonel Appen. Under another leader, Colonel Jones, it has shared every campaign and expedition of mine since, is with me now, and can march, and bivouac, and fight as well as the best regiment in this or any army. Its reputation now is equal to that of any from the State of Ohio. I am, with respect, Yours, truly, FARRAGUT. BY THE AUTHOR OF "THE RED RIVER EXPEDITION," "THE MILITIA," ETC. "FEAR, Grandmother?" said little Nelson; "fear, Grandmother? I never saw fear!" And in this childishi prattle sprouted the germ of Trafalgar. I begin by striking the key-note of the character of the man whose name heads this sketch. What Nelson's achievements and Collingwood's character were to England, and more, Farragut is to America. Of that large class of mankind which refuses to believe in the contemporaneous existence of greatness, in the possibility of shaking hands with genius, it is perhaps useless to request a comparison of the actual present, seen in the raw daylight, with the mythical mezzotint past of their imaginations. But to the careful reader of history, not merely of the past, but of all times, the name of our Admiral must stand out in bold relief on the roll of the great naval heroes of the world. He has carved his own name with his sword. No noble relatives pushed him forward; no influence at Court spiced commonplaces, till, in the nostrils of the people, they had the flavor of heroism. If his entry into the service now justly proud to claim him as its own was not exactly through the hawse-hole, it certainly was not through the cabin window, in the sense of the old saw. We have no moral parallax to calculate-no angle of apparent and true position to determine. We are to judge him as he is, his achievements as they were. If, in the historical perspective, the naval hero necessarily casts a shorter shadow than that of the leader of armies, the student of character may find some compensation for the absence of the bold outlines and high coloring that belong to the figures which monopolize the foreground, in the perfect details, the matchless simplicity, the delicate finish, the harmony of the accessories. The Admiral can never occupy so large a space in the public mind as the General; but he appeals more nearly to the popular heart of all maritime nations. Many of those particulars as to the Admiral's parentage and early years, which would serve so materially to illuminate his character, and to show those of us the man, who now see only the admiral, are unfortunately wanting, or at best rare or of somewhat doubtful authenticity. His father, George Farragut, a native of Citadella, the capital of the Island of Minorca, and a descendant of an ancient Catalonian house, came to this country in 1776 and entered the American army, rising, it is said, to the rank of major. After the peace, he married Miss Elizabeth Shine, of North Carolina, a member of the old Scotch family of McIven, and settled down, to fight the Indians and subdue the soil, at Campbell's Station, near Knoxville, Tennessee. Here on the 5th of July, 1801, was born to this fortunate pair a son, DAVID GLASCOE FARRAGUT, destined, under Providence, to become the great naval hero of the century. As early as the 17th of December, 1810, being then little more than nine years of age, he became seized with the boyish thirst for salt water that makes the sailor, and that hankering for the smell of villainous saltpetre that makes the hero. His desire was probably gratified without much difficulty, through the influence of Captain Porter, between whose father and young Farragut's, then sailing-masters in the Navy together, a warm friendship had sprung up; and a midshipman's warrantthere were midshipmen in those days!-was procured for him. The War of 1812 broke out, and his gallant patron began to fit out the "Essex" for her famous cruise under the flag of Free Trade and Sailors' Rights, which it pleased his fancy to fly in the faces of the Englishmen, more to the annoyance of the latter by reason of association of ideas than for any intrinsic meaning of the phrase in the ears of to-day. Midshipman Farragut was ordered to her. The now historic vessel sailed from the Delaware on the 28th of October, 1812, carrying as fair a freight of immortals as has, perhaps, fallen to the share of most ships since that one, bearing the kernels of mankind and his animal kingdom, bumped ashore on Ararat. The "Essex" shaped her course successively for Port Praya, Fernando de Noronho, and Cape Frio, and after cruising for a while off the coasts of Brazil and Buenos Ayres, with the object of meeting Commodore Bainbridge, who was just then making our little navy famous in those waters, made the best of her way to the Pacific, arriving at Valparaiso on the 14th of March, 1813. And now began that career of destruction of British commerce, which, after effectually extinguishing it during nearly a year, was to terminate on the 28th of March, 1814, by the capture of the "Essex" and her consort, the armed prize ship "Essex, junior," in the neutral port of Valparaiso, by the British ships-of-war "Phoebe" and "Cherub." The "Cherub" carried twenty-eight guns, viz, eighteen thirty-twos, eight twenty-fours, and two long nines; and the "Phoebe" mounted fifty-three guns, including thirty long eighteens, sixteen thirty-twos, one howitzer, and six three-pounders-the complement of the former being one hundred and eighty, and that of the latter three hundred and twenty men. Opposed to this force, Captain Porter had the "Essex," forty-six, and the "Essex, junior," twenty, while the united crews of the two ships amounted to but three hundred and thirty-five men. In spite of these odds, the fight was bravely maintained for over two and a half hours, until the "Essex," on fire for the third or fourth time, the flames at length threatening the magazine, her decks swept, her rigging shot away, her hull in a sinking condition, from the effect of the enemy's superior fire, her guns disabled by the number of killed and wounded, was forced to strike her flag. Our loss was indeed "dreadfully severe," as Captain Porter says: fifty-eight killed, sixty-six wounded (thirty-nine severely), and thirty-one missing the missing apparently consisting of those who availed themselves of the permission to jump overboard and swim ashore, when the progress of the flames and a terrible explosion between decks first showed that there was no hope. But among those who stuck to the ship till the last was, quite as a matter of course to us of 1864, Midshipman D. G. Farragut, then a boy of scarce fourteen years of age. Those who are curious in the history of those times, in tracing the dawn of greatness, or in studying historic parallels, will find plenty of food for their digestion in the "Journal of a Cruise made to the Pacific Ocean, by Captain DAVID PORTER, in the United States Frigate ESSEX, in the Years 1812, 1813, and 1814," a book which made stir enough in its day, but rests quietly enough now in the back alcoves of our great libraries. In it appears, with his name mis-spelled, at the head of the list of slightly wounded, "D. G. Faragut, midshipman." And a page or two further on, we find him, with improved orthography this time, as one of those sent home in the "Essex, junior," on their parole. Of his conduct during these perilous hours, his commander says: "Midshipmen Isaacs, Farragut, and Ogden exerted themselves in the performance of their respective duties, and gave an earnest of their value to the service. * They are too young to be recommended for promotion." How that earnest was fulfilled in the life of one of the trio-whether the lessons thus burned upon the youthful brain were soon effaced, we shall see. * Captain Porter now had the young midshipman put to school at Chester and taught military tactics, among other things; but he soon found himself afloat again in new waters, in the Mediterranean this time. In 1816, he was attached to the ship-of-theline, and there had the good fortune to meet in the capacity of chaplain a gentleman to whom he himself in a moment of generous exuberance has attributed all that he knows and all that he is. This was before the days of the Naval Academy, when the chaplain in addition to his spiritual functions was expected to perform the duties of schoolmaster. Between the worthy chaplain and one of his young charges, now our Admiral, sprang up an interest which was to continue, afloat and ashore, for the next three years. When Mr. Charles Folsom, for that worthy member of the University of Harvard was then our chaplain, was appointed Consul at Tunis, young Farragut was sent with him. I wish there were space in this article to quote more than these few words from the excellent letter which Mr. Folsom has recently given to the public, speaking of this inter |