near Prairie Grove, in which both sides declared they had beaten. As the rebels tore up their blankets in the night, after the fighting was over, and wound them round their cannon wheels so as to get away without being heard by the Unionists, I should say they had had the worst of it. Be that as it may, at the end of 1862 Missouri was comparatively quiet, and there was very little of interest going on in Arkansas, to either the rebel or Union cause. CHAPTER XXXIX. WORK ON THE OCEAN IN 1882. Hampton Roads - The Burnside Expeditiva. — A Firmdale Monster. —How the Cumberland weat down. — A Cheese Box xe a Rafi — Fits of the Mimar and Merrimack, LET us turn to the sea-coast once more and see what our gunboats and iron-clads are doing there. In January, 1862, nearly one hundred ships, both steam and sailing vessels, were riding at anchor in Hampton Rads. Hampton Roads is not a highway on land as its name might imply. It is an arm of Chesapeake Bay, running up into the coast of Virginia. These ships and the troops on board them, were commanded by Commodore Goldsborough and General Ambrose Burnside. These were going down to the coast of North Carolina, to take possession of it as Dupont had taken the islands of South Carolina. They set out on the 11th of January. Just as they drew near Hatteras Inlet, one of the dreadful gales blew off the stormy cape. The splendid fleet was scattered and some of the ships lost. After the storm was over, seventy vessels got over the bay and made their way to Roanoke Island. They came to the very spot where Sir Walter Raleigh's unsuccessful colony came in 1585. How differently it looked in this year of grace, 1862, when the Burnside Expedition steamed up to capture it. Now it bristled with angry-looking cannon, and instead of the fragrant odors of the forest, the air was redolent of smoke and the smell of gunpowder. Burnside's success at Roanoke was as decided as Dupont's success at Port Royal. His troops landed on the island, marched up through a narrow causeway, defended on each side by cannon, and took the enemy's works in gallant fashion. After taking Roanoke they moved to the main-land and captured Newbern, the most im portant town on the North Carolina coast. By April the towns at the mouths of all the principal rivers were in the power of the United States. The whole coast of Carolina was blockaded by our ships. If Burnside had controlled land forces enough he might have pressed still farther inland, but in all this expedition he had only about 15,000 men. This very month of April General Quincy Gilmore, a civil engineer as well as a soldier, attacked Fort Pulaski, a stronghold guarding the mouth of the Savannah River. This post was taken, and another of the best points on the coast restored to the nation. In the mean time a formidable monster had appeared in Hampton Roads, some time after Burnside left there. A fleet of Union vessels lying peacefully in the James River not far from Fortress Monroe, were startled by the appearance of an iron-clad ship making rapidly towards them. It was the steamer Merrimack, once a fine war vessel belonging to the navy. When the rebels seized the navyyard at Norfolk they had sunk this ship in the harbor. On second thought they had raised the hulk, and found it still firm and seaworthy. They had put over the deck a shelving iron roof from which cannon-balls glanced over harmlessly, and had plated the sides over with iron to below the water-level. Thus fitted up, with a formidable pointed" beak" of oak and iron fastened to her bow, the Merrimack was a monster frightful to the stoutest wooden ship that ever sailed the seas. Down she came on this Saturday, the 8th of March, right upon the grand old Cumberland, who awaited her unflinchingly. They fought for two hours, the water gushing through the holes which the iron beak of the enemy gored in the wooden sides of the Cumberland. At the last, her brave captain, Morris, refused to surrender, and the ship went down with one hundred dead and wounded on her decks, with her good flag still flying. Even after the vessel sank, the flag floated above the waves, a sign of hope and cheer to the others in the fight. Without a pause the Merrimack turned to the Congress, who had already been attacked by some wooden companions of the iron giant-ship. In a short time the Congress was on fire, slowly burning down to the powder stored in the hold. Then the monster went on to attack the other ships lying almost under the shadow of Fortress Monroe. Luckily darkness came to check her all-devouring career, and with the certainty of more easy victories on the next day, the Merrimack withdrew till daylight. But day-break a little changed the scene. Next morning the Merrimack beheld a plucky little enemy beside her, dressed in a suit of clothes of the same material as her own. It was the United States Monitor, built in New York by John Ericsson, and sent just in time to try her hand at checking the victorious Merrimack. She looked like a flat iron raft, with a round iron box or turret in the middle. The rebels called it a "Yankee cheese-box on a raft," and this was not a bad name for it. But the cheese-box had within its iron sides two great guns which turned round and round on a pivot, and could be sighted by the men inside, with almost the precision of a rifle. These guns could send a ball that weighed two hundred pounds. When the Merrimack saw this little craft steaming up close by her, with nothing visible but the turret, she felt like laugh ing. But when one of those two hundred pound balls dented into her iron sides and shook her like the crash of a thunder-bolt, there was no fun in it. Goliah did not laugh after David struck him once with the stone from his sling. The Merrimack tried her shot on the Monitor, but they pattered off her iron-proof sides like hail on a house-roof. She ran down upon her, full force, and tried to gore her with her pointed beak as she had gored the Cumberland and Congress; but the little craft scarcely budged under the shock and kept up her steady fire from those revolving guns. At last, after four hours of such fighting, the Merrimack retired, leaving the small Monitor in possession of the watery field. Cheers rose from fort and ships at the spectacle; and from that time there was no more fear of the rebel monster, in Hampton Roads, while the "Yankee cheese-box" guarded the entrance there. CHAPTER XL. SHILOH, ISLAND NO. 10, AND CORINTII. The Log Meeting-house. - The Surprise. "Drive the Yankees into the River." — -Beaure- Beauregard's Last Strategy. The THE fall of Fort Donelson drove the rebels straight down through the State of Tennessee. Their commanding general, Albert S. Johnston, stopped his march at Corinth, a little town in the very northeast corner of Mississippi, only a few miles from the boundary of Tennessee. Here he was joined by General Beauregard, the hero of Bull Run, who came to aid him. Bishop Polk also came from Columbus with part of his troops, - the rest he had left to fortify Island No. 10-and General Bragg, who had commanded the famous battery at Buena Vista in Mexico, also added an army freshly recruited in Mississippi and Alabama, to the gathering masses. By the 1st of April 40,000 rebels were in Corinth. Grant was closely following on Johnston's heels. He had halted at a point on the Tennessee River known as Pittsburg Landing, about twenty miles north of Corinth; and all about this village, which consisted of two or three log huts on the river bank, his army lay encamped. Three miles from the river was a poor little log church known as "Shiloh Meeting-house," and around this church was posted the division of William T. Sherman, who had been sent to join Grant after the taking of Donelson. It was just before dawn on Sunday, the 6th of April. The Union army near Pittsburg Landing was fast asleep. Behind them lay the broad Tennessee River. To the right and left, winding about their encampment, were two small rivers known as "Snake" and "Lick" creeks, tributaries of the large Tennessee. General Grant was at Savannah, ten miles distant, looking after provisions to feed his great army. There had been some rumors that the enemy at Corinth meant to attack at Pittsburg Landing, but not much attention was paid to this report, and it seemed quite certain that General Carlos Buell, who was on his way with a large force to join Grant at Pittsburg Landing, would come up before serious fighting began. Therefore Grant in Savannah, and the Union troops in their camp on the river, slept soundly and without fear. At that very moment Johnston and Beauregard, with their army |