perhaps, on account of the effect they produced, of the war, were those on the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers. There was stationed in command of the post of Cairo at the junction of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers a colonel of Illinois volunteers, who had been brevetted a brigadier-general. His name was Ulysses S. Grant. He was a native of Point Pleasant, Ohio, born April 27, 1822, and had been educated at West Point and took part as a lieutenant in the Mexican war. Subsequently he was stationed as an officer of the United States army in northern California and southern Oregon, where for a while he rusted for want of adequate active service. In 1854 he resigned from the army and tried farming, but was not successful. Agriculture was not his fort. When the civil war broke out in 1861, he was a clerk in his father's leather-store at Galena, Illinois. At the first mutterings of the coming storm, he at once offered his services and became mustering officer for the state; and soon afterwards he was appointed colonel of the Twenty-first Illinois regiment. As such colonel, in September, 1861, he took the field and by gallant conduct soon became a brigadier-general and was placed in command at Cairo. In the early part of 1862, President Lincoln, becoming dissatisfied with McClellan's inaction and being also urged forward by the push and energy of Edwin M. Stanton, who had just succeeded Simon Cameron in the office of United States secretary of war, ordered a general advance with a determination that something should be done. This order suited Grant. Even in advance of the required time, he grasped the offered opportunity and undertook with an army of about fifteen thousand men under his charge, assisted by seven gun-boats under command of Commander A. H. Foote, to open the way into the heart of Tennessee and thereby break and penetrate the rebel line of defense in that region. He accordingly proceeded about eighty miles up the Tennessee river and invested Fort Henry, which he reduced on February 6, 1861, driving the Confederates from that place to Fort Donelson on the Cumberland river about twelve miles eastward. This was supposed to be the most impregnable rebel stronghold in the west. Grant pursued to that point, while Foote with his gun-boats passed down the Tennessee and thence up the Ohio and Cumberland to the same

neighborhood; and on February 14 the attack upon Donelson commenced. On February 16, the Confederate general Simon B. Buckner, who had been left in command by the flight of his superiors, Generals Gideon J. Pillow and John B. Floyd, was compelled to surrender. He had asked, under a flag of truce, for an armistice to "settle the terms of capitulation." But Grant replied, in a few pithy words, which of themselves had as great and perhaps greater effect than battles, "No terms, except unconditional surrender, can be accepted. I purpose to move immediately on your works." Buckner called these terms "ungenerous and unchivalrous;" but the general public of the United States, which was electrified with the news of the victory, looked upon Grant as their deliverer, hailed him as the coming man, praised the state from which he had volunteered and the men he had led; and, instead of thinking him ungenerous or unchivalrous, took him to their hearts, told stories and made songs about him, used his name as a rallying cry, called him with familiar pride "Unconditional Surrender" Grant, sometimes United States Grant or Uncle Sam Grant, and cheered and hurrahed at every allusion to him.

Grant's victory at Donelson was the first great success of the Union arms; and it put a new phase upon the war. Its immediate effect was not only to compel the Confederates to surrender their strongest position in the west and all the soldiers and arms found there, but also to drive them out of Kentucky and all the western part of Tennessee, including Nashville, the capital. General Albert Sidney Johnston, who had been in command there, was obliged to retire to the neighborhood of Corinth in the northeastern corner of Mississippi; while Grant's army moved up the Tennessee river to Pittsburg Landing on the Tennessee side of the state line, but not far from Corinth. At that point, and at a place a short distance above it called Shiloh, was fought on April 6 and 7 another great battle, called sometimes that of Pittsburg Landing but more commonly that of Shiloh. It lasted several days and commenced with success for the Confederates; but in the course of it, their general, Albert Sidney Johnston, was killed; and there was no one equal to him to retrieve the day. General Grant had been at first largely outnumbered but,

being soon reinforced by General Carlos F. Buell, he gallantly recovered his position and held the field. Soon afterwards the Confederates were obliged to evacuate Corinth. Meanwhile Island Number Ten in the Mississippi river opposite New Madrid, which had been fortified by the rebels, was taken by General Pope, supported by the now famous gun-boats, several of which ran past the batteries along the river at night and, getting below the island, cut it off from its supplies and compelled it to surrender with all its men and munitions of war. The consequence of these victories was that the entire Mississippi river as far down as Vicksburg came into possession of the United States; and a big breach was thus made in the southern line of defense.

The capture of Fort Donelson in February, 1862, was followed in March by one of the most remarkable naval battles ever fought. It will be remembered that in April, 1861, a few days after the firing upon Sumter, when the Norfolk navy yard in Virginia was seized by the rebels, one of the national vessels that fell into their hands was the steam frigate Merrimac. This was subsequently, by the use of huge iron chains and plates disposed about its sides, transformed into what was called an iron-clad. After its transformation it was expected to sweep the northern coasts and bombard all the northern sea-coast cities with impunity. The commencement of its career was very prosperous and it promised to fulfill expectations. Steaming out of Norfolk into Hampton Roads, it on March 8, 1862, attacked and in a short time destroyed the United States sloopof-war Cumberland and frigate Congress; and in the evening just before dark, as the end of the day's work, drove the United States frigate Minnesota aground. On the next morning, Sunday, March 9, the Merrimac again steamed up and, with the pride and confidence of a Goliath, proceeded on its way to finish up the grounded Minnesota. But as it was surging along towards its prey, it was unexpectedly met by a curious-looking little iron vessel, almost entirely submerged in the water but with a round turret well exposed. It looked something like a cheese-box on a raft; and as such it was jeered and laughed at. This little craft, which was named the Monitor, may be called the original of almost all modern iron-clad naval architecture,

It was the invention of John Ericsson and had been placed under the command of Lieutenant John L. Worden. It had arrived at Fortress Monroe on its first, or trial trip on the evening of March 8 after the destruction of the Cumberland and Congress and the grounding of the Minnesota; and on the next or Sunday morning it had steamed down in front of the Minnesota and, like another little David, awaited the coming on of the huge champion of the enemy.

Nobody probably was ever more surprised than the rebels on board the Merrimac when the little Monitor opened fire from its turret. It was the boldest, sauciest, most determined and hottest fire for a small body ever delivered. There was no hesitation and no cessation about it. On the other hand the idea, which first presented itself to the rebels of sinking or at least silencing it by one of the Merrimac's big guns, was soon given up; the ridiculous-looking little craft that was at first jeered at began to be feared; and it was soon seen, as well by one side as the other, that one of the greatest inventions of the age had been made and was proving its value. The big guns of the Merrimac, which immediately found enough to do without going any further after the Minnesota, were trained upon it; but they had nothing to aim at except the turret and almost submerged deck, from which their balls glanced off with little or no effect; while the Monitor's balls, delivered furiously and uninterruptedly from its revolving turret, told with such crashing force upon the sides of the Merrimac as in a short time to cripple and practically destroy it, and in the meanwhile compel it to retreat and ingloriously leave the field and the victory to its little antagonist. The Merrimac was so demoralized that it never offered to fight another battle; and soon afterwards, when the Confederates were obliged to evacuate Norfolk, it was blown up. The Monitor, on the contrary, which had suddenly become the most effective and most famous war ship ever built, swept everything before it until a few months subsequently it was lost in a storm off Cape Hatteras.

The next month, April, 1862, another remarkable naval conflict took place in the neighborhood of New Orleans. A fleet of forty-seven gun-boats, under command of Captain David G. Farragut, undertook to open the way up from the mouths of the

Mississippi to New Orleans. There were two renowned forts on opposite banks of the river about half way up, one Fort St. Philip on the north or left bank and the other Fort Jackson on the south or right bank. These were fully armed and equipped and were supposed to be practically impregnable. Farragut commenced to bombard them on April 18 and continued his firing upon them for five days. On the morning of April 24, finding that the forts still held out, Farragut conceived the bold design of running past them. As he brought his fleet up, the Confederates opened a tremendous fire from the forts and their vessels. They also cut adrift and sent floating down the river against him rafts and steamboats ablaze with burning cotton. They likewise sent against him an iron-clad ram called the Manassas. But in vain. Though with considerable loss, Farragut ran the gauntlet of the forts; passed the fire-vessels; destroyed or silenced his antagonists; overcame every obstacle and, steaming up to the city, captured and turned it over to the command of General Benjamin F. Butler, who followed with some fifteen thousand Union troops and put things in order as he advanced. This Butler, who was the author of the famous designation of escaped or seized negro slaves as "contraband of war," was one of the strongest, ablest, most determined, most self-sufficient and most unscrupulous characters of the age. He was a man of extraordinary power, who seemed to court and fatten on abuse; and he succeeded so well in exciting rebel spleen that towards the end of the year 1862, the Confederate president, Jefferson Davis, was badgered into the weak absurdity of declaring him an outlaw and a felon.

During all this time, President Lincoln, who by the terms of the constitution of the United States was commander-in-chief of the United States army, was searching for a general. He was heart and soul in favor of the Union; but he knew little or nothing of military affairs and made many mistakes before he at last learned by experience and settled down upon the best man for the place. The country, and particularly that portion under arms, was divided up into military departments, each administered by its own general in subordination to the president. But, under the president, the major-general at Wash