ington was at the head of the army, and he was supposed to have control and supervision over all the departments and to direct the general conduct of affairs. General Scott had occupied this position, and after him McClellan; but as has been seen McClellan was found wanting. Meanwhile there were many changes in the departments-and some for the worse. This was especially the case when General Grant was virtually superseded in the command of his army after the battle of Shiloh by General Henry W. Halleck, and as a consequence the progress of Grant's victories in the west was, for a time at least, paralyzed.

McClellan was still in the Virginian peninsula between the York and James rivers with a couple of hundred thousand men and very slowly moving up towards Richmond. General Banks had just cleared the Shenandoah valley of the enemy and was on his way to join McClellan, when Thomas J. Jackson, or Stonewall" Jackson as he was generally called, one of the ablest and most remarkable men of the war, suddenly broke into the valley and made an attack upon the forces under General James Shields, whom Banks had left behind. Jackson, who was a native of Harrison county, Virginia, born in 1824, was a West Point graduate and had seen some service as a lieutenant in the Mexican war. He subsequently became a professor of natural philosophy in the Virginia Military Institute at Lexington and continued there until the breaking out of the rebellion in 1861, when he accepted service in the Confederate army. His first exploit was to capture the arsenal at Harper's Ferry on May 3. This put him in command of a Confederate. brigade; and it was the magnificent military management of that brigade in the face of a terrific fire at Bull Run that occasioned the remark, "There stands old Jackson, like a stone wall," and gave him the from-that-time-famous designation of Stonewall Jackson. With a comparatively small force but with a military genius which more than made up for its deficiency as against his antagonists, Jackson first attacked Shields so as to compel Banks to take the back track and return to the Shenandoah. As soon as he had disposed of Shields for the time, he turned on Banks and drove him across the Potomac and out of the

valley. He then returned and, after putting a stop to the advance of General John C. Fremont who was bringing up an army from the west to support Banks, again attacked Shields and drove him off, thus brilliantly saving the Shenandoah for a time at least for the Confederacy and creating great consternation at Washington and in the federal councils. The ulterior effect, which was of great importance, was to detain a large portion of the federal forces that had been intended to aid McClellan from joining that general; while Jackson himself, with a watchfulness and celerity that knew no cessation, made his way across the Blue Ridge and joined the main Confederate army in front of Richmond.

The outcome of McClellan's strategy in the Virginian peninsula, after several battles that were of no great importance, was to get his magnificent army separated into two divisions by the little river Chickahominy, which suddenly rose and became a large stream. While in that condition, his left wing was attacked at Fair Oaks and Seven Pines by the Confederates under General Joseph E. Johnston. The result was a fierce contest, that lasted several days without any very great success on either side; but as one of its consequences General Johnston was wounded and was succeeded by General Robert E. Lee, who thereupon obtained and thenceforth to the end of the war retained command of the Confederate army in Virginia. It was at this time that Jackson came up and reinforced Lee; and the two together soon fell upon McClellan and drove him before them with great loss. Being caught in a divided condition, he found it impossible to unite his wings and maintain his base of supplies on the York river; and he was therefore obliged, in the face of a victorious enemy, to change his base to the James river. In doing so, he was compelled to fight the series of engagements known as the "Seven Days' Battles," in which the losses were over fifteen thousand on each side, before he could reach a position of even tolerable safety.

Lincoln, in his search for a general to supersede McClellan, called General Halleck to Washington, apparently for the benefit of his advice, and appointed General John Pope, who had done good work at Pea Ridge and Island Number Ten in the west,

to take general command of the long Union line extending from McClellan's position on the James river to the Shenandoah. On the western end of this line was Banks. Lee and Jackson, as soon as McClellan found a resting-place on the James, turned their attention to the other end of Pope's line and started operations there with a sudden and dashing attack by Jackson upon Banks at Cedar Mountain. Lee followed immediately in the wake of Jackson; and the two joining forced Banks back and then attacked Pope. McClellan had been ordered to join Pope; and a part of his force arrived in time to take part in the second battle of Bull Run. But it did no good; Pope was defeated; his army routed; Washington exposed, and the whole north driven wild with excitement and apprehension. Lee at once led his triumphant army across the upper Potomac into Maryland. McClellan, gathering up the defeated Union armies, followed Lee and, on September 17, 1862, fought the desperate battle of Antietam creek, which, though with terrific loss on both sides, resulted in favor of the Union armies, which held the field. The Confederates were obliged to recross the Potomac; and they leisurely moved up the Shenandoah valley to recuperate. They were allowed to go and were not pursued.

By this time, Lincoln, finding that Pope did not meet expectations and being more and more dissatisfied with McClellan, appointed General Ambrose E. Burnside in his place. But what McClellan lacked of push, Burnside lacked of caution. He seemed determined that there should be no failure for want of daring. But he was rash. He at once advanced towards Richmond and, upon reaching the Rappahannock at Fredericksburg, found Lee in position on the hills beyond the town. Without hesitating and apparently without counting the danger, he immediately on December 13 crossed the river and, forming his forces into three divisions, attempted to storm the intrenched heights. The result was a terrible slaughter of Union troopsthe loss amounting it was said to twelve thousand men-and the complete defeat and rout of the Union army. Burnside's disaster was greater than Pope's had been and much greater than any that McClellan had suffered. Lincoln thereupon made. another choice of a general and on this occasion settled upon

General Joseph Hooker, a dashing soldier, formerly of California, who had acquired and was generally and widely known by the familiar title of "Fighting Joe Hooker." Being appointed in Burnside's place, Hooker at once withdrew the Union forces from the neighborhood of the Rappahannock to that of the Potomac, and for several months devoted his time and attention to reorganizing and strengthening his army before advancing again towards Richmond. And thus at the end of 1862, the contending armies in Virginia occupied much the same positions as at the beginning of the war. The military operations of the Confederates in that part of the country had as a rule been able and effective, while those of the United States had been a series of blunders from the start. In the west it was different: there the Union generals won the successes and the Confederates committed the blunders. But even there, for the time at least, there was sufficient meddling by the administration, or by persons who had the ear of the administration, to seriously jeopardize the Union cause, which in the hands of such men as Grant, Thomas, Buell, Farragut and Foote was doing well.

Halleck's interference with Grant by assuming general command of the army at Corinth and leaving Grant in only a subordinate position might have led to very serious consequences. The main thing that appears to have recommended Halleck to Lincoln and his secretary of war Stanton was not any battle he had fought or active service he had performed; but his talk about war. McClellan, Pope, Burnside, Hooker and others had each done something; but Halleck was a great military scholar and talked learnedly. He was so effective and weighty in this respect that he got, among the hangers-on about Washington, to be known by the name of "Old Brains;" and the designation afterwards stuck to him-his friends and his enemies each using it, one side in a favorable and the other and greater number in an opposite sense. To understand the effect of his interference, it is to be borne in mind that when Grant took Donelson, he had broken the Confederate line of defense in the west and made a terrible breach in it. The Confederates had fallen back to Corinth and Grant, assisted by Buell, had driven them out of that place. It was clearly the part of the Union

forces to prevent a new line of defense from being formed; and after many delays Buell was sent eastward with his army to seize Chattanooga, a strong place on the Tennessee river near the northern line of Georgia, and prevent it from falling into the enemy's hands. But there was so much bad management that, before Buell could reach the place, it was occupied by the Confederates under General Braxton Bragg; and it took a long time and the expense of much treasure and blood before they could be dislodged. The possession of Chattanooga as a base enabled the Confederates to make an attempt to repair their losses in the west by sending two armies, one under General Kirby Smith from the eastern part of Tennessee and the other under Bragg from Chattanooga, to invade Kentucky and threaten the southern parts of Ohio and Indiana. Several battles took place, one near Richmond in Kentucky on August 30 and one at Perrysville on October 8, with the general result that the Confederates were driven back. About the same time several attacks were made upon the Union armies at Corinth and its neighborhood; but they were repelled by General Rosecrans. One of his battles was that of Iuka, fought on September 19; another that of Corinth, fought on October 4, and the other that of Stone river, which commenced on December 31, lasted several days, engaged forty thousand men, with a loss of more than ten thousand on each side, and resulted in hurling the rebels back behind their line at Chattanooga.

Grant meanwhile had fixed his attention upon Vicksburg on the east bank of the Mississippi about half way between New Orleans and Memphis, the only point on the river remaining in the hands of the Confederates but the strongest and most important position in the southwest. His plan was to march against it with his army on the east side, while General William T. Sherman with forty thousand men and Admiral David D. Porter with a fleet of gun-boats were to descend the river from Memphis to his support. But the stand, which the Confederates were enabled to keep up in Mississippi, chiefly on account of their possession of Chattanooga, prevented Grant from marching on Vicksburg as he had intended; so that, when Sherman and Porter reached and attacked the bluffs north of that city, Grant