then was. General Burnside into the eastern part of Tennessee. Learning this and how much Rosecrans' army had been thereby reduced below his own numbers after reinforcement, Bragg, as soon as he safely could, sent off a part of his forces under General James Longstreet to cope with Burnside at or near Knoxville where he About the same time, on account of the favorable condition of federal affairs in other quarters, many changes took place in the Union armies. In October Rosecrans was superseded by Thomas; and Grant, who had been so successful on the Mississippi, was placed in general command of all the armies in the west. Soon afterwards he was joined by two corps under Hooker from the army of the Potomac; and Sherman came up with the greater part of the so-called army of the Tennessee from Vicksburg and vicinity, where it was no longer needed. In a couple of weeks thereafter, an assault was made upon Bragg's fortified positions on Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge overlooking Chattanooga; and there was no cessation in the attack until both places were taken and the rebels driven out of Tennessee. Lookout Mountain, which rises high above the valley of the river at Chattanooga and commands an extensive view in several directions, was successfully stormed on November 24 by Hooker, who on this occasion showed how well he deserved the name of "Fighting Joe." In the midst of a thick fog and mist that covered the summit, he pushed up the heights, fighting step by step all the way but steadily advancing, until he gained and cleared the top; and it was from this circumstance that his gallant action was afterwards usually called the "battle above the clouds." On the next day after Lookout Mountain was thus cleared, Missionary Ridge on the same or south side of the river was attacked by the main army, having Hooker on the right wing, Thomas in the center and Sherman on the left. Before such a combination it was impossible for Bragg to stand. In a short time he was driven off to Dalton in Georgia, where he was shortly afterwards superseded in his command by Joseph E. Johnston; and about the same time Longstreet found it advisable to abandon the siege of Knoxville, where he had Burnside surrounded; and, retreating into Virginia, he joined Lee. Of the ports on the Atlantic coast still remaining in the pos session of the Confederacy, the strongest and most important was Charleston, South Carolina. Several attempts had been made to reduce it without success. At length, however, on September 7, 1863, Fort Wagner on Morris Island, which commanded the main ship-channel, was taken; and soon afterwards Fort Sumter, where the first gun of the war was fired, was entirely demolished. Upon the capture of these places, United States vessels entered the harbor and effectually closed it up. Meanwhile the Confederates had managed to fit out several formidable cruisers in England, a number of whose office-holders, with Palmerston at the head, and some of its merchants and manufacturers were in secret, if not openly, inimical to the prosperity of the United States and willing to do almost anything calculated to cripple and embarrass it. Among the most destructive of the cruisers thus furnished by the English ill-wishers of the United States, and whose actions seem to have been winked at by the British government, were the Florida, the Georgia and the Alabama. The Florida, which had been built at Liverpool, captured twentyone merchant vessels belonging to citizens of the northern states in 1863 and the first half of 1864. An end was put to its piratical depredations upon the unarmed merchant marine by its seizure by the United States in the harbor of Bahia, Brazil, in October, 1864. The Georgia, which had been built at Glasgow in Scotland and put to sea in April, 1863, was captured, after a very short cruise in which little damage was done, by the United States frigate Niagara. The Alabama, the most successful and destructive of the pirate vessels fitted out by the English, was built in Liverpool for its Confederate captain Raphael Semmes. While it was building in the early part of 1863, the British government was informed of its purpose and urged to prevent its going to sea by the United States minister; but his representations and remonstrances were disregarded and the vessel was allowed to sail in July. Its warfare, like that of the other Confederate cruisers, was confined to attacking unarmed vessels of the northern merchant marine. After destroying sixty of them, it was cornered off Cherbourg in the British Channel by the United States steamer Kearsarge under the command of Captain John A. Winslow and, after a short action, sunk. Semmes, who had posed and was generally recognized by the south as a chivalrous partisan, though it would be difficult to justify his title to such a character from the facts, managed to escape from his ship and seek refuge under British protection in a little English pleasure yacht, which was hovering suspiciously near at the time of the action. As Great Britain subsequently had to pay for all the damage caused by these cruisers, the north perhaps did not lose much; but its feelings for the time against the so-called "perfidious Briton" ran very high. A number of small operations, rather indicating bad management in the war department or responsible head of the army at Washington than weakness in the soldiers employed, took place in the early part of 1864. General Truman Seymour conducted an expedition into Florida but was defeated with considerable loss. General Banks was sent up Red river to attack Shreveport in Louisiana and seize a large quantity of cotton; but he was overpowered and his expedition ended in failure and disaster. The only expeditions of the time that were successful were a raid by Sherman into and across Mississippi for the purpose of breaking up railroads and bridges and destroying supplies, and a campaign by Rosecrans, who had been appointed to the command in Missouri, against an invasion by General Sterling A. Price and the driving of him and his men out of that state. On the other hand a large Confederate force under General Nathan B. Forrest made a raid into Tennessee and Kentucky and on April 12 captured Fort Pillow on the Mississippi river about forty miles north of Memphis, where he was said to have massacred a number of white as well as all the negro troops found there. At or about the same time that these comparatively inconsequential affairs were being transacted at a distance, a very important matter was taking place at the national capital. Grant's great success in the west had attracted the attention of the public. Without assumption or pretense of any kind, and not even complaining when unjustly treated, he had gone on with determination, earnestness and ability, fulfilling the duties of his station whatever it might be and producing very great and at length brilliant effects. Though some others would have been glad to keep him down, his merits, particularly as the administration and the country felt the need of and were seeking with all their might for a great general, could no longer be hid. On December 7, 1863, the first day of the congress that met that year, Elihu B. Washburn of Illinois introduced into the house a resolution empowering the president to appoint a lieutenant-general of all the United States forces. It was avowedly intended to place Grant at the head of all the armies and in fact repose in him the entire further conduct of the war. He had already been appointed a major-general in the regular army; but the purpose now was to create a new and theretofore unprecedented grade, which would outrank in military affairs everybody else except the president, who was and would have to remain the constitutional commanderin-chief. There was some opposition to the bill; even such men as Thaddeus Stevens and James A. Garfield voted against it; but it nevertheless prevailed by a vote of ninety-six ayes to forty-one This was owing in great measure to a remarkable speech of Washburn describing Grant as uniformly successful in every fight from Belmont to Lookout Mountain and the very man the public wanted and upon whom the country could depend to fight out the rebellion to the end. He then spoke of the famous campaign against Vicksburg and called particular attention to the fact that, for the purpose of securing celerity of movement on that occasion, Grant had not taken along any of the trappings and paraphernalia so common to military men. "General Grant," he continued, "took with him neither a horse, nor an orderly, nor a servant, nor a camp chest, nor an overcoat, nor a blanket, nor even a clean shirt. His entire baggage for six days-I was with him at the time-was a tooth-brush. He fared like the commonest soldier in his command, partaking of his rations and sleeping upon the ground with no covering except the canopy of heaven." noes. The bill, having passed the senate as well as the house, was on February 29, 1864, approved by Lincoln, who immediately thereafter nominated Grant. The lieutenant-general was thereupon ordered to Washington, where he arrived on March 8. Lincoln had never seen Grant nor Grant Lincoln; and consequently the two greatest men in their respective spheres of their day then met for the first time. From that moment, Grant was the military head-in-fact of the United States armies. He at once superseded Halleck and took personal supervision and direction of the war in Virginia. While retaining Meade in general command under himself, he reorganized the army of the Potomac into three corps under Generals Winfield S. Hancock, George B. Warren and John Sedgwick respectively; and soon after he added a fourth corps under General Burnside. He also called General Philip H. Sheridan from the west and appointed him to the general command of the cavalry in the eastern army, while on the other hand he left Sherman in general command of all the armies of the west. The simple fact of the appointment of these men, especially in the light of their extraordinary subsequent efficiency, indicated that Grant was not only great himself but able to discover military greatness in other men. In this respect he was evidently superior to Lincoln; though it must be admitted that no man was ever more willing to recognize greatness than Lincoln, and no one more willing to adhere to and support Grant, through thick and thin, when he had once come to know the man and appreciate his greatness. On the Confederate side Lee had also divided his Virginia army into three corps under Generals Ambrose P. Hill, Richard S. Ewell and James Longstreet respectively, while Johnston was left at Dalton in Georgia to oppose Sherman in the west. Early in May, 1864, under Grant's orders, there was a simultaneous advance upon the Confederates both in Virginia and Georgia. In Virginia the army of the Potomac, which consisted of about one hundred and twenty-five thousand men, nearly twice as large as Lee's army, crossed the Rapidan and entered what was known as the "Wilderness"-a forbidding and difficult road next the river on the direct route from Fredericksburg southward. Grant's idea was to push rapidly through the wilderness and get between Lee's army and Richmond. But Lee had chosen and fortified so many positions all along the route and defended them with so much ability and constancy that Grant had to fight his way step by step almost the entire distance. From May 5 to May 8 there was, so to speak, a continuous uninterrupted battle; and on each day great bravery was displayed and |