Our

mantle, who claims to have had it from General Polk's own lips. readers can estimate its worth for themselves. The history of every bat tle is encumbered with many apocryphal tales, of which this may be one.

General Buell did not expect an attack from the enemy in the morning. He did not know that his army had won a victory at night. Cherishing no doubt that the enemy would endeavor to hold his position, orders were issued to prepare for battle on the following day. But while the National army were making arrangements for the renewal of the conflict, the vanquished rebels were in full retreat. The light of the next morning revealed the abandonment of all their positions. It was still thought that the rebels would endeavor to make a stand at some other point in the vicinity. Pursuit was instantly ordered. The rebels were, however, too swift-footed to be caught. After chasing them about sixty miles in a southeast direotion, as far as London, the pursuit was abandoned, and the National army, turning due west, leisurely continued its march, nearly two hundred miles, to Bowling Green. General Bragg, crossing the border into Tennessee, did not check the progress of his columns until he reached Murfreesboro', some thirty miles south of Nashville.

Thus ended General Bragg's invasion of Kentucky. The results were far from satisfactory to the rebels. They had expected that Kentucky would rise and welcome General Bragg as a deliverer. They were sanguine in their expectations of taking possession both of Louisville and Cincinnati. They had resolved to transfer the scene of war from the Cotton into the Border States, hoping thence to push their armies into the Free States of the North. In all this they signally failed. Yet the campaign accomplished important results for the rebels. A half-starved army foraged almost uninterruptedly in Kentucky for a fortnight. They entered the State so destitute of provisions, that they were obliged to parole all their prisoners simply because they had nothing wherewith to feed them. They revelled in abundance while they remained within the State, and carried out of it an immense quantity of all kinds of stores. The Richmond Examiner declared that the wagon-train brought out of Kentucky by General Kirby Smith alone, was forty miles long. It contained a million yards of jeans, and an immense amount of clothing, boots, and shoes. Two hundred wagons were loaded with bacon. They carried off six thousand barrels of pork. This immense train was followed by fifteen hundred mules and horses, eight thousand beeves, and a large lot of swine. Such was the plunder secured by a raid into a "neutral" State.

The murmurs against General Buell had become so loud and general that they could no longer be disregarded by the Government. Though the people claimed no military knowledge, they could not fail to see that all the territory which, with a single division, General Mitchel had occupied and held, had been surrendered to the rebels by General Buell, in command of a magnificent army, without a struggle. Suspicions of disloyalty were widely circulated. It was impossible to understand a strategy which had sacrificed the brave Colonel Wilder and his heroic force at Mumfordsville, and which permitted General McCook, with a single division, to fight an enemy whom the united army might easily have annihilated. At

the time of Colonel Wilder's capture, the removal of General Buell was impatiently demanded. He was relieved of his command for a single day at Louisville, but within twenty-four hours was reinstated. When he commenced the pursuit of General Bragg great things were promised, and the country expected that the rebels would be made to pay dearly for their audacity. But when it was known that the rebel army had escaped with impunity, carrying all their plunder with them, a clamor of dissatisfaction arose which could not be silenced. General Buell's army, forbidden to go to the succor of their comrades at Mumfordsville and Perryville, had lost confidence in their commander. On the 30th of October General Buell was again relieved of his command, and Major-General W. S. Rosecrans was assigned to his place. General Buell was understood to be undisguisedly a warm advocate of slavery, and as such it was not possible but that he must have wished to have the war so conducted as to lead to some compromise, by which the claims of slavery might be respected. This campaign was subjected to a long, official, military examination. Like all military court proceedings, it was conducted with closed doors. The result has never yet been given to the public. Had the result been his triumphant exoneration, it is not probable that it would so long have been kept secret.

At the beginning of the rebellion there were two parties in the North, both alike desirous of the preservation of the Union. They, however, differed widely in respect to the policy proper to effect this end. A small but earnest minority, constantly increasing in numbers and strength of purpose as the war progressed, regarded with horror the rebellion, as the last crowning crime in the long record of infamy of a nefarious slaveocracy. They saw at once that the impending battle was to be no brief contest with a furious but short-lived mob, but a life-and-death struggle between the Republic and the mortal foe which it had so long unconsciously cherished -slavery. They prepared for the conflict accordingly, determined not only to preserve the Union, but to bring treason to a speedy and condign punishment. Regarding slavery as the source of all our National troubles, they were desirous not to shield it from any of the blows to which it should be exposed by the fortunes of the war.

On the other hand, there was a large number of men in the North, connected with the South by social, political, and commercial ties, who regarded that section as the victim of Northern wrongs. They regarded their treason as the not unnatural anger of a people goaded to madness by the Abolitionists. It was, consequently, their wish to conciliate treason, not to punish it. While, therefore, they girded on the sword to protect the Capital from capture and the Northern border from invasion, they were very solicitous not to push the war to such an extremity as to endanger the institution of slavery. The preservation of slavery was considered, politically, a matter of vital moment; for the institution bound the South together as one sectional party. A party at the North, combining with the South, had gen erally succeeded in controlling the action of the Government. It therefore seemed of the utmost moment not to strike blows so heavy as to alienate these friends, and thus prevent future coöperation. Of the former class

Generals Fremont and Grant, and the lamented Generals Lyon and Mitchel, may be regarded as the type. Generals McClellan and Buell may, perhaps, be regarded as the military leaders of the other party. Of them both it may be said, that they took up the sword without heart, wielded it without earnestness, and laid it down without honor.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE BATTLE OF PITTSBURG LANDING.

From March 5th to April 7th, 1862.

ANDREW JOHNSON MILITARY GOVERNOR OF TENNESSEE.-POPULATION OF EAST TENNESSEE.— ENERGETIC MEASURES OF GOVERNOR JOHNSON.-RETREAT OF THE REBELS TO MURFREESBORO'. -BUELL'S ADVANCE ON NASHVILLE.-MOVEMENTS OF THE VARIOUS ARMIES.-GENERAL GRANT'S ADVANCE TO SAVANNAH, Tennessee.—CHARACTER OF THE COUNTRY AT Pittsburg LANDING.-SURPRISE OF THE PATRIOT TROOPS.-TERRIBLE BATTLE.

As already recounted in a previous chapter, the city of Nashville was occupied by the National forces on the 25th of February, 1862. They advanced under the command of General Buell from Bowling Green silently, after the fall of Forts Henry and Donelson. The city surrendered without resistance, which, indeed, had it been attempted, would have been utterly in vain.

Almost immediately after the capital of Tennessee had thus com? again under National rule, President Lincoln appointed Andrew Johnson Military Governor of the State. The appointinent was confirmed by the United States Senate on the 5th of March. In two days after, Governor Johnson, with his staff-for with his appointment as Governor he received a commission as brigadier-general of volunteers-was on his way to Nashville, which place he reached on the 12th. At the same time, by an order dated the 11th of March, the Departments of Kansas and Kentucky, under the commands respectively of General Hunter and General Buell, were united with that of Missouri, and the consolidated department received the designation of Department of the Mississippi. Thus General Buell and General Hunter were both subordinated to General Halleck, to whom was intrusted the charge of military affairs, while the civil administration of Tennessee was in the hands of Governor Johnson.

He entered upon his difficult duties with that energy which had always characterized him. He found the capital abandoned by the rebel Governorelect, and by the Legislature. The State records were removed, and the moneys of the State had been taken from the vaults of the bank, and were appropriated either by individual thieves, or by that organic thief, the Confederate Government. Nearly all the offices, both State and National, were vacated either by abandonment, or by undisguised treason. Upon Governor Johnson devolved the task of reorganizing a State, devastated by war, and rent by bitter faction. Eastern Tennessee, his own native. home, and the stronghold of loyalty, was still under the military control of the rebels. In West Tennessee, in which alone Governor Johnson could exercise any practical authority, he found a few warm, earnest, and

sincere supporters, men who, like himself, had been from the outset lovers of the Union, and enemies of the rebellion. There were a few open and undisguised foes of the Union, who had the courage and consistency to .cling, in the time of its adversity, to the same rebel cause which they had advocated when it was popular to do so. But far the greater number of the community consisted of insincere and hypocritical adherents, who had yielded unresistingly to the popular current when it swept the State into the political maelstrom of treason and rebellion. These men were now professedly converted to the National cause by the victorious advance of the Federal armies, and were equally ready to cry "Hosanna" or "Crucify," as the popular demand and the passing circumstances might seem to require. The evening of his arrival in Nashville a public meeting was held, at which Governor Johnson made an address, afterwards published as an "Appeal to the People of Tennessee." In this he declared that it was the purpose of the Administration to secure to every State a republican form of Government; that to that end he had been temporarily appointed military governor of the State; that it was his duty to protect public property, to afford to all the protection of law, to restore the State as speedily as possible to the Union, to fill by appointment all offices which had been vacated by abandonment or treason, to respect all rights and redress all wrongs, and that while he should punish intelligent and conscious treason in high places, a full and complete amnesty was offered for all past acts to those who, in a private, unofficial capacity, had assumed a position of hostility to the Government, upon the one condition of their again yielding themselves peaceful subjects to the just supremacy

of the laws.

Governor Johnson at once commenced vigorous measures for the reëstablishment of the National authority. The mayor and common council of the city were required to take the oath of allegiance; they refused. He expelled them from office, and appointed others in their stead. Disloyal men of prominence were arrested. The press was put under rigid control, that there should be no treasonable utterances. One or two journals were suppressed. An order was issued that whenever a Union man was maltreated by guerrillas, five or more prominent rebels, from the immediate vicinity, should be arrested for retaliation.

By these measures of salutary rigor, some degree of peace and prosperity was gradually restored to the city over which treason had cast its blight. Union men, seeing that the occupation of Nashville promised to be permanent, took heart. Time-servers and popularity-hunters flocked by hundreds from the failing, to the Union cause. Union meetings were held. Prominent ex-leaders from among the rebels spoke in favor of returning to the old flag. Trade revived. The courts recommenced their sessions. The Louisville and Nashville Railroad was put again in running order. A regular market was called again into existence. Prices became more moderate. Vacant houses found occupants. Some sales of real estate, even, were effected. Still, there were unmistakable evidences that the majority of the inhabitants of the city were far from being hearty supporters of the United States Government.