lated, and issued a stringent order, dismissing and removing several general officers of high rank from their commands, and decreeing death as a punishment for the crime of desertion, which had much increased, and threatened considerably to reduce the army. The President, to whom this order was referred, refused to sanction it, but was yet unwilling to accept Burnside's consequent resignation. When, however, he found that the army was in a complete state of demoralisation, and that he must either punish the malcontents-of which General Hooker was among the most conspicuousor remove General Burnside, he decided on the latter course, and Burnside was relieved of his command, and Hooker appointed to succeed him. This change was pleasing to the Republican party and to a portion of the army, but there were men who doubted whether so loud a talker as General Hooker was known to be would prove a discreet commander, and not a few entertained a personal dislike against him on account of the discourtesy and absence of good feeling which he had shown in his conduct towards M'Clellan.

Thus terminated for the present the winter campaign of Fredericksburg. Seldom have so many lives been so fruitlessly sacrificed, and seldom has a nation been called on to bear with equanimity misfortunes occasioned by so great mismanagement. Commencing with the miscarriage of the orders relating to the pontoons,* and

* Captain Chesney, in his review of the recent campaign of Virginia, thus refers to the mistakes which occurred in reference to the transport of the pontoons. And it should be noted that these blunders were not made-as in the Crimean war, so sharply criticised by American officers-at the commencement of hostilities, but at the end of eighteen months of war conducted on the very largest scale.'

continuing during nearly the whole campaign, the general mismanagement of its conduct was redeemed solely by the masterly manner in which the retreat of the Federal army was secured during the night of the 15th-a retreat which might have been rendered disastrous if the Confederate General had been aware that it was in progress. It is indeed difficult to read the account of the battle of Fredericksburg without counting it as another among the many lost opportunities of the war. Had the Federals been followed after their last repulse, or had they been pressed during their retreat, the Rappahannock might have been more fatal to their army than was the Elster at Leipsic to the rearguard of Napoleon.

For several months the two armies continued to watch each other across the Rappahannock, nor was it until the spring that active operations were resumed in Virginia. The Campaign of the West, less influenced by weather, continued during the winter months, and in that direction, although gallantly opposed, the Federal armies pursued a steady but not uninterrupted advance.

CHAPTER XI.

THE WINTER CAMPAIGN IN THE WEST.

THAT the importance of the Western Campaign was fully appreciated by the Government of the Confederate States is clear both from the words and acts of the President. During the month of December he undertook the long and tedious journey from Richmond to Chattanooga, and after passing in review the army of General Bragg near Murfreesboro, proceeded onwards to his own state, Mississippi. There he addressed the State Legislature, urging the people of the West to renewed exertions, and putting before them the sufferings of those who had been brought under the power of the Federal armies, drawing a vivid and perhaps highly coloured picture of the savage character of the war, and showing how reunion with such a race as the hated Yankee was impossible. He pointed out that there were two prominent objects in the programme of the enemy,-one to get possession of the Mississippi River and to open it to navigation, in order to appease the clamours of the West, and to utilize the capture of New Orleans, which had thus far rendered the Federals no service; the other to seize the capital of the Confederacy, and to hold it, if only as a proof that the Confederacy had no existence. We have recently (said the President) defeated them at Fredericksburg, and I believe that, under God and by the

valour of our troops, the capital of the Confederacy will stand safe behind its wall of living breasts. Vicksburg and Port Hudson have been strengthened, and now we can concentrate at either of them a force sufficient for their protection. Let every man (he added) hasten to defend these places, and thus hold the Mississippi River, that great artery of the Confederacy, preserve our communications with the Trans-Mississippi departments, and thwart the enemy's scheme of forcing navigation through to New Orleans. By holding that section of the river between Port Hudson and Vicksburg, we shall secure these results, and the people of the West, cut off from New Orleans, will be driven to the East to seek a market for their products, and will be compelled to pay so much in the way of freights, that those products will be rendered almost valueless. Thus (he concluded) I should not be surprised if the first day-break of peace were to dawn upon us from that quarter.'

Such were the opinions uttered by President Davis, and his words will serve as an indication of the objects of the Western Campaign. The heroic defence of Vicksburg and the repulse in the previous summer of the Federal fleet, encouraged the Confederates to fortify Port Hudson some distance further down the Mississippi, and to endeavour to hold the river between those places. On their possession rested in a great measure the safety of the State of Mississippi, as the left flank and lines of communication of the army defending its Northern extremities depended for their security on immunity from attack from the river. The army of Mississippi, including the garrisons of Vicksburg and Port Hudson, was placed under General Pemberton, an old West Point officer, but the whole command of the West was given to General J. Johnston, the hero of Bull Run and the Seven Pines.

His command included the army of Tennessee, still under General Braxton Bragg, who although he had disappointed the hopes of his fellow-countrymen in the campaign of Kentucky, was yet supported by the President, who did not desert those whom he deemed meritorious even when unsuccessful. To him was allotted the task of defending Southern Tennessee, and if possible, when the communications of the Federal armies should have been sufficiently harassed by the cavalry of Morgan and Forrest, of advancing on Nashville and the line of the Cumberland.

As was indicated in President Davis's speech, there were hopes in the South that the West, viewing her own interests, might separate her policy from the Northern and Eastern States, and either force them to agree to peace, or conclude a separate treaty. This hope had been long encouraged among the Confederates, but proved equally fallacious as the expectation of European intervention. The West was the most formidable antagonist with which the South had to contend; her troops were accounted to be the bravest in the Federal armies, and it was from her that the most terrible blows were to be received.

Two main armies were now threatening the Confederacy from the West, of which one was moving from Western Tennessee into the State of Mississippi, whilst a strong detached force which may be called its right wing, was organising for a separate expedition down the Mississippi River against Vicksburg. This army was under General Grant, and the detached expedition, under General Sherman. It was opposed by Generals Pemberton, Van Dorn, and Price, who defended the lines of the Tallahatchie River, the approaches by the rail into the State of Mississippi, and the fortifications