CHAP. XX.

BATTLE OF MISSIONARY RIDGE.

1639

and that night they fled down the northern slopes to the Chattanooga Valley, and joined their commander on Missionary Ridge. In the crisp air and the sunlight, the next morning, the Stars and Stripes were seen waving over "Pulpit Rock," on the crest of Lookout Mountain, from which, a few days before, Jefferson Davis had harangued the troops, assuring them that all was well with the Confederacy.

Sherman, in the meantime, had crossed the Tennessee River and secured a position on the northern end of Missionary Ridge, on which Bragg had concentrated all his forces, and there the Confederates were attacked on front and flank on the 25th of November. Hooker came down from Lookout Mountain, and entering Ross's Gap, attacked Bragg's left, while Sherman was assailing his right. There was a fearful struggle, beheld with intense interest by General Grant, who stood on Orchard Knob and directed the movements of the National army. At length the centre, under General Thomas, moved up the declivities; and very soon the Confederates were driven from the Ridge, when they fled toward Ringgold, followed by a portion of the National army. At Ringgold, a sharp engagement occurred, when the Confederates retreated to Dalton, the Nationals fell back, and Sherman hastened to the relief of Burnside, as already mentioned.

General Grant reported the Union loss, in the series of struggles which ended in victory at Missionary Ridge, at five thousand six hundred and sixteen, in killed, wounded, and missing. The Confederate loss was about three thousand one hundred, killed and wounded, and a little more than six thousand prisoners. Grant had also captured forty pieces of artillery and about seven thousand small arms. In a letter to the victorious general, the President thanked him and his men for their skill and bravery in securing "a lodgement at Chattanooga and Knoxville." Congress voted thanks and a gold medal for Grant, and directed the President of the Republic to cause the latter to be struck, "with suitable emblems, devices, and inscriptions." The general was the recipient of other tokens of regard, of various kinds; and the legislatures of New York and Ohio voted him thanks in the name of the people of those great States.

During the first half of 1863, General J. G. Foster was in command of the National troops in North Carolina, with his headquarters at New Berne, from which point he sent out raiding parties to scatter Confederate forces who were gathering here and there to recover lost posts in that State. In these expeditions, many sharp skirmishes took place. The Nationals were generally successful, and confined their antagonists to the interior of the State. Finally, in July (1863), Foster was called to the command at Fortress

Monroe, and left his troops in charge of General Palmer. Meanwhile there had been important occurrences in the vicinity of Charleston, South Carolina, the capture of that city being one objective of the National Government. Attempts had been made the previous year by General David Hunter (commanding the Department of the South) and Admiral Dupont, to seize that city, but failed. Dupont had received important information concerning military affairs at Charleston, from Robert Small, a slave, who was a pilot in the Confederate service. One night, at the middle of May (1862), assisted by some fellow-bondsmen, Small took the Confederate steamer Planter out of Charleston harbor, delivered her to Dupont, gave him valuable information, and entered the service of the Republic. Soon afterward the National land troops took a position on James Island, near Charleston; and at Secessionville, General Benham, with a small force, fought the Confederates at the middle of June, and was defeated. Further attempts to capture Charleston were then suspended.

Hunter was succeeded in the command of the department by General O. M. Mitchel, who, as we have observed, was called to Washington from Tennessee, where he chafed under Buell's command. He reached Hilton Head on the 16th of September, and with his usual vigor, he devised plans and prepared to execute them for the public good. Hilton Head island was swarming with refugee slaves, and he at once took measures for their relief, laying out a village, causing neat and comfortable log-houses to be built for their residences, and finding employment for them. He was preparing to use his military force with vigor in his department; but before his arrangements were completed, he was smitten by a disease similar to the yellow fever, when he was conveyed to the more healthy locality of Beaufort, where he died on the 30th of October. From that time, until the spring of 1864, very little of importance occurred in the Department of the South, of which Hunter again became the commander.

EFFORTS TO CAPTURE CHARLESTON-“ THE SWAMP ANGEL "-SIEGE OF FORT WAGNER-SUMTER IN RUINS-EVENTS WEST OF THE MISSISSIPPI-INVASION OF MISSOURI-LAWRENCE SACKEDEVENTS IN ARKANSAS AND IN THE INDIAN TERRITORY-RAID INTO MISSOURI-STRUGGLE FOR LOUISIANA-GRANT IN NEW ORLEANS-DESIGNS AGAINST TEXAS-FORREST IN TENNES SEE-STRENGTH OF THE NATIONALS AND CONFEDERATES COMPARED-HIGH-HANDED MEASURES-THE BRITISH AND THE CONFEDERATES-GOOD SIGNS-GRANT LIEUTENANT-GENERALCAMPAIGN OF 1864-SHERMAN'S RAID IN MISSISSIPPI-MASSACRE AT FORT PILLOW-FORREST'S EXPLOITS-RED RIVER EXPEDITION-THE EXPEDITION ABANDONED-NEGRO TROOPS.

A

LTHOUGH Charleston had become a comparatively unimportant point in the grand theatre of the war, its possession was coveted by the National Government because of the salutary moral effect which such conquest would produce. A strong effort to accomplish that purpose was made in the spring of 1863. On the 6th of April, Admiral Dupont crossed Charleston Bar with nine "monitor" or turreted iron vessels, leaving five gun-boats outside as a reserve, and proceeded to attack Fort Sumter, the most formidable obstacle in his way to the city. At the same time a co-operating force of land troops, four thousand strong, under General Truman Seymour, took a masked position on Folly Island. As Dupont approached, the cannon of the Confederates on Sumter and the adjacent batteries were silent until the vessels were entangled in an unsuspected network of torpedoes and other obstructions, when nearly three hundred guns opened a concentric fire upon the fleet, driving them back to the ocean and destroying the Keokuk, one of the smallest of the iron-clads. The land troops could do nothing until Fort Sumter was reduced, and the enterprise was a failure.

In June following, General Quincey A. Gillmore succeeded General Hunter in the command of the Southern Department. He found himself at the head of eighteen thousand men, with a generous supply of ordnance, small arms, and stores. An expedition against Charleston, by land and water, was immediately planned. Gillmore determined to seize Morris Island, on which was strong Fort Wagner that commanded Fort Sumter. That island and its military works in his possession, he might batter down Fort Sumter with heavy siege guns, and lay Charleston in ashes with his shells, if it was

not surrendered. Dupont did not approve the plan; and early in July, Admiral John A. Dahlgren took his place. General Alfred H. Terry was sent with a force to James Island to mask Gillmore's intentions, when National troops were suddenly landed on Morris Island, and with the aid of batteries on Folly Island, they drove the Confederates into Fort Wagner. Then Gillmore planted a line of batteries across Morris Island to confront that fort, which he found to be much stronger than he suspected. The Nationals assaulted it (July 11) and were repulsed, when a simultaneous bombardment by sea and land was determined on. This was done on the 18th of July, when a hundred great guns opened on the fort from the ships and the land-batteries. Meanwhile General Terry had been attacked by a force sent from Charleston, by Beauregard, to surprise him. But the vigilance of Terry never slept, and the Confederates were easily repulsed. The Nationals were then withdrawn from James Island and joined the main body of troops on Morris Island.

At sunset, on the 18th, Gillmore's forces moved in two columns, to attack Fort Wagner. A yiolent thunder-storm was raging. One column was led by General Strong, the other by Colonel H. L. Putnam, acting as brigadier. The struggle was brief but fearful. Both columns of the Nationals were repulsed, with great slaughter in their ranks, losing, in the aggregate, full fifteen hundred men. Strong and Putnam were mortally wounded; and Colonel Robert G. Shaw, who was at the head of the first regiment of colored troops organized in the free-labor States, was instantly killed. Because he commanded colored troops, Shaw was intensely hated by the Confederates; and they foolishly thought they had dishonored him when, as they proclaimed, they had buried his body "in a pit under a heap of his niggers."

Gillmore now abandoned the plan for capturing Fort Wagner by direct assault, and began a regular siege. With infinite labor a battery was constructed in a morass half-way between Morris and James islands, upon a platform of heavy timbers standing in the deep black mud. When a lieutenant of engineers was ordered to construct it he said, "It is impossible.' His commanding officer replied, "There is no such word as impossible; call for what you need." The lieutenant, who was a wag, made a requisition on the quartermaster for "one hundred men eighteen feet high to wade In mud sixteen feet deep;" and he gravely inquired of the engineer whether these men might be spliced, if required. The lieutenant was arrested for contempt, but was soon released, and he built a redoubt with the services of men of ordinary height. Upon the redoubt was erected a Parrott gun, which they called "The Swamp Angel," that sent shells into