reach, or at least every loyal man within reach (for plenty of the men in Washington were looking and hoping for the success of the South). The instructions usually given to pickets were in this instance reversed. The men were ordered, in place of keeping their positions hidden and of maintaining absolute quiet, to move from post to post along the whole line, and they were also ordered, without any reference to the saving of ammunition, to shoot off their carbines on the least possible pretext and without pretext. The armories were then beginning to send to the front Sharp's repeating carbines. The invention of breech-loading rifles came too late to be of service to the infantry on either side, but during the last year of the War, certain brigades of cavalry were armed with Sharp's breech-loaders. The infantry weapon used through the War by the armies of the North as by those of the South was the muzzle-loading rifle which bore the name on our side of the Springfield and on the Confederate side of the Enfield. The larger portion of the Northern rifles were manufactured in Springfield, Massachusetts, while the Southern rifles, in great part imported from England, took their name from the English factory. It was of convenience for both sides that the two rifles

were practically identical so that captured pieces and captured ammunition could be interchanged without difficulty.

Early's skirmish line was instructed early in the night to "feel" the Federal pickets, an instruction which resulted in a perfect blaze of carbine fire from Wisewell's men. The report

that went to Early was that the picket line must be about six thousand strong. The conclusion on the part of the old Confederate commander was that the troops from the army of the Potomac must have reached the city. If that were true, there was, of course, no chance that on the following day he could break through the entrenchments, while there was considerable risk that his retreat to the Shenandoah might be cut off. Early the next morning, therefore, the disappointed Early led his men back to Falling Waters.

I happened during the following winter, when in prison in Danville, to meet a Confederate lieutenant who had been on Early's staff and who had lost an arm in this little campaign. He reported that when Early, on recrossing the Potomac, learned that he had had Washington in his grasp and that the divisions marching to its relief did not arrive and could not have arrived for another twenty-four hours, he was about the

maddest Early that the lieutenant had ever seen. "And," added the lieutenant, "when Early was angry, the atmosphere became blue."

VIII

THE FINAL CAMPAIGN

AFTER this close escape, it was clear to Grant as it had been clear to Lincoln that whatever forces were concentrated before Petersburg, the line of advance for Confederate invaders through the Shenandoah must be blocked. General Sheridan was placed in charge of the army of the Shenandoah and the 19th corps, instead of returning to the trenches of the James, marched on from Washington to Martinsburg and Winchester.

In September, the commander in Washington had the satisfaction of hearing that his old assailant Early had been sent "whirling through Winchester" by the fierce advance of Sheridan. Lincoln recognised the possibility that Early might refuse to stay defeated and might make use, as had so often before been done by Confederate commanders in the Valley, of the short interior line to secure reinforcements from Richmond and to make a fresh attack. On the 29th of September, twenty days before this

attack came off, Lincoln writes to Grant: "Lee may be planning to reinforce Early. Care should be taken to trace any movement of troops westward." On the 19th of October, the persistent old fighter Early, not willing to acknowledge himself beaten and understanding that he had to do with an army that for the moment did not have the advantage of Sheridan's leadership, made his plucky, and for the time successful, fight at Cedar Creek. The arrival of Sheridan at the critical hour in the afternoon of the 19th of October did not, as has sometimes been stated, check the retreat of a demoralised army. Sheridan found his army driven back, to be sure, from its first position, but in occupation of a well supported line across the pike from which had just been thrown back the last attack made by Early's advance. It was Sheridan however who decided not only that the battle which had been lost could be regained, but that the work could be done to best advantage right away on that day, and it was Sheridan who led his troops through the too short hours of the October afternoon back to their original position from which before dark they were able to push Early's fatigued fighters across Cedar Creek southward. Lincoln had found another man who could fight. He