its wasted strength in Virginia, behind its accustomed barrier, the Potomac.

While Lee was thus attempting Maryland, the equally bold and alarming enterprise of carrying the war through Kentucky into Ohio was assigned to Bragg, who was in command of the insurgent army on the southern border of Tennessee. He, with great rapidity, moved from Chattanooga, turning the left flank of General Buell, and, appealing for reinforcements to the slavery-inspired sentiments which existed in Kentucky and Tennessee, directed his forces against Louisville and Cincinnati. An uprising of the farmers of Ohio confronted and turned away the devastation from the latter city. General Buell followed the main column of invasion, outmarched it on the way to Louisville, and obliged it to take a direction eastward. The two insurgent columns, being united at Perryville, were attacked by General Buell. The battle, like all of our contests, was obstinate and bloody. Bragg, after severe losses, retreated through a comparatively barren region, and Buell was obliged to abandon the pursuit by the complete exhaustion of all the sources of supply. The insurgent commander crossed the Cumberland Mountains, and then, marching westward, took up a position at Murfreesboro', fortified there, and proceeded to recruit his wasted forces.

Van Dorn and Price were at the same period in command of very considerable forces in Mississippi and Alabama, and to them was assigned the third part in the grand invasion of the loyal states which the cabal at Richmond had decreed. This was an attempt, as they called it, to deliver, but in fact to subjugate, western Tennessee and Kentucky. General Rosecrans received the assault of those portions of the insurgent forces at Corinth, defeated them with great slaughter, and drove them backward, so that they neither reached nor approached the region which they were appointed to invade. General Rosecrans, called to succeed General Buell in command of the army of the Cumberland, then entered Nashville, which the insurgents had before invested in carrying out their general scheme of invasion. He raised the siege, and prepared for offensive action. In the last days of the year he issued from Nashville, and delivered a sanguinary battle at Stone River, which gave him possession of Murfreesboro'. Bragg retreated to Shelbyville and Tullahoma, and there again rested and intrenched. A long period of needed rest was now employed by the respective parties in increasing the

strength and efficiency of their armies; but this repose was broken by frequent skirmishes, and by cavalry expeditions, which penetrated hostile regions, sometimes hundreds of miles, and effected breaches of military connections and a destruction of military stores upon an extensive scale, while they kept up the spirit of the troops, and hardened them for more general and severe conflicts.

Vicksburg then remained in the hands of the insurgents, the principal key to the navigation of the Mississippi River- a navigation which was confessed on all sides to be absolutely essential to the United States, and, when reopened by them, fatal to the insurrection. The duty of wresting that key from the insurgents had been devolved on the navy, with the aid of a considerable land force then encamped on the west bank of the Mississippi River. But new and unforeseen difficulties continually baffled the enterprise, and seemed to render it impossible. General Grant, who was at the head of the Department and of the army of the Tennessee, at length assumed the active command of the troops investing the stronghold, and these were adequately reinforced. The naval squadron on the Mississippi, under command of Rear-Admiral Porter, was also steadily increased until more than one hundred armed vessels were employed upon the river, including many iron-clad gunboats of great power. Part of the Gulf squadron, under Admiral Farragut, gallantly running the batteries of Port Hudson under a fierce fire, coöperated with the river fleets. Laborious and persevering attempts were made to open an artificial channel for the river opposite Vicksburg, as had been done with such signal success at Island No. 10. But the various canals projected and executed failed, and only a few small steamers of no considerable power were thus enabled to pass the city. Combined land and naval expeditions were also sent forth, which, with infinite pains and endurance, attempted to turn the enemy's works by navigating the various bayous and sluggish rivers, whose intricate network forms so singular a feature of the military topography of the banks of the Mississippi. All these attempts having failed from physical obstacles found to be insurmountable, General Grant and Admiral Porter at last put afloat armed steamers and steam-transports, which ran through the fires of the long line of shore batteries which the insurgents had erected at Vicksburg, and its chief supports, Warrenton and Grand Gulf. At the same time the land forces moved down the right

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bank of the river to a point below Grand Gulf, where they crossed in the steamers which had effected so dangerous a passage. batteries of Grand Gulf for several hours resisted a bombardment by the gunboats at short range, but they fell into the hands of the Admiral as soon as General Grant's forces appeared behind them. General Grant, through a series of brilliant manoeuvres, with marches interrupted by desperate battles day after day, succeeded in dividing and separating the insurgent forces. He then attacked the chief auxiliary column under Johnston and drove it out of Jackson, the capital of Mississippi. Having destroyed the railroad bridges and military stores there, General Grant turned at once to the west. Numerous combats ensued, in all of which the loyal arms were successful. Loring, with a considerable insurgent force, was driven off towards the southeast, while Pemberton, after a loss of sixty pieces of artillery and many prisoners, regained his shelter within the fortified lines of Vicksburg, with an army now reduced to between thirty thousand and forty thousand men. During those movements the heavy batteries of the insurgents which were established near the mouth of the Yazoo River, and which constituted an important part of the defensive system of Vicksburg, were taken and razed by Rear-Admiral Porter, who thereupon sent a detachment of his fleet up that important tributary of the Mississippi, and effectually destroyed the numerous vessels and stores which were found within and upon its banks. General Grant, during these brilliant operations, had necessarily operated by a movable column. He now reestablished his communications with the river fleets above as well as below Vicksburg, invested the town, and, ignorant of the numbers enclosed within its defences, attempted an assault. Though bravely and vigorously made, it was nevertheless unsuccessful. He thereupon sat down before the fortifications, to reduce them by the less bloody, but sure, methods of siege. Pemberton made a gallant defence, hoping for relief from Johnston. Strenuous efforts were made by the chiefs at Richmond to enable Johnston to render that assistance. They detached and sent to him troops from Bragg's army on the frontier of Alabama, and from Beauregard's command in South Carolina, and in doing this they endangered both of those armies. All the capable free men of Mississippi were called to the rescue of the capital of their state, and to save the stronghold of the treasonable confederacy which was besieged within their limits.

Moreover, the besieged post was in the very centre of the slave population of that confederacy, and the President's proclamation of freedom would be sounded in their hearing if the stronghold should fall. But the effort required was too great for the demoralized and exhausted condition of the insurgents. Johnston did not arrive to raise the siege, nor did success attend any of the attempts from within to break the skilfully drawn lines of General Grant. On the fourth of July General Pemberton laid down his arms and surrendered the post, with thirty thousand men, two hundred pieces of artillery, seventy thousand small arms, and ammunition sufficient for a six years' defence. This capture was as remarkable as the famous one made by Napoleon at Ulm.

On the same day an insurgent attack upon General Prentiss, 'at Helena, situated on the right bank of the Mississippi, in the State of Arkansas, was repulsed with the loss of many prisoners on the part of the assailants. As if the anniversary so identified with the nation's hopes was appointed to be peculiarly eventful, Lee, who had again entered Maryland, and passing through that state had approached the Susquehanna, threatening Harrisburg, Pittsburg, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, fell back, after pitched battles continued for three days at Gettysburg, and resumed his retreat, with an army even worse shattered than before, to his accustomed position on the Rappahannock.

On the eighth of July the insurgent garrison at Port Hudson, six thousand strong, after enduring a long siege with the utmost courage, surrendered unconditionally to General Banks; and thus the United States recovered from the insurgents the last of the numerous posts by which for more than two years they had effectually destroyed the navigation of the Mississippi. This great river, which in time of peace contributes relatively as much towards a supply of the increased wants of mankind as the Nile did to those wants in the time of the Roman Empire, is now again opened to the inland commerce of the country. Steamers descend the river and its tributaries from the navigable floods to the Gulf of Mexico. It is not to be doubted that the insurgent losses in these operations. upon the Mississippi amount to fifty thousand men and three hundred pieces of artillery, a large portion of which were of heavy calibre. Johnston's army, which, at the time of the surrender, was advancing to threaten the besiegers, at once fell back to Jackson, and it

was again driven from that capital by a detachment which General Grant had committed to the command of General Sherman. In retiring, Johnston fired many buildings filled with munitions of war, and abandoned a large quantity of railroad locomotives and cars, which had been detained at that place by reason of the railroads north, south, east, and west of Jackson having been previously cut by the government forces.

General Sherman now desisted from the pursuit of Johnston and returned to Vicksburg, where a portion of the army is enjoying repose, not more necessary than well earned, while others are engaged in expelling from the vicinity of the Mississippi roving bands of the insurgents who infest its banks and fire from thence upon passing steamers. It is reported that Johnston, with the troops at his command, now said to be twenty-five thousand, has fallen back to Meridian, on the eastern border of Mississippi, a hundred and twenty miles east of Vicksburg, so that the state, whose misguided people were among the earliest and most intemperate abettors of the insurrection, is virtually abandoned by its military agents. In Louisiana, General Banks succeeded General Butler. After spending some months in organizing the Department and disciplining the new levies which constituted its force, General Banks made a rapid and successful series of marches and contests, in which he drove the insurgent troops out of the Attakapas and Teche regions, well known as the richest portions of that very productive state, captured Alexandria and Donaldsonville, the seats of its fugitive seditious executive and legislative authorities, crossed the Mississippi at Bayou Sara, and there receiving an additional column which was ascending from Baton Rouge, invested Port Hudson, which, excluding Vicksburg, was the only remaining stronghold of the insurrection on the great river.

It will be remembered that on the 22d day of September, 1862, the President issued a proclamation requiring the insurgents to lay down their arms and return to their allegiance, under the penalty that in all the districts where the insurrection should be still maintained with the support of the people, he would on the first of January then next proclaim as a military measure the freedom of the slaves. The warning was generally rejected and defied, but the proclamation which it heralded was duly issued. As the national armies advanced into the insurrectionary territories, slaves in con