within six months, and with becoming energy on the part of the administration it might be finished in three."

But there was one element which the newspaper did not take into its calculation; and which, despite the almost appalling disparity of resources between the belligerents, insured, on certain conditions, the final success of the South. It was the vast extent of territory which the North proposed to subjugate, and which never yet, in the history of wars, was brought to such a fate, on the single condition that its people remained firm in their resolution and purpose. Against the inequality of resources between the North and the South, we may put these considerations, in which the latter had immense. advantages that the South was fighting on the defensive, and had, therefore, no need of positive victories; that she only sought a negative conclusion, and might win by endurance; and that her territory was so extensive that it would take several millions of men to garrison it, as long as its people were firmly disposed to dispute the authority of the in

vaders.

With reflecting persons in the North, the real question touching the war had come to be the measure of Southern endurance; and this virtue had obtained a new and vital value in the stages through which the war was now passing. It was fashionable for Yankees to laugh at Confederate expectations of political revolutions or financial rupture in the North; they concluded that the time was past when the Confederates could expect to win their independence by a grand military coup or force of military successes. All these calculations were lightly or insolently regarded by Northern men. Their real anxiety was, the measure of endurance on the part of the South. The great curiosity of Northern politicians was as to the real spirit of the South, and the questions of thinking men among them invariably went to the point of the probable term of Southern endurance. This quality had assumed a new value in Northern eyes. It had become morally certain that by force of it alone the South would obtain her independence. Such was the silent but general concession of the Northern mind. There was but one condition to assure the independence of the South: that the spirit of the people and the army would not break by some unworthy impatience, or not be deliberately broken down by

insane persistence in folly on the part of Davis and his clique of toadies and encouragers.

There were two parties in the North, perhaps equally intelligent, and each claiming to draw their opinions from Southern sources of information, which differed as to the real spirit of the South: one claiming that it was resolute, and even in the last necessity desperate; the other contending that it was fast being broken by reverses, and would end in submission. One found this question in every circle in the North. Reliable information upon it was far more valuable to the Washington Government than maps of all the fortifications in the Confederate States. To convince the North of the spirit of the Southern people was more important than half-a-dozen victories; for it was to convince them of the hopelessness of war, and to put before their eyes the immediate necessity of conscription.

President Davis said rightly that the Confederacy "had no vital points;" but the declaration implied the condition that the spirit of the people, despite of temporary disasters, was to remain erect and unbroken. And a period of the war was now approaching when precisely that condition was to be tested, and the spirit of the people of the Confederacy was to be tried, as it had never before been, by the fire and sword of the invader. To the events of this remarkable period we must now draw the attention of the reader.

THE HOOD-SHERMAN CAMPAIGN.

The public did not have long to wait for the development of that curious strategy which President Davis had planned with Hood for the compensation of the loss of Atlanta. Indeed, no secret was made of its general movement and designs.

On the 18th of September, President Davis arrived at General Hood's headquarters, and the following day reviewed the whole army. In the evening, the President addressed the soldiers in hopeful and encouraging tones. Turning to Cheatham's division of Tennesseeans, he said: "Be of good cheer, for within a short while your faces will be turned homeward, and your feet pressing Tennessee soil."

General Hood was enthusiastically called for. He said:

"Soldiers, it is not my province to make speeches: I was not born for such work; that I leave to other men. Within a few days I expect to give the command Forward!' and I believe you are, like myself, willing to go forward, even if we live on parched corn and beef. I am ready to give the command Forward!' this very night. Good-night."

On the 29th of September, Hood began his march, getting well in the rear of Sherman, and next day encamping near the old battle-ground of New Hope Church. His first movement attracted but little attention. The incautious language of President Davis first led the enemy to suppose that this movement was preliminary to something more extensive, and General Sherman's suspicions also were apparently aroused by it; for we find him about this time sending his spare forces to the rear, under General Thomas, and distributing strong detachments, under Newton, Corse, and Schofield, at different points immediately in the rear of Atlanta. He also ordered frequent reconnoissances of the enemy in his position near Newnan. The Yankee cavalry reported, on September 27, further movements of Hood towards the Chattahoochee. On October 1, Generals Fuller and Ransom made a reconnoissance towards Newnan, and discovered that the Confederates had crossed the Chattahoochee River on September 29 and 30, and had concentrated in the vicinity of Powder Springs, Ga. On the 3d of October, General Sherman, with the bulk of his army, moved in pursuit, vowing his intention to destroy Hood.

On the 5th of October, when Hood's advance assaulted Allatoona, Sherman was on Kenesaw Mountain, signalling to the garrison at Allatoona, over the heads of the Confederates, to hold out until he relieved them. Hood moved westward, and crossing the Etowah and Oostananla rivers by forced marches, attacked Dalton on the 12th, which was surrendered.

After obstructing Snake Creek Gap as much as possible, in order to delay Sherman, who continued to press him, Hood moved west, passing through the gap of Pigeon Mountain, and entered Lafayette on the 15th of October. He had now advanced as far north as it was thought possible to do without fighting, and a battle appeared to be imminent in the vicinity of the old battle-field of Chickamauga. But Hood, after holding the gaps of Pigeon Mountain as long as possible, suddenly

moved south from Lafayette to Gadsden, Alabama, closely followed as far as Gaylesville by General Sherman. This movement was looked upon as a retreat, and as the end of the great raid of which Hood and Davis had promised and boasted so much. But it soon became apparent that Hood was not yet at the end of his strategy, and that the campaign was only about to begin in earnest.

On October 23, Hood moved from Gadsden, through Lookout Mountain, towards Gunter's Landing and Decatur, on the Tennessee River, near the last of which places he formed a junction with a portion of General Dick Taylor's army, which had meantime quietly moved up the Mobile and Ohio Railroad to Corinth, and thence to Tuscumbia, the new base of supplies. He thus placed himself far in General Sherman's rear before that officer could take steps to transfer his army to the new front of the Confederates on the Tennessee. Hood's advance had probably reached the Tennessee before Sherman positively knew that he had abandoned Gadsden. Undoubtedly it was much to his surprise when, on October 25, he tried the gap and found it abandoned by Hood. The position was certainly startling. He dared not follow, thus abandoning his line of supplies to venture in a mountainous country, through which a large army had just passed. It was impossible to transfer his entire army to Hood's front in time to meet him and thus hold his communications intact. The position demanded resolution and action.

General Sherman seems here to have comprehended Hood's designs. On the junction of Taylor's army with him, he reasoned that the two would strike a blow for the recovery of Middle Tennessee; and, if successful, then for East Tennessee also. But he calculated that Tennessee would be safe in charge of General Thomas, to whom he could assign a force sufficient to grapple with Hood, Taylor, or Beauregard; while for himself he had projected another campaign. Turning eastward, then, from Gaylesville, he announced to his army that he should follow Hood no longer, but let him go north as far as he pleased. "If he will go to the river," he said, "I will give him his rations." Giving his instructions to General Thomas, and dividing his army so as to spare him a part of the Army of the Cumberland and the Army of the Ohio, he moved

southeast towards Atlanta by the 1st of November, causing the railroad track to be removed from Atlanta to Chattanooga, and sent to the latter city. On the 4th of November, he began his preparations for his new movement; and the same day telegraphed his intentions to Washington, in the following words: "Hood has crossed the Tennessee. Thomas will take care of him and Nashville, while Schofield will not let him into Chattanooga or Knoxville. Georgia and South Carolina are at my mercy-and I shall strike. Do not be anxious about me. I am all right." The campaign he had projected was neither more nor less than this: with the four corps, and the cavalry force still under his immediate command, an army of not far from sixty thousand infantry and artillery, and about five thousand cavalry, he purposed, cutting loose from all bases, and constituting a strictly movable column, with thirty or forty days' rations, and his train reduced to the smallest possible dimensions, to move southeastward, through the heart of the country, upon Savannah; and thence, should circumstances favor, northward through South Carolina and North Carolina, to compel the surrender or evacuation of Richmond.

And now commenced one of the most extraordinary campaigns of any war-presenting the singular spectacle of two great antagonistic chieftains both at once acting on the offensive, day after day marching away from each other, and moving diametrically apart.

On the 20th of November, General Hood commenced to move his army from Northern Alabama to Tennessee. His line of march from Florence followed two parallel roads to the chief town of Wayne County, in Tennessee-Waynesboro'. Simultaneously with this advance, the Yankees evacuated or surrendered Decatur and Huntsville. The Fourth Army Corps, under General Stanley, two divisions of the Twentythird Corps, under General Schofield, and an aggregation of fort-garrisons from the surrounding country, under General Richard W.. Johnson, concentrated at Pulaski. Hood, immediately after his arrival at Waynesboro', changed front to the northwest; and, while marching directly upon Columbia, threatened, with Forrest's cavalry, to cut off the Yankee retreat from Pulaski. That position, about to be flanked, was at once abandoned. Schofield, with the force that had been con