order of Louis XIV., history can point to nothing more ruthless than the devastation of Western Virginia, and afterwards of South Carolina, by the agents of a Republic which started on its career with an ostentatious declaration of its respect for human rights. Sheridan writes to Grant on the 7th October:-"The whole country from the Blue Ridge to the North Mountain has been made untenable for a rebel army. I have destroyed over two thousand barns filled with wheat and hay and farming implements, over seventy mills filled with flour and wheat; have driven in front of the army over four thousand head of stock, and have killed and issued to the troops not less than three thousand sheep. This destruction embraces the Luray valley and Little Fort valley as well as the main valley. A large number of horses have been obtained, a proper estimate of which I can not now make." We have now to speak of Sherman's advance into Georgia, and of the great march by which that General cut his way through the heart of the Confederate dominion, dividing its eastern from its western half by a broad belt of plundered and wasted territory. Appointed in March to the chief command of the military division of the Mississippi, he mustered his forces from their winter encampments round Chattanooga, and at the head of an army but little short of 100,000 men of all arms, commenced his forward march on the 6th May. The Confederate General Johnston, posted at Dalton, had barely 50,000 men to oppose to this formidable force. The movements, feints, surprises, combats, which followed possess little interest except from the purely military point of view; suffice it to say that Johnston, though resolutely defending every available position, was pushed back, by weight of numbers and skilful strategy, to the lines which covered Atlanta, an important city in the north of Georgia, where the Confederate Government had established extensive workshops and manufactories. In the battle of Kenesaw mountain (June 14) the Southern service lost a valuable officer in Lieutenant-General Polk, formerly the Protestant Episcopal Bishop of Louisiana, who was instantaneously struck dead by a cannon-shot. President Davis considered-erroneously, it would seem -that Johnston had given ground too easily, and sent Hood to Atlanta to supersede him. The change was unfortunate. Hood, a rash, eager, impatient man, vainly flung his troops against Sherman's disciplined and wellhandled masses; he was beaten in almost every encounter, and compelled, Sherman having seized the railway in his rear, to evacuate Atlanta (September 5), after destroying engines, stores, and war material to the utmost of his power. But instead of interposing his army between Sherman and the coast, and trusting to being reinforced so as to hold his ground, Hood resolved to transfer his army to a different field of operations, foolishly imagining that the invasion of Tennessee by a beaten army would draw Sherman out of Georgia. The Federal commander followed him for a few days, as he was rapidly marching out of Georgia into Northern Alabama; but since Hood declined battle, Sherman gave up the pursuit, and after taking care that General Thomas (who had been left in command at Nashville, the capital of Tennessee) should have an ample force left at his disposal wherewith to defend that state, returned to Atlanta. The end of Hood's ill-judged enterprise may be told in a few words. Entering Tennessee from Alabama, he first met with serious resistance at Franklin, a few miles south of Nashville, where General Schofield defended himself vigorously in an entrenched position (November 30), but being outnumbered, fell back on Nashville. In this action the brave Irishman, Pat. Cleburne, sometimes called the "Stonewall Jackson" of the West, fell mortally wounded. Thomas had collected at Nashville a force fully equal to that under Hood, and better fed and equipped; and when the latter appeared before the city, the Federal General at once attacked, defeated his adversary in several engagements, and finally drove him out of Tennessee. 66 Meantime, Sherman, having thoroughly destroyed the railways in his rear, and collected thirty days' supplies for his men, set out from Atlanta (November 11) at the head of a seasoned and efficient army of 65,000 men, The withdrawal of Hood's army had left the way almost open before him, the natural obstacles of bad roads, forests, marshes, and rivers being the chief impediments in his path. The army was divided into two divisions or wings, one under Howard, the other under Slocum; and a skilful use of cavalry on each wing to cover and conceal the march of the main body left the feeble Confederate force remaining in his front in continual uncertainty as to his objective point. At one time they thought he was aiming at Macon; at another time Augusta, a large town on the South Carolina border, appeared to be menaced; and they broke up and moved about their forces accordingly. Milledgeville, the political capital of the state, fell into Sherman's hands on the 23rd November. Pushing steadily forward at the rate of about fifteen miles a day, and subsisting on the resources of the country, his troops arrived in front of Fort M'Alister (December 13), the chief defence of Savannah on the west. The fort, defended by a weak garrison of two hundred men, was easily stormed, and Savannah was immediately invested, communications being now opened between Sherman's army and the Federal blockading fleet in the river. On the night of December 20, Hardee with 15,000 men evacuated the place, and effected a safe retreat into South Carolina. Savannah, one of the most important towns in the Confederacy, with 25,000 bales of cotton in its warehouses and 154 guns mounted on its ramparts, became the prize of the conqueror. Here he remained over a month, resting his troops, and making preparations for the continuation of his march into South Carolina. His losses on the long march from Atlanta to Savannah did not amount to 600 men. The naval transactions of the year comprise the termination of the destructive career of the Alabama, and the capture of the Mobile forts. Up to the beginning of 1864, one hundred and ninety-three merchant ships, valued with their cargoes at more than thirteen millions of dollars, had been captured by Confederate cruisers; and of these, all but seventeen were burnt after capture. A.D. 1864.] THE ATTACK UPON MOBILE. 101 brave resistance, was overpowered. The Tennessee and Selma were captured, while the remaining vessels either ran on shore or escaped up the bay to Mobile. All the three forts were reduced within a few days with the help of General Granger, and the entrances to Mobile bay were thus effectually closed against the friends or customers of the Confederacy. This was unavoidable, because the Confederate ports were closed by the blockade, and England had, by express proclamation, at the commencement of the strife, prohibited captors from bringing prizes into any British or colonial port. Of these captures, a large share had fallen to the Alabama and her active captain, Raphael Semmes. Being in Cherbourg harbour in June this year, and learning that the Kearsarge, a Federal gun-boat, was off the port, The Florida, which escaped out of Liverpool, at an Captain Semmes sent a challenge to her commander, early period of the war, under the name of the Oreto, had Captain Winslow, which was, of course, accepted. The like the Alabama, made havoc of Federal commerce for two ships were pretty equally matched, the Alabama a considerable time. In the October of this year, she carrying eight guns, the Kearsarge seven, but the heavy was lying in the harbour of Bahia, whither she had gone 11-inch guns of the latter gave her the advantage. for repairs, when the U.S. frigate Wachusetts, Captain The Alabama sailed out of Cherbourg on the morning of Collins, suddenly attacked her, at a time when her captain the 19th June, attended by the English yacht the Deer- and half her crew were on shore, compelled her to surhound, owned and sailed by Mr. Lancaster. The render, and towed her out of the bay. The Brazilian Kearsarge was waiting about seven miles from shore. Government loudly protested against this flagrant breach The fight began, the ships moving round each other in of international law, and Mr. Seward promptly disavowed circles, and lasted for about an hour, when the Alabama, the act, and informed the Brazilian chargé d'affaires having been hulled several times by the heavy 11-inch that the captain of the Wachusetts would be suspended, shot of her antagonist, was observed to be in a sinking and the consul at Bahia, who had urged the captain to condition. When she was nearly filled with water, the act complained of, dismissed. As to the Florida, Semmes hauled down his flag, and the boats of the Kear- she could not be restored, having sunk at her anchors in sarge, assisted by those of the Deerhound, took off him Hampton Roads, "owing to a leak which could not be and his crew. In twenty minutes after she struck her seasonably stopped;" the fact being that a war transport, colours, the Alabama went down stern foremost. Her by a convenient accident, had run her down. practice had been far inferior to that of the Kearsarge, which only had three men wounded, one of them mortally, while of the crew of the Alabama, nine were killed and twenty-one wounded. Captain Semmes was landed from the Deerhound at Cowes, and afterwards claimed as a prisoner of war by the American minister; but the claim was disallowed. By the summer of 1864, nearly all the ports of the Southern States were effectually sealed against blockaderunners, except Mobile and Wilmington. It was now resolved to attack the first of these. Mobile, the principal sea-port of the state of Alabama, a flourishing and populous city before the war began, stands at the head of the bay of the same name, some thirty miles from the open sea. There is a double entrance into the bay, Dauphine island separating the two inlets; and the approaches were guarded by three large forts-Fort Powell, Fort Gaines, and Fort Morgan. Inside the bay was a Confederate squadron, comprising the formidable ironclad Tennessee, under the command of Admiral Buchanan. Notwithstanding these obstacles, Admiral Farragut, having a fleet of four iron-clads and fourteen wooden shipsof-war (including the stout old Hartford, in which he had run the gauntlet of the forts below New Orleans) at his disposal, and aided by a land force under General Granger, resolved to attempt to fight his way between the heads. On the morning of the 5th August, the fleet steered for the eastern entrance. The leading ship, the iron-clad Tecumseh, struck upon a torpedo, which blew a large hole in her bottom, causing her to go down immediately with the greater part of her crew. But the other ships held on their way undaunted, and, passing between Forts Morgan and Gaines with little loss, encountered, inside the bay, the Confederate squadron, which, after a An unpleasant incident occurred in the autumn, which, but for the firm and moderate attitude of Mr. Lincoln, might easily have involved us in a serious difficulty with the United States. A considerable number of Confederate refugees had gradually gathered in Canada, men rendered desperate by the wreck of their property and the misfortunes of their country. Some twenty-five of these men, in the month of October, crossed the border into the state of Vermont, and entering the little town of St. Albans in the dead of night, attacked and plundered the bank, shooting dead several of the townspeople who endeavoured to arrest their proceedings, and escaping back into Canada. They were soon arrested by the Canadian authorities, and the money was recovered. The case being an important one, it was removed from the jurisdiction of the magis trates of St. John's, the place where the raiders were arrested, to that of the Supreme Court at Montreal, and a writ of habeas corpus was refused. The American consul, Mr. Edmonds, was instructed to demand their extradition, but this was refused on legal grounds, and an investigation was instituted into the affair under the Ashburton Treaty. A number of witnesses were examined, and much time consumed; but in the end Judge Coursol decided that his court had no jurisdiction in the case, and ordered the release of the raiders from custody. The Canadian Government wisely resolved that so flagrant a miscarriage of justice should not be permitted; in fact, their law advisers gave it as their opinion that the Judge's decision was bad in law; and accordingly warrants were issued for the reapprehension of the criminals. Already, as a precautionary measure, the colonial Government had appointed special stipendiary magistrates to prevent breaches of international law along the frontier. But the news of the Judge's decision, releasing the raiders, had reached New York before the subsequent conduct of the Canadian Government was announced, and it aroused, not unnaturally, great excitement and indignation. Major-General Dix, who commanded in the state of New York, went so far as to issue an order in which he said : "All military commanders on the frontiers are instructed in case further acts of depredation and murder are attempted, whether by marauders or persons acting under commissions from the rebel authorities at Richmond, to shoot down the perpetrators if possible while in the commission of their crimes; or if it be necessary, with a view to their capture, to cross the boundary between the United Canada were not deemed to be internationally unjust or unfriendly towards the United States; but that, on the contrary, there was every reason to expect that, with the approval of the home Government, they would take the necessary measures to prevent new excursions across the border. These anticipations were fully justified by the subsequent conduct of the Canadian Government. A strong force of militia was stationed at various points along the frontier, several of the raiders were arrested under the warrant for their re-apprehension, the Court at Montreal reversed its former decision and declared that it had jurisdiction, those captured were tried anew, and States and Canada, the said commanders are hereby directed to pursue them wherever they may take refuge, and, if captured, they are under no circumstances to be surrendered, but are to be sent to these head-quarters for trial and punishment by martial law." This order, which the Major-General must have penned while under the influence of excited feeling, was cancelled by President Lincoln. But the President, with the approval of the Senate, gave notice to the British Government that after the expiration of six months, the period stipulated under existing arrangements, the United States would hold themselves at liberty, in view of the insecurity of life and property on the Canadian border, to increase if necessary their naval armament on the Lakes. But in his message to the new Congress (December 6, 1864), Mr. Lincoln expressly stated that the colonial authorities of at least one of them was adjudged on the evidence to he guilty of robbery, and ordered to be given up to the United States. A constitutional amendment had been passed by the Senate, on the 8th April, 1864, abolishing and for ever prohibiting slavery throughout the United States, but it had been thrown out by the House of Representatives. The Congress, which met in December, 1864, took up the question again; the amendment was passed by both Houses in January, 1865, and having been afterwards ratified by more than two-thirds of the States, became part of the Federal Constitution. The usual political agitation in connection with the election of a new President began in the autumn of this year. Mr. Lincoln offered himself for re-election; the Chicago Corvention, representing the Democratic party, chose General M'Lellan for its candidate. The Democrats held an essentially false position; they professed to be as firmly opposed to disunion as Mr. Lincoln himself; yet they desired to have peace with the South, and trust to conciliatory and peaceable means to bring about re-union. How baseless and irrational such views were was clearly demonstrated this year, when President Davis, on being sounded, by some Northern men, who had been permitted to pass through the lines of both armies, on the subject of peace, declared that he desired it most fervently, but that it could not be obtained on any other basis than the recognition of Southern independence. Republican candidates were chosen in an overwhelming majority, and Mr. Lincoln was accordingly re-elected President for another term of four years. The Regency, after the French capture of the capital, and afterwards Maximilian, determined to uphold the law of secularisation; against the former the bishops launched an excommunication, and if they refrained from that extreme measure against the new Emperor, their disaffection and covert hostility must have been seriously detrimental to his interests. Hence must be explained the singular fact, that, in the autumn, while the Emperor was absent on a tour through several provinces, Miramon, the native general most attached to the Church party, supported by the Archbishop of Mexico, rose in rebellion, and got posses sion of a portion of the city. But his success was only ephemeral, and before the end of the year the French had taken Matamoras on the eastern, and Acapulco on the western coast, and armed resistance to the Empire in the field was well nigh at an end. An appalling calamity befell the capital of our Indian empire in the autumn of this year. On the morning of the 5th October, a heavy gale set in from the north-east at Calcutta; gradually it veered round to the eastward, increasing in fury all the time, then to the southward, and finally to the south-west, so as to leave no doubt that it was a true cyclone, or revolving storm, to which the site of Calcutta is peculiarly exposed. But such a hurricane as this had never been known within the memory of man. With a noise like distant thunder the nucleus, or most violent portion of the storm came on, tearing up trees by their roots, carrying off the roofs of houses, overturning walls and buildings, and heaping up masses of ruin in the streets and roads, where neither foot nor carriage passengers could make their way. Nearly all the churches and chapels in Calcutta were unroofed or otherwise seriously damaged, and scarcely a house in the city escaped without some injury. The native huts, especially in the suburbs, were nearly all blown down. Except the cocoa-nut and other palms, scarcely a tree was anywhere left standing after the storm had passed away. The beautiful avenues in Fort William were entirely destroyed, and the Eden Gardens turned into a wilderness. But it was on the river that the storm was attended with the most disastrous consequences. So long as the wind blew from the eastward, and therefore across the Hooghly, no great damage was done; but after it had gone round to the south, the force of the hurricane, aided by a high tide, raised such a sea that no moorings could hold out against it. Tier after tier of vessels broke adrift, in most cases taking moorings, buoys, and tackle with them, and drove about in clusters of four, six, and eight, entangled to The imperial crown of Mexico was offered, as we have seen, to the Archduke Maximilian, in the autumn of 1863. Pressed by the Emperor Napoleon, and confident in his own upright intentions, Maximilian in an evil hour suffered himself to be persuaded to accept the fatal gift. Money was before all things necessary in order to carry out the fair programme of beneficent reforms which the new Empire was to introduce, and also to re-imburse the French treasury, which had the fear of the biting eloquence of Thiers always before its eyes, in a portion of the enormous expense of the Mexican expedition. The capitalists of Vienna, Paris, and London were consulted, and a Mexican loan of some £15,000,000 was set afloat, but under conditions onerous in the extreme, so that Maximilian was able to take a very small portion of this sum with him, when he sailed for Mexico. With regard to the future, the Austrian Court must have deemed that its hazards were sufficiently guarded against by means of the convention which Maximilian entered into with France. Under this convention (April 10, 1864), it was agreed that a French corps of 25,000 men should remain in Mexico, and should only quit it when the Emperor should have organised his own army. In any case, even after the recall of her troops, it was agreed that France should, during a further term of six years, leave in Mexico a force of 8,000 men, composing the foreign legion in the service of that country. The Emperor of Austria also gave permission for officers of the Austrian army to volunteer into the Mexican foreign legion, retaining for six years their Austrian military rank. The Archduke formally accepted the crown on the 10th April, and a few days afterwards he and his Empress left Miramar, and embarked for Mexico, taking Rome on their way. They arrived at Vera Cruz at the end of May, and entered the city of Mexico, amid the ac-gether, and carrying with them ships at anchor in the clamations of the people, on the 12th June. The rest of the year was spent in endeavours to crush the partisans of Juarez and the Republic, who were now called “insur. gents." On the whole, considerable progress was made in pacifying the country, and in putting down the Juarists, who were defeated in a pitched battle at Durango towards the end of September. Unfortunately for Maximilian he had incurred the anger of the powerful ecclesiastical interest in the country. Juarez some years before had secularised the immense landed property of the Mexican Church, and had been excommunicated by the bishops. stream, and everything else with which they came in contact. Of more than two hundred ships in the Hooghly, it was said that only ten were left at their moorings after the storm, the rest having been stranded or sunk. The Bengal, one of the Peninsular and Oriental Company's steamers, another British steamer, and a French shp were fairly lifted up and deposited on shore. The total loss of life was very considerable, but does not appear to have been accurately ascertained. In the city and suburbs of Calcutta it was reported at forty-one natives, and two Europeans, besides some twenty seriously wounded by the |