met any military officer who was so willing to forego "the show business."

General Sherman was assigned to the command of the military division of the Mississippi, succeeding Grant, who, in an order dated March 17, 1864, took command of the armies of the United States, with head-quarters in the field, and, until further notice, with the Army of the Potomac. Heretofore there had been no concert of action between the armies in the West and those in the East. They had acted independently of each other; and between the two great divisions there had been innumerable jealousies and heart-burnings, both as to relative merits and as to military promotions. Henceforth this was to cease. These bodies would not any longer be, as Grant said, "like a balky team, no two ever pulling together"; thereby enabling the enemy, who operated on interior lines, to attend to the one, or the other, that happened to be active while the other was not in motion. Henceforth the enemy was to be pressed on all sides, and without cessation. Lincoln, on his part, sent Grant into the field with these words: "You are vigilant and self-reliant. Pleased with this, I wish not to obtrude any restraints or constraints upon you. If there be anything in my power to give, do not fail to let me know. And now, with a brave army and a just cause, may God sustain you.'

When the invincible hero of the West pitched his tent with the Army of the Potomac, on the banks of the Rapidan, everybody felt that the time had now come when the fate of the Confederacy was to be determined. To use Grant's own words, the policy

now was "to hammer continuously against the armed force of the enemy and his resources, until, by mere attrition, if in no other way, there should be nothing left for him but an equal submission with the loyal section of our common country to the Constitution and laws of the land."

The campaign against the Rebel capital opened in May, Meade commanding the Army of the Potomac, which was now reinforced by the Ninth Corps, under Burnside. The other corps commanders were Hancock, Warren, and Sedgwick. The army moved at midnight, on the 3d of the month. On the 5th and 6th were fought the bloody battles of the Wilderness, battles that once more filled Washington with wounded, and were the beginning of the long series of struggles with the enemy that resulted at last in his overthrow and surrender. Success generally crowned the Federal arms, and the Rebels were steadily pressed backward upon Richmond, although not without a gallant and desperate resistance. The excitement in Washington at this time was intense. At every sound of victory from the front, the President was visited by bands of enthusiastic citizens, who, with music and cheering, invited Lincoln to come to the now historic window of the White House and speak to the crowds. On one of these occasions, May 11th, Lincoln read to the enthusiastic assembly a despatch just received from Grant, in which he said: "Our losses have been heavy, as well as those of the enemy, and I propose to fight it out on this line, if it takes all summer."

On another occasion, near the end of the war,

apparently being at a loss for anything further to say after he had congratulated the people on a victory of the Federal arms, he asked that the band should play Dixie, the favorite air of the Rebels; and he explained his request by saying that he always did like that tune, and "General Grant has captured it now, I believe, and henceforth it is ours by the laws of war." He said, privately, that a speech in reply to a serenade was the most difficult job that he undertook in the line of speech-making. "For," he said, "while I am glad to congratulate the people on our victories, I do not like even to seem to glorify ourselves at the expense of a fallen foe. And, besides, after you have said you are glad, what more is there to say?"

Not only with victories of the Army of the Potomac, but with those of the armies of the West were the people now glad. Sherman had opened his campaign on the western side of the Alleghanies at the same time that Grant had begun his aggressive movements. The Rebels had measurably recovered from their overwhelming defeat at Missionary Ridge, and had filled up their depleted ranks once more. Sherman pressed the enemy, after serious fighting all along the line, driving him back, almost inch by inch, into Georgia, fighting the battles of Resaca, Allatoona, and around Kennesaw, and finally invested Atlanta. On the 22d of July, Atlanta fell into his hands, and, requiring that important railroad centre for a base of supplies, he sent out the people of the city. It was in vain that the Rebel general, Hood, and the mayor of the city protested against what they

called an act of barbarity. In his reply Sherman said that the war must be prosecuted, and that war was barbarous. "You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will," he said. "War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it; and those who have brought war upon our country deserve all the curses and maledictions that a people can pour out." These sentiments appalled the Rebels, who had been accustomed to remonstrate effectively, like so many politicians, when they saw the cause they held being seriously crippled by the tactics of those against whom they defended it.

Hood, hoping to drive Sherman to the northward, moved against the Tennessee country once more, passing to the right of Atlanta. The Federal lines, under Thomas and Schofield, were formed in front of Nashville. Then Hood was attacked in his turn, and after a fierce and bloody fight, continuing through two days, the Rebel army under Hood was ignominiously put to flight. The Rebels broke and fled in the utmost confusion, giving up several thousand prisoners and a vast amount of arms, ammunition, and artillery. Some fragments of the once proud army of Hood joined themselves to other organizations, but the army itself disappeared from the campaign. This memorable annihilation of Hood's force astonished and delighted all the loyal people. Lincoln, elated by the defeat of what had so long been a menacing force on the borders of Tennessee, was reminded by its collapse of the fate of a savage dog belonging to one of his neighbors, in the frontier settlement in which he lived in his youth.

The dog, he said, was the terror of the neighborhood, and its owner, a churlish and quarrelsome fellow, took pleasure in the brute's formidable attitude. Finally, all other means having failed to subdue the creature, a man loaded a lump of meat with a charge of powder, to which was attached a slow fuse. This was dropped where the dreaded dog would find it, and the animal gulped down the tempting bit. There was a dull rumbling, a muffled explosion, and fragments of the dog were seen flying in all directions. The grieved owner, picking up the shattered remains of his cruel favorite, said: "He was a good dog, but, as a dog, his days of usefulness are over." "Hood's army was a good army," said Lincoln, by way of comment, “and we were all afraid of it; but, as an army, its usefulness is gone."

Military operations on the line of the James River, Virginia, were a part of Grant's plan, and General B. F. Butler took possession of the City Point, on the James, where Grant subsequently established a base of supplies. Butler, being attacked here, fell back on the peninsula between the James and the Appomattox, where, being shut in by a line of Rebel intrenchments, he was "bottled up" as Grant said at the time.

General Hunter was sent to clear the valley of the Shenandoah of the enemy, but, being confronted by a superior force, he was compelled to retire by the way of the Kanawha.

The Rebel General Early, being only temporarily delayed by the opposition offered him by the Federal forces under General Lew Wallace, pressed on toward