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which was a part of Gen. Beauregard's plan, and been compelled to fall back, it is thought not improbable that we could have made a successful stand on the Cumberland. But Gen. Bragg had failed to adopt these suggestions. Had he succeeded, after our victory at Perryville, in driving the enemy back to Louisville, unless he had been able to take that place, he would have been compelled to retreat so soon as the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers should have risen sufficiently to have admitted the entrance of the enemy's gunboats and transports. Taking this view, it may be said that as we did not have command of these rivers, it was fortunate that our army left Kentucky when it did, otherwise it might have found great difficulty after the winter rains commenced in getting away at all.

For the failure of Gen. Bragg's campaign in Kentucky, the excuse was offered that the people of that State had been unfriendly, that they had not joined his standard in considerable numbers, and that they had disappointed his own and the common expectation of the Southern public with respect to their political sentiments. It is scarcely necessary to remar how little applicable such an excuse is to positive blunders in the conduct of an army, and to those imperfections of judgment and faults of strategy which, whatever may be their remote connection, are the immediate occasions and responsible causes of disaster.

But it is to be admitted that the. South was bitterly disappointed in the manifestations of public sentiment in Kentucky; that the exhibitions of sympathy in this State were meagre and sentimental, and amounted to but little practical aid of our cause. Indeed, no subject was at once more dispiriting and perplexing to the South than the cautious and unmanly reception given to our armies, both in Kentucky and Maryland. The references we have made to the sentiment of each of these States, leaves but little room to doubt the general conclusion, that the dread of Yankee vengeance, and love of property, were too powerful to make them take risks against these in

favour of a cause for which their people had a mere preference, without any attachments to it higher than those of selfish calculation.

There must, indeed, be some explanation for the extraordinary quiet of the people of Maryland and Kentucky under the tyranny that ruled them, and for that submission, the painful signs of which we had unwillingly seen. This explanation was not to be found in the conduct of the United States. It is a remarkable fact that the Lincoln government had not taken any pains to change the opinions and prejudices of the people in these two States. It had made no attempt to conciliate them; it had performed no act calculated to awaken their affection; it had done nothing to convert their hearts to the support of an administration to which they were originally hostile.

It would be a foolish and brutal explanation to attribute the submission of these States to cowardice. The people of these States were brave; they were descended from noble ancestries, and they had the same blood and types of race that were common to the South. The sons of Kentucky and Maryland who had fought under the Confederate flag were as noble specimens of the Southern soldier as any to be found in our armies. But the people of these States, who had stayed at home and been schooled in the lessons of submission, appeared to have lost the spirit and stature of their ancestors, and dragged the names of Maryland and Kentucky in the dust.

The only just explanation that can be furnished of the abject attitude of these States is, that having taken the first steps of submission to a pitiless despotism, they had been easily corrupted into its subjects. The lessons of history furnish many exhibitions of how easily the spirit of a community is crushed by submission to tyranny; how the practice of non-resistance makes of men crawling creatures. The mistake is in making the first step of submission; when that is accomplished, demoralization becomes rapid, and the bravest community sinks into emasculation. Under the experience of non-resist

ance to the rule of a despot, men become timid, artful and miserly; they spend their lives in consulting the little ends of personal selfishness. This corruption in Kentucky, as well as in Maryland, had gone on with visible steps. Their history was a lesson which the South might well remember, of the fatal consequences of any submission to despotic will, for however specious its plea, all records of man's experience have shown that it undermines the virtues of a people, and degenerates at last into servile acquiescence in its fate.

CHAPTER VI.

Our Lines in the Southwest... General Breckenridge's Attack on Baton Rouge...Destruction of the Ram Arkansas... Gen. Price's Reverse at Iuka... Desperate Fighting... THE BATTLE OF CORINTH... Van Dorn's Hasty Exultations... The Massacre of College Hill... Wild and Terrible Courage of the Confederates...Our Forces Beaten Back...Our Lines of Retreat Secured... The Military Prospects of the South Overshadowed... THE DEPARTMENT OF THE TRANS-MISSISSIPPI... Romance of the War in Missouri... Schofield's Order Calling Out the Militia... Atrocities of the Yankee Rule in Missouri... Robbery Without "Red Tape "...The Guerilla Campaign... The Affair of Kirksville... Execution of Col. McCullough...The Affair of Lone Jack... Timely Reinforcement of Lexington by the Yankees... The Palmyra Massacre... The Question of Retaliation with the South...THE MILITARY AND POLITICAL SITUATION... Survey of the Military Situation... Capture of Galveston by the Yankees... The Enemy's Naval Power... His Iron Clads.. Importance of Founderies in the South... Prospect in the Southwest... Prospect in Tennessee... Prospect in Virginia...Stuart's Raid into Pennsylvania...Souvenirs of Southern Chivalry... The "Soft-mannered Rebels"... Political Complexion of the War in the North... Lincoln's "Emancipation Proclamation"... History of Yankee Legislation in the War... Political Errour of the Emancipation Proclamation-Its Effect on the South... The Decay of European Sympathy with the Abolitionists... What the War Accomplished for Negro Slavery in the South...Yankee Falsehoods and Bravados in Europe... Delusion of Conquering the South by Starvation.. Caricatures in the New York Pictorials... The Noble Eloquence of Hunger and Rags... Manners in the South...Yankee Warfare... The Desolation of Virginia.....The Lessons of Harsh Necessity...Improvement of the Civil Administration of the Confederacy...Ordnance, Manufacturing Resources, Quartermasters' Supplies, &c.

The crisis in Kentucky was probably hastened by certain disastrous events which had taken place on our lines in the Southwest. A large Confederate force had been left in North Mississippi when Gen. Bragg moved into Kentucky, and the speculation was not remote that, with the Memphis and Charleston railroad open from Chattanooga to a point near the position of our army in Mississippi, that portion of our forces in the West might render important assistance to, or, in some

emergency, effect a co-operation with the armies that had been marched into Kentucky.

But the story of the Southwest was one of almost unbroken disaster, owing less, perhaps, to inadequate numbers than to the blind and romantic generalship which carried them into the jaws of destruction. There was one golden link in the chain of events here, and that was the heroic defence of Vicksburg. But while this famous town so nobly disputed the palm of the Mississippi, her example of victorious resistance was obscured, though not overshadowed, by other events in the Southwest.

On the 5th of August, an attack make by General Breckenridge with less than three thousand men on Baton Rouge, was severely repulsed by an enemy nearly twice his numbers, fighting behind fortifications which were almost impregnable, and assisted by a fleet of gunboats in the river. The unequal attack was made by our troops with devoted courage; they succeeded in driving the enemy to the arsenal and tower, and to the cover of his gunboats; but they were compelled to withdraw with diminished and exhausted numbers before a fire which it was impossible to penetrate.

This check (for it deserves no more important or decisive title) was in a measure occasioned, or, at least, was accompanied, by a disaster of real importance. This was the destruction of the great Confederate ram Arkansas, already famous for having run the gauntlet of the hostile fleet at Vicksburg, and the promises of whose future services had given, to the South many brilliant but illusory hopes. The Arkansas left Vicksburg to co-operate in the attack upon Baton Rouge. After passing Bayou Sara her machinery became deranged or disabled. But two alternatives were left-to blow her up or suffer her to be captured by the Yankee gunboats. The former was resorted to, and this proud achievement of naval architecture floated a wreck on the Mississippi River.

The failure of another enterprise of attack on the enemy, made by Gen. Price at Iuka on the 20th of September, was

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