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THE SECOND YEAR OF THE WAR.

CHAPTER I.

The New Orleans Disaster... Its Consequences and Effects... Dispatches of the European Commissioners... Butler "the Beast"... Public Opinion in Ba¬ rope... The Atrocities of the Massachusetts Tyrant... Execution of Mumford... Lesson of New Orleans... Spirit of Resistance in the South...Change in the Fortunes of the Confederacy...Two Leading Causes for it... The Richmond "Examiner"... The Conscription Law...Governor Brown of Georgia...Re-organization of the Army.... Abandonment of our Frontier Defences... The Policy. of Concentration...Governor Rector's Appeal... First Movements of the Summer Campaign in Virginia... The Retreat from Yorktown... Evacuation of Norfolk... Destruction of the "Virginia"... Commodore Tatnall's Report...Secretary Mallory's Visit to Norfolk... The Engagement of Williamsburg... The Affair of Barhamsville... McClellan's Investment of the Lines of the Chickahominy... Alarm in Richmond... The Water Avenue of the James... The Panic in Official Circles... Consternation in the President's House... Correspondence between President Davis and the Legislature of Virginia... Noble Resolutions of the Legislature... Response of the Citizens of Richmond... The Bombardment of Drewry's Bluff... The Mass Meeting at the City Hall... Renewal of Public Confidence... The Occasions of This... JACKSON'S CAMPAIGN IN THE VALLEY... The Engagement of McDowell... The Surprise at Front Royal... Banks' Retreat Down the Valley... The Engagements of Port Republic... Results of the Campaign... Death of Turner Ashby... Sufferings of the People of the Valley of the Shenandoah... MEMOIR OF TURNER ASHBY.

The fall of New Orleans was one of the most extraordinary triumphs which the enemy had obtained. It was the crowning stroke of that extraordinary campaign of the winter and spring of the year 1862, in which, by the improvidence of the Southern authorities and a false military policy which divided their armies and weakened them by undue dispersion, they had lost much of their territory, most of the prestige of their arms, and had fallen upon a train of disasters well calculated

to affect the general public, both at home and abroad. The close of this campaign, so ill-starred to the Confederacy, found it with scarcely more than three entire States-Texas, Alabama and Georgia. Large portions of the territories of Virginia, the Carolinas and Florida were occupied by the enemy; he had broken our line of defences in Tennessee, and held important positions on the Upper Mississippi; and now, by the capture of New Orleans, he had secured the great Southern depot of the trade of the immense central valley of the continent, obtained command of an extent of territory accessible by his gunboats greater than the entire country before lost to the Confederacy, and had good reason to hope, by the junction of his fleets on the Mississippi, to open its navigation, and give to the West an outlet to the ocean.

The conquests of the Federal arms made in the winter and spring of 1862, were not without their effect in Europe, and presented to the nations in that part of the world a sombre picture of the Confederacy. The dispatches of our ministers at the courts of England and France declared that the prospect of recognition, of which they had formerly given such warm and sanguine assurances, had been overclouded by the disaster at New Orleans. Mr. Slidell wrote from Paris that the French government declared that "if New Orleans had not fallen, our recognition could not have been much longer delayed." He added, however, that he had been assured that "even after that disaster, if we obtained decided successes in Virginia and Tennessee, or could hold the enemy at bay a month or two, the same result would follow"-a promise, to the breach of which and to the unhappy expectations which it excited, we shall hereafter have occasion to refer. Mr. Mason, our minister at London, also referred to the opinion that at the time of the enemy's capture of New Orleans, our recognition was on the eve of accomplishment.

The immediate sufferers of the disaster at New Orleans were the people of that city. It was aptly rewarded for its easy submission by the scourge of a tyrant. The corrupt and mer

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