hardiness of character, like that of his own physique, the inheritance of thirty years in field and garrison. Dignified and decorous, his brother officers found him free from show and pretence, frank, open, and magnanimous; while to his troops he was kindly and amiable. He excited no envy or jealousy in his rivals, who found him straightforward and conscientious; and his men had cause to know that he was observant of merit and rewarded it. His reputation was without reproach, his controlled temper superior to the vicissitudes of camp and battle, and joined to them was a courage which set life at a pin's fee. A Virginian, and of such social ties as might well have made him "a Pharisee of the Pharisees," he had proved at the outset the quality of the allegiance he bore to the Republic, by casting in his lot with the Union arms. His loyalty was disinterested, and the result of conviction not of political aspiration. The progress of the war, too, gave him, as it did so many officers, a chance to show the quantity and stability of his patriotism. Even while the country resounded with the glories of Chickamauga and Missionary Ridge, Sherman, his junior in experience, in length of service, and in years, and his equal only in rank, was appointed over him to the command vacated by General Grant. Without murmur, perhaps without thought of injury, Thomas took his place under Sherman with the cheerful obedience of a true soldier. On the eve of Nashville, he was to have been relieved of command, but desired, for the sake of the country, that he might execute a long-formed plan, after which he would be at such disposal as might seem fit. Such was General Thomas, the completely rounded, skilful, judicious, modest soldier-a man compact of genuine stuff, a trustworthy man Rich in saving common sense, In his simplicity sublime. i. 1 {་ wave, tepens fellows, insi Nude and condi g: the d to ead, as ti XII. FIVE FORKS. I. PRELUDE TO FIVE FORKS. THE end of the Confederacy was nigh. Four years had Virginia, buttress and sea-wall of the South, withstood the tide of invasion which ceaselessly rolled in upon her, spurning it from her battlements, shattered and spent, as the rock flings back the billow beaten into foam. Six times the tumultuous flood had surged with whelming front against her firm barrier, and six times baffled had recoiled: now it was McDowell; now McClellan; now Pope; now Burnside; now Hooker; now Meade; now Grant. Grant it was, indeed, whose great host came, at length, like the mighty seventh wave, topping its fellows, to crush into ruin even the ramparts of rock-bound Virginia. Once more at the end as in the beginning, the armed champions of North and South gathered towards that battleploughed State, on whose soil was fated to end, as there it had begun, the arbitrament of arms. From North, from South, from West, Federal and Confederate alike drew nearer to the historic campaigning ground. Savannah, Wilmington, and Charleston, falling in succession, had left the Atlantic a sealed ocean to the Confederacy, with no port along three thousand |