mopolis, Alabama, and prepared for the gathering emergency.

The enemy's cavalry column under Smith and Grierson was to pass through one of the richest districts of the Confederacy to the assistance of Sherman.

From Pontotoc, Mississippi, to the southern boundary line of Noxubee county, a distance of eighty or ninety miles from forty to fifty in width, there was an area of country rich as the Delta of the Nile. Magnificent plantations were spread on either side of the Mobile and Ohio Railroad, level as the sea, and dotted with abodes of wealth and intelligence. Pontotoc, Aberdeen, Columbus, and Macon, were the centres of local trade for all this region. These towns had an aggregate population of perhaps thirty thousand, and the narrow territorial limits of their trade illustrated the fact that this district was the richest granary of the South.

Owing to the exhaustion of his horses, the want of arms and munitions, and other causes, Forrest could array a force of only two thousand four hundred men to confront Smith and Grierson's column of seven thousand of the best equipped cavalry the Yankees had ever put in the field. Forrest's men, too, were mostly new and untried, especially in the cavalry service. He had recently recruited them in West Tennessee. It seemed the extreme of rashness and recklessness, to attempt with such a force to arrest the march of a column of seven thousand splendidly mounted and equipped men, led by experienced officers, whose march thus far had been uninterrupted, who were buoyant and confident, and were charged with such an important mission. The junction of this cavalry force with Sherman at Meridian, was the key of the Yankee plan for the occupation and subjugation of the Southwest. If successful, Sherman would have been in a condition to advance upon Demopolis and Selma, and these important points, as well as the rich countries adjacent, would have been at the mercy of the enemy.

General Polk, with his scant infantry force, quickly perceived the momentous issue which depended upon the result of the cavalry movement from Memphis, and after securing his small ariny on the east side of the Tombigbee, and removing all his supplies and munitions and returning to Mobile the

troops he had borrowed from General Maury, sent imperative orders to Lee and Forrest to unite their forces, and at every cost to crush and drive back Smith and Grierson's car alry.

Lee did not receive these orders in time to reach Forrest with his force, which was already greatly exhausted by the continual skirmishing with Sherman's column. Forrest, therefore, was left alone with his two thousand four hundred men to perform this immense undertaking. Confronting the énemy on the broad prairies near West Point, on the Tibbee river, he prepared for action. The enemy formed in a long and most imposing line, outflanking Forrest and threatening the instant demolition of his small and imperfectly organized force. The charge was given, and the Yankees advanced with great boldness and an air of certain victory. Great was their surprise when, as they approached Forrest's line, they observed his men slip from their horses, converting themselves into infantry, each man taking the most favorable position, availing themselves of every advantage the ground afforded, and awaiting with the utmost coolness the impetuous charge of the Yankee chivalry. On came the splendidly mounted dragoons, under those far-famed Yankee chiefs, Smith and Grierson, with such fierce displays of valor and determination as augured badly for Forrest's infantry scouts, scattered through the bushes and over the prairie in rather an irregular and unmilitary style. But these valorous horsemen did not advance far before the balls of two thousand riflemen began to rattle through their ranks with fearful effect. Scores of men and horses fell at the first fire, and their onward movement was checked, and before they could recover and reform the volley was repeated-again and again—until dismay and terror began to prevail in their ranks, and they soon broke into confusion and fled.

Having discovered the small force of Forrest, several attempts were made by Smith and Grierson to rally their men and resume the offensive. Their efforts were successful on the hills, just beyond Okalona, when the last grand charge was made by them on the 21st of February. The fight commenced late in the evening, and was obstinate, as the enemy were forced to make repeated stands to hold us in check, and to save their pack mules, &c., from a stampede. It closed with a

grand cavalry charge of the enemy's whole force. We repulsed them with heavy loss, and completely routed them.

General Forrest's command was too tired to continue the pursuit. General Gholson, with six or seven hundred State troops, arrived and went in pursuit. The enemy never halted for a moment in his retreat, and when last heard from, the remnant of this splendid force was hastening fast to Memphis, in far different plight from that in which it had so recently emerged from its fortifications.

The disastrous retreat of Grierson and Smith upon Memphis was decisive of the campaign. Their retreat naturally interrupted Sherman's communications all along the line of the Mobile and Ohio Railroad, and deprived his army of an important source of supply, without which he was incapable of maintaining his ground. Worse still, the falling back of these two officers took away from him the cavalry force upon which he relied to prosecute his operations. He was left to retrace his steps in disappointment and disgrace, and to retire to Vicksburg. Back there he dragged his weary, broken-down column, in a demoralized state; having accomplished not a single military result in his campaign, and having achieved no other glory than that of warfare upon private property and inoffensive people, a cheap triumph of the ruffian and the plunderer.

In a congratulatory order to his army, General Polk said: "The concentration of our cavalry on the enemy's column of cavalry from West Tennessee formed the turning point of the campaign. That concentration broke down his only means of subsisting his infantry. His column was defeated and routed, and his whole force compelled to make a hasty retreat. Never did a grand campaign, inaugurated with such pretension, terminate more ingloriously. With a force three times that which was opposed to its advance, they have been defeated and forced to leave the field with a loss of men, small arms and artillery."

The Yankees made an absurd attempt to cover up Sherman's defeat with the stereotyped lie, that the expedition had "accomplished all that was intended." It could hardly be possible that the object of an expedition of such magnitude as that conducted by Sherman through Mississippi was simply to march over a sterile country one hundred and fifty miles, take posses

sion of a comparatively insignificant point, and then march back again.

The truth was, Grant's grand combination in the West had completely broken down; and Sherman's defeat had given the Confederacy two months more time to prepare for the great campaign of 1864.

While the events we have been narrating were transpiring in the Southwest, as part of the grand plan, there had been a movement on the lines in North Georgia. Thomas, in immediate command of the Yankee forces there, had attempted an advance on the 25th of February. For a whole day he attempted to penetrate our lines, but was compelled suddenly to fall back upon his base at Chickamauga. The "On-to-Atlanta" was a programme all parts of which had been disconcerted, and to amend which the campaign in the West had to be put over until the fighting month of May.

CHAPTER X.

Auspicious Signs of the Spring of 1864.-Military Successes of the Confederates.Improvements in the Internal Polity of the Confederacy-Two Important Measures of Legislation.-Revolution of our Finances.-Enlargement of the Conscription.— Theory of the New Military Law.--A Blot on the Political Record of the Confederacy.-Qualified Suspension of the Habeas Corpus.-An Infamous Edict, but a "Deadletter."-An Official Libel upon the Confederacy.-The Real Condition of Civil Liberty in the South.-The Conscription not properly a Measure of Force.-Impressments but a System of Patriotic Contribution.--Development of the Yankee Government into Despotism.-An Explanation of this.-The Essence of Despotism in One Yankee Statute.-MILITARY RESOURCES OF THE CONFEDERACY.-Its Military System, the Best and Most Elastic in the World.-The War Conducted on A Voluntary Basis.-Supplies.--Scarcity of Meat.-The Grain Product.-Two Centres of Supplies.-A Dream of Yankee Hate.--Great Natural Resources of the North.-Summary of the Yankee Military Drafts.-Tonnage of the Yankee Navy.-The Yankee War Debt.--Economic Effects of the War.--Its Effects on European Industry.-Yankee Conquest of the South an Impossibility.--A Remarkable Incident of the War.DAHLGREN'S RAID AROUND RICHMOND.-Kilpatrick's and Custar's Parts of the Expedition.-Dahlgren and his Negro Guide.-His "Braves" Whipped by the Richmond Clerks and Artisans.--Death of the Marauder.-Revelation of his Infamous Designs. --Copy and History of "the Dahlgren Papers."-A Characteristic Yankee Apotheosis. Ridiculous and Infamous Behavior of the Confederate Authorities.--A Brutal and Savage Threat.-President Davis in Melodrama.

THE auspicious signs of the spring of 1864 was the theme everywhere of the Confederate press. We have seen how a current of success had set in for the South. Mr. Lincoln's shocking experiment in Florida; Thomas's disastrous repulse in North Georgia; Sherman's magnificent failure, were glad auguries for the Confederate arms in the coming campaigns. The situation was being rapidly improved. Not to speak just yet of our achievements in Texas, in Western Louisiana, and along the banks of the Mississippi, we could refer with satisfaction to Longstreet's exploits in East Tennessee, subsequent to the raising of the siege of Knoxville, and fancied permanent occupation of East Tennessee by the enemy. The siege of Charleston had proven only a running sore, where the strength and wealth of the enemy were wasted without the slightest prospect of advancing one step beyond the landward beach of Morris Island. Florida had afforded nothing but disaster to them and glory to us. The rainy season would soon render it