incapable, and because he thought that quickness of movement would outweigh every advantage against him. Said Buckner, after the surrender, "Had I commanded, you would not have reached the fort so easily."—" If you had," replied Grant, "I should have waited for re-enforcements; but I knew Pillow would never come out of his works to fight." The judgment of Grant proved correct, and the plan of battle was justified by success. In both actions the main principles guiding Grant were, "Having assumed the offensive, to maintain it at all hazards; "To take every precaution possible for full support of all under command;" Begin the fighting;" and "Never to scare." However erroneous in other respects, these tactics were true to those laws, and were won under them; but they ended in bringing Grant into temporary retirement and discredit. The scandal-mongers were again at their despicable work. Envy, malice, management, had full sway; and, under pretence of promotion, Grant was for a season in reality tabooed and ignored, till after his superiors found by the evacuation of Corinth that he had at Pittsburg Landing won the entire field in that section. Sitting idly in his tent, instead of being with his command in active service, he wrote to his father, "I will go on and do my duty to the very best of my ability, and do all I can to bring the war to a speedy close. I am not an aspirant for any thing at the close of the war. . . . One thing I am well aware of: I have the confidence of every man in

my command." Some of the "on-to-Richmond papers of that period, like the independent press of this, under the impression that the true way to beat your worst enemies is to vilify your best friends, hounded Grant incessantly.

Mortified and wounded at his treatment from the papers and from those over him, Grant was forced to demand relief from his equivocal relation to the army; and he said in a letter, "I am not going to lay off my shoulder-straps until the close of the war; but I should like to go to New Mexico, or some other remote place, and have a small command out of reach of the newspapers." Halleck, who had been to the front while Grant was reduced to inaction in his tent, after his eyes were open to the superior military wisdom of the shelved officer by the extensive manner in which he had been fooled, through the enemy's movements at Corinth, in finding a barren town where he had planned to bag an army, acknowledged his mistake as to the importance of the battle of Pittsburg Landing. The country, seeing a new and alarming emergency before it in the necessity to counteract the succession of delays and disasters in other points, ordered the re-instatement of Grant on the summoning of Halleck to Washington. He had often expressed his willingness to serve under Sherman with the same readiness as to have Sherman serve under him; but he felt his compulsory, and to him humiliating, retirement deeply.

He also saw with regret the needless postponement of a vigorous campaign, and prolongation of movements in a rebellious region, which a change of command forced upon the country. One of the biographers of Grant remarks, "It is pleasant to record, that always after going to Washington, as if in atonement for his former ungraciousness, Halleck gave to Grant hearty and entire support." The same historian observes, in connection with this unpleasant experience, that "Grant felt keenly the newspaper denunciation of which he had been the victim, but very seldom alluded to it. Once he said to a Cincinnati correspondent,

"Your paper has made many false statements about me, and, I presume, will continue to do so. Go on in that way if you like; but it is hard treatment for a man trying to do his duty in the field. I am willing to be judged by my acts, but not to have them misrepresented or falsified.'"

It is possible to imagine how these insults and suspicions rankled in the brave soul that endured them all, and never in the height of his power remembered these acts against their perpetrators; but it can never be known how much it cost this country to fight on the most approved principles of engineering, or to pursue the supercilious methods of the martinets who sometimes hold the destinies of nations.

CHAPTER V.

A BLOW THAT TOLD.

IN March, 1863, three officers stood together one midnight, watching strange incidents about Port Hudson. They made part of the advance which was to co-operate with Farragut in his attempt to pass fortifications that Jefferson Davis shortly before, after personal examination, had pronounced "impregnable." The formidable bluffs, commanding the river for miles in either direction, were amply supplied with the best armament for defence. Against the fearful fire of these powerful batteries, Farragut was at that moment "running the gauntlet." The land forces were in the rear of Port Hudson, there to divert the enemy, and draw a portion of the garrison from operating against the fleet. The precise object of the expedition no one of the three knew, although hearsay gave it that it was in connection with Grant's movements above. One of the officers in this group had served with Grant in Oregon, and the conversation naturally turned upon him.

It was an extraordinary scene: the air roared with the rush of bombs; the earth trembled under the fierce, incessant cannonade; the heav

ens were filled with curves of light from busy shells; when an explosion shook the ground for miles, and made the air alive with conflagration.

One of the officers exclaimed, "If the Lord will let me live just long enough to find what all this is, and what it is about, I shall die happy.”

Morning brought word that Farragut, after a most terrible damage to his fleet, including the destruction of the large steamer "Mississippi" by the firing of her magazine, and with much loss of life, had passed the guns of the enemy, and was on his way up the river to communicate with Grant. It was the "beginning of the end;" and what Grant's colleague said, in giving an estimate of him, proved true: "I don't know what he is up to; but he always pulls through, and he will come out right." Whoever has seen that area of rank, monotonous desolation along the borders of the Lower Mississippi, traversed by sluggish gullies, overspread with trackless and treacherous lowlands, the paradise of the centipede, alligator, and mosquito, and the terror of living men, will understand why Grant made seven abortive attempts upon Vicksburg on the upper side.

A writer says, "The swamps, forests, jungles, bayous, and rivers of this remarkable region are the most perfect defence that could be devised for important points situated on the highlands which lie beyond them. To the army operating along the main river they proved to be a perfect barrier; for, although they were frequently penetrated, it