bears an analogy to that of Sherman from Chattanooga to Atlanta- the distance traversed being the same, and the result in cach case being largely due to a system of wellcombined manœuvres. But the means at the disposal of Rosecrans were greatly inferior to those of Sherman, and it must be borne in mind that as Rosecrans's march was prior to Sherman's, the difficulty was enhanced by the novelty of the operation. Indeed, Rosecrans's campaign from Murfreesboro' to Chattanooga furnishes the type of those great movements over large spaces that were made with such success at a later period of the war.

This fact will, perhaps, enable us to fix upon the salient quality of Rosecrans's military talent. It is as a strategist that he chiefly distinguished himself; for in the fashion of his mind there were some peculiarities that would often mar his success. He was, for example, always too weak to dismiss from command a number of very incompetent subordinates. In the conduct of battle, though extremely brilliant, he lacked calm, and was capable of measures that were egregiously bad. Of this his conduct at Chickamauga will afford an illustion, and it will at the same time give me an opportunity of explaining an act which at the time was by some cruelly attributed to a want of courage- a quality which might as well be denied Julius Cæsar as Rosecrans.

When at Chickamauga the enemy pierced the right wing, Rosecrans and staff were forced back in the rout, and by the intervention of the Confederates separated from the centre and left of the army. In order to reach the centre and left, Rosecrans had to climb Mission Ridge, and make a detour of seven or eight miles. When he had gotten as far as Rossville, the point at which he might either turn southward and make towards the centre and left, or northward, and make to Chattanooga, word was brought him that Negley's division was routed. Now Negley held the extreme left. Unfortunately, there was at the same time a lull along the whole

battle-front so that to Rosecrans's apprehension, every circumstance conspired to raise the conviction that the whole army had been routed, and that the best thing he could do was to return to Chattanooga, reorganize its shattered masses, and prepare for a defensive battle. He did so, and on reaching Chattanooga telegraphed to Washington his belief that the army had been beaten and routed.

Now, the question as to how we are to judge this conduct, is so intimately connected with the peculiarities of Rosecrans's mind, that it may be said to turn on a point of metaphysics. Rosecrans is a man, who, in his mental powers, is incapable of staying at those half-way houses of impression and belief, in which men ordinarily rest when they have not the means of judging with certainty. He is by constitution an absolutist in thought. He knows only convictions, and when he has made up his mind to a conclusion, he cannot be moved from it. Hence, he is either tremendously right, or tremendously wrong. Unhappily, it was the latter at Chickamauga. If he had been correct in his theory as to the fortune of the day, he did the best thing that could possibly be done in returning to Chattanooga. He was not right in his theory, and his action in accordance with that theory was a great error.

But, whatever deduction may be made in consideration of such things from Rosecrans's title to complete commandership, no candid mind who shall review the course of the war can forget that it was he who, in the "winter of our discontent," brought an outburst of summer hope in the triumph of Murfreesboro', and who, by a giant leap, clutched the crown of victory in the mountain fastness of Chattanooga.

VI.

THE MONITOR AND MERRIMAC.

I.

PRELUDE TO HAMPTON ROADS.

COULD we fancy some ancient monarch of the quarter-deck, some Blake, DuQuesne, Tromp, Ruyter, nay, even a Jervis or a Nelson of our own century, risen from his bed of fame and escorted to a modern ship of war, what would not be his bewilderment at the scene! Amazed at his surroundings, he would accuse his own eyes of treachery, and declare himself delirious or dreaming: and when, after infinite wonder, the truth became clear to him, he would no longer recognize his profession, and would confess that he was but a novice in naval combat. In place of that majestic structure of oak and canvas, perfected by the elaboration of centuries, and beautiful in the form and finish of its multitudinous details, over which his admiral's pennant once floated, he beholds under his feet a long, low, iron-bound raft, rising but a few inches out of the water, and, fixed thereon, a stumpy iron cylinder. No cunningly-carved stern or quarter-gallery, no magnificent figure-head, no solid bulwarks surmounted with snowy hammocks, no polished and shining capstan, no neatly-coiled cables, nothing of all the paraphernalia of that holy-stoned deck he was wont to pace in great glory, now meets his eye: there is only a rusty, greasy, iron planking, stript of all

adornment, and indeed of everything once familiar. At each larger swell the ocean rushes over the deck, a result which his astonished gaze finds to be a matter of design. Instead of those clouds of canvas he was wont to see stretching far up into the sky, with all their attendant complexity of rope and spar, there is not only no sail visible, but no yard for a sail, nor a single mast for a yard. That vast apparatus of timber and rigging which marked the sailing-craft of less than twoscore years ago, is shorn clean to the hull, so that for this modern nondescript the whole art of navigation seems to be useless. Yet, since the structure moves, and with steady rapidity, our spectator searches, but in vain, for the motive power. When instructed that it is buried deep under water, safe from the reach of hostile shot, that it consists of a new agent, steam, operating a new instrument, the screw-propeller, his mystery redoubles: but when he extends his glance beneath the deck, and for himself descries the wondrous machinery collected there, toiling with its awe-inspring strength and precision, his astonishment passes all bounds.

Nevertheless, a greater shock of surprise is in store. This uncouth marvel steams straight into the centre of a vast fleet of those enormous, three-decked wooden floating gun-boxes, such as might have won or lost the fight off Trafalgar, and instantly opens fire. Thunderstruck at her audacity, our resurrected admiral finds every one of her numerous opponents greater in bulk, with thrice her complement of men, and twenty or fifty times her number of guns. But the. miracle is soon explained: the missiles of the whole fleet, pattering against the iron fortress-walls, break with the impact, ́or glance off, leaving a shallow dent in proof of their harmlessness. He misses the familiar music of battle, with shot flying through. port-hole or crashing through hull, tearing rigging and bringing down masts, with guns dismounted and gunners slain by scores, with cockpit full and scuppers run

ning with blood: the crew are as safe behind an impregnable rampart as if on their pillows at home; and indeed most of them, no longer sailors but stokers, in lieu of manning the tops or standing at the deck batteries, are assigned the humble functions of tranquilly shovelling coal, far down below the water-line! Meanwhile, from within the ugly cylinder, a pair of monstrous guns, which to our astounded on-looker appear even more fabulous by their gigantic dimensions than aught else he has witnessed, hurl forth huge spheres, as the machinery of their wondrous gun-shield revolves them to every quarter of the compass. Each shot crashes a yawning cavern through the sides of some adversary, into which the waves pour in torrents; while, by another modern device, that of "horizontal shell-firing," such of the ill-starred wooden navy as are not sunk outright, are blown up, or clothed in flames. Confounded beyond measure at each moment's revelations, "what engine of destruction," at length he exclaims, "can this be, at once invulnerable itself, and annihilating to all around it? and what is this type of the war-ship of the nineteenth century?" The answer is quickly returned, "It is the American Monitor."

It is chiefly within the last quarter of a century that naval warfare has been revolutionized by new inventions and devices, and the crowning act of progress, the introduction of the monitor iron-clad, dates from the War of the Rebellion. Under our own eyes have been consummated innovations which make all previous naval history merely the object of antiquarian research, and previous naval science profitless knowledge. The early annals of naval warfare have now little that is practically worthy of record. At a bound, the science of ship-fighting leaps to the heroic battles of immortal Greece. In two regards, at least, the naval contests of Greece and Rome are more worthy of our notice now than the ship-fighting of nearly twenty centuries thereafter; for those