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South a period of probation during which infinite results might be compassed. A whole year had been gained. whole year? and in less time than that States had been founded which flourished through ages!

Thus the result first in importance of the victory of Bull Run was to furnish the South with that element of visible success which was needful to unify the South, for there were tens of thousands of rich, of brave, of patriotic and of greatly influential men whose minds had never been thoroughly made up to permanently accept the Confederacy. Deprecating at the outset the effort at secession, partly on the ground of right, partly on the ground of expediency, these men could not find it in their consciences, certainly not in their discretion, as men of the world, to espouse a government which, in their eyes, was neither a de jure nor a de facto authority. To enrol this influential class, and thereby to take from the loyal North its plausible hopes from "Southern Unionists," and, weld the South into a homogeneous nation, with but a single sentiment and aim, there was wanting a victory in the field. That victory was won, and thereafter thousands of those who before had refrained from the strife out of no selfish motives, but from loyalty to law, till law should be hopelessly disowned, and a greater law take the vacant seat and by visible proofs support a claim to sovereignty, these men threw, at length, their swords into the scale, and with them life, fortune, and honor.

The uncounted hundred millions who from across the ocean gazed on through four years with never-ceasing wonder, upon the mighty drama whose stage was a hemisphere, were not less affected than the actors themselves by its opening scene. Sympathy indeed was quickly distributed to one or other of the combatants, according to the character, or sensibilities, or understanding of the onlookers. But it was only or chiefly after the struggle at Bull Run that, for the South especially, Transatlantic sympathy took practical shape, and manifested its sincerity in supplies of money, ships, arms,

munitions of war, and whatever other material assistance could be sent across the water. The tendencies of foreign governments also to recognize as a belligerent power the nascent Confederacy, which had before been chiefly inclinations matured to more positive acts; and, above all, the people of Europe exerted upon their governments a strong pressure for the absolute recognition of the Southern Confederacy. This favorable sentiment being reflected across the Atlantic, had its full effect in raising the hopes of the insurgent South.

Nor do we yet reach the limits of the general results of Bull Run. Something I shall perhaps be expected to say of the general and well-grounded confidence which Bull Run gave to the South in the valor of its troops. Had this sensiment risen no higher than was justified by a sensible review of the circumstances of the victory, it might have simply acted as a stimulus to the South. But in the temper in which it found the people, it afforded so colorable an excuse for still more extravagant and ridiculous assertions of Southern prowess as to damage most seriously the cause they had at heart.

In tracing the connecting links in the complicated chain of cause and effect that runs through war, it will frequently be discovered that results the most momentous go back to influences seemingly the most remote. Of this truth the aspect and prospect of the rebellion, in so far as regards the military resources of the South at the opening of the campaign of the following year, furnish a striking illustration. It was in no slight degree the victory of the Confederates at Bull Run that in the following spring prepared for them a crushing defeat on the Cumberland and the Tennessee. Inflated with pride at their triumph in the first clash of arms, the Southern leaders no less than the Southern people, anticipated no other result whenever it might please the men of the North to test their prowess: so that while the North during the succeeding autumn and winter was forming a colossal armament, the Confederates, re

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posing in vainglorious confidence, contented themselves with preparations little proportioned to their actual needs. This apathy especially prevailed at the West. It was in vain that General Sidney Johnston, who commanded the Department, labored to produce a realizing sense of the requirements of his situation. "I appealed," says he, in an epistle of lamentation, written after the fall of Fort Donelson, "I appealed in vain to the War Department and the Governors of States -the aid given was small." It thus came about that at the opening of the spring campaign of 1862 the entire force garrisoning his very extended line of three hundred miles, from the Cumberland Mountains to the Mississippi River, numbered some 37,000.men. The result was, as will hereafter appear, that when Grant moved against Johnston his line, everywhere weak, was easily broken, and with the fall of Donelson the whole western system of defence fell in ruins to the ground. The high-blown confidence of the people was then succeeded by demoralization and a distrust of ultimate success that prevented the Confederate Government from ever evoking the full military strength of the west.

Regarding the great lessons of the battle fought on the plains of Manassas and the marvellous scope it instantly lent to the American conflict, it may be truthfully asserted that the cannon of Bull Run echoed henceforth on every battle-field of the war, aye, down to the very surrender at Appomattox Court House.

II.

DONELSON.

I.

PRELUDE TO DONELSON.

THROUGHOUT the vast extent of territory enclosed between the Alleghanies and the Mississippi, the year 1861 passed without military operations of moment, but not without preparations for war on a colossal scale. The beginning of 1862 saw in the West a mighty armament and a formidable fleet ready to move against the enemy. Events had clearly determined the theatre of the war, which indeed was already marked out by the controlling lines of physical geography.

The centre zone presents a striking natural peculiarity, which not only shaped the lines of military operation, but which was bound up with a series of natural influences that powerfully affected the course of the war. This region is divided by the Tennessee River into two distinct parts, which may be called the upper centre zone and the lower centre In the latter the water-shed carries all the rivers into the Gulf of Mexico; in the former, enclosed between the Tennessee and the Ohio, and embracing the States of Tennessee and Kentucky, the rivers, rising in the Alleghanies, flow westward and northward and swell the volume of the Father of Waters.

zone.

Now it is worthy of note, that while the States of the lower centre zone were carried into secession by a kind of political

gravitation as potent as the propulsive force that hurries their waters to the Gulf, Tennessee resisted the primary secession movement, and only fell into the secondary movement inaugurated by Virginia, and that Kentucky, after a brief dream of neutrality, resisted altogether, and adhered to the Union. Kentucky's loyalty marked out that State as the theatre of war in the West, for it was soon seen by the insurgents that, as the great water highways of the Tennessee and Cumberland, which conduct to the very heart of the South, flow northward through that State, and empty into the Ohio, the loss of Kentucky must be the loss of all the territory north of the Tennessee. When, therefore, Kentucky committed herself definitively to the side of the Union, the insurgents crossed her borders, seized and fortified Columbus, on the Mississippi, obstructed the Tennessee and Cumberland, intrenched themselves at Bowling Green—in a word, sought to gain the dominion of the whole upper centre zone, by anticipating control of the Mississippi water-shed.

The defensive line taken up by the Confederates embraced a very extended front, stretching through Kentucky from the Mississippi to the Cumberland Mountains. The control of this theatre of operations had since September, 1861, been in the hands of General Albert Sydney Johnston, an old officer of the service of the United States, and popularly esteemed at the time the ablest of those who had linked their fortunes with the revolt.

The left flank of Johnston's line rested on the Mississippi, at Columbus, twenty miles south of the mouth of the Ohio, where, upon a range of bold and jutting bluffs, a fortified camp was formed, and powerful batteries were erected to close the navigation of the river. The force at this point was under General Leonidas Polk, a whilom bishop of the Episcopal Church, who had exchanged the crozier for the weapons of carnal warfare. Running eastward from Columbus, the line passed through Forts Henry and Donelson