Sumter to a shapeless mass of rubbish. A short time after, a party of sailors from the Union fleet essayed to capture it by night, but its garrison, upstarting from the ruins, drove them back with heavy loss.

General Review of the Third Year of the War. - The Confederates had gained the great battles of Chickamauga and Chancellorsville, seized Galveston, and successfully resisted every attack on Charleston.

The Federals had gained the important battles before Vicksburg, and those at Chattanooga and at Gettysburg. They had captured the garrisons of Vicksburg and Port Hudson. The Mississippi was patrolled by gun-boats, and the Confederate army was entirely cut off from its western supplies. Arkansas, East Tennessee, and large portions of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas had been won for the Union.

1864.

The Situation. -In March, General Grant was made Lieutenant-General in command of all the forces of the United States. Heretofore, the different armies had acted independently. They were now to move in concert, and thus prevent the Confederate forces from aiding each other. The strength of the South lay in the armies of Lee in Virginia, and Joseph E. Johnston in Georgia. Grant was to attack the former, Sherman the latter, and both were to keep at work, regardless of season or weather. While the Army

cers were shot, that what was left of the regiment was led off by a boy-Lt. Higginson. No measure of the war was more bitterly opposed than the project of arming the slaves. It was denounced at the North, and the Confederate Congress passed a law which threatened with death any white officer captured while in command of negro troops, leaving the men to be dealt with according to the laws of the State in which they were taken. Yet, so willing were the negroes to enlist, and so faithful did they prove themselves in service, that, in December, 1863, over fifty thousand had been enrolled, and before the close of the war that number was quadrupled.

of the Potomac was crossing the Rapidan (May 4), Grant, seated on a log by the road-side, penciled a telegram to Sherman to start.

THE WAR IN TENNESSEE AND GEORGIA.

Advance upon Atlanta.-Sherman, with one hundred thousand men, now moved upon Johnston, who, with nearly fifty thousand, was stationed at Dalton, Ga. (map opp. p. 222). The Confederate commander, foreseeing this advance, had selected a series of almost impregnable positions, one behind the other, all the way to Atlanta. For one hundred miles, there was continued skirmishing among mountains and woods, which presented every opportunity for such a warfare. Both armies were led by profound strategists. Sherman would drive Johnston into a stronghold, and then with consummate skill outflank him, when Johnston with equal

skill would retreat to a new post and prepare to meet his opponent again.* At DALTON, RESACA, DALLAS, and LOST and KENESAW MOUNTAINS, bloody battles were fought. Finally, Johnston retired to the intrenchments of Atlanta (July 10). Capture of Atlanta.-Davis, dissatisfied with this Fabian policy, now put Hood in command. He attacked the Union army three times with tremendous energy, but was repulsed with great slaughter. Sherman, thereupon re-enacting his favorite flank movement, filled his wagons with fifteen-days rations, dexterously shifted his whole army on Hood's line of supplies, and compelled the evacuation of the city.t

The Effect. This campaign, during four months of fighting and marching, day and night, in its ten pitched battles and scores of lesser engagements, cost the Union army thirty thousand men, and the Confederate, thirty-five thousand. Georgia was the workshop, store-house, granary, and arsenal of the Confederacy. At Atlanta, Rome, and the neighboring towns, were manufactories, foundries, and mills, where

* When either party stopped for a day or two, it fortified its front with an abattis of felled trees and a ditch with a headlog placed on the embankment. The head-log was a tree twelve or fifteen inches in diameter resting on small cross-sticks, thus leaving a space of four or five inches between the log and the dirt, through which the guns could be pointed.

+ During this campaign, Sherman's supplies were brought up by a single line of railroad from Nashville, a distance of three hundred miles, and exposed throughout to the attacks of the enemy. Yet so carefully was it garrisoned and so rapidly were bridges built and breaks repaired, that the damages were often mended before the news of the accident reached camp. Sherman said that the whistle of the

GUARDING A TRAIN.

locomotive was quite frequently heard on the camp-ground before the echoes of the

skirmish-fire had died away.

clothing, wagons, harnesses, powder, balls, and cannon were furnished to all its armies. The South was henceforth cut off from these supplies.

Hood's Invasion of Tennessee.-Sherman now longed to sweep through the Atlantic States. But this was impossible so long as Hood, with an army of forty thousand, was in front, while the cavalry under Forrest was raiding along his railroad communications toward Chattanooga and Nashville. With unconcealed joy, therefore, Sherman learned that Hood was to invade Tennessee.* Relieved of this anxiety, he prepared his army for its celebrated "March to the Sea".

Battle of Nashville (December 15, 16). — Hood crossed the Tennessee, and, after a desperate struggle with Schofield's army, at FRANKLIN, shut up General Thomas within the fortifications at Nashville. For two weeks little was done.† When Thomas was fully ready, he suddenly sallied out on Hood, and in a terrible two-days battle drove the Confederate forces out of their intrenchments into headlong flight. The Union cavalry thundered upon their heels with remorseless energy. The infantry followed closely behind. The entire Confederate army, except the rear-guard, which fought bravely to the last, was dissolved into a rabble of demoralized fugitives, who escaped across the Tennessee.

The Effect. For the first time in the war, an army was destroyed. The object which Sherman hoped to attain when he moved on Atlanta, was accomplished by Thomas, three hundred miles away. Sherman could now go where he pleased

* Hood's expectation was that Sherman would follow him into Tennessee, and thus Georgia be saved from invasion. Sherman had no such idea. "If Hood will go there", said he, "I will give him rations to go with." Now was presented the singular spectacle of these two armies, which had so lately been engaged in deadly combat, marching from each other as fast as they could go.

+ Great disappointment was felt at the North over the retreat to Nashville, and still more at Thomas' delay in that city. Grant ordered him to move, and had actually started to take charge of his troops in person, when he learned of the splendid

with little danger of meeting a foe. The war at the West, so far as any great movements were concerned, was finished.

Sherman's March to the Sea.—Breaking loose from his communications with Nashville, and burning the city of Atlanta, Sherman started (Nov. 16), with sixty thousand men, for the Atlantic coast (map opp. p. 222). The army moved in four columns, with a cloud of cavalry under Kilpatrick,* and skirmishers in front to disguise its route. The wings destroyed the Georgia Central and Augusta railroads, and the troops foraged on the country as they passed. In five weeks, they had marched three hundred miles, reached the sea,‡ stormed Fort McAlister, and captured Savannah.§

The Effect of this march can hardly be over-estimated. A fertile region, sixty miles wide and three hundred long, was desolated; three hundred miles of railroad were destroyed; the eastern portion of the already-sundered Confederacy was cut in twain; immense supplies of provisions were captured, and the hardships of war brought home to those who had hitherto been exempt from its actual contact.

victory his slow but sure general had achieved. The rock of Chickamauga had become the sledge of Nashville.

* The ubiquity of the cavalry movements of the war is remarkable. In February preceding, Kilpatrick, who now opened up the way for Sherman's march through Georgia, made a dash with the cavalry of the Army of the Potomac to rescue the Union prisoners at Richmond. He got within the defenses of the city, but not fully appreciating his success, withdrew, while Colonel Ulric Dahlgren, who headed a co-operating force, through the ignorance or treachery of his guide, lost his route, was surrounded by the enemy, and fell in an attempt to cut his way out. Great damage was done to railroads and canals near Richmond.

+ A feint which Sherman made toward Augusta led to a concentration at that city of the cavalry and militia called out to dispute his progress. The real direction of his march was not discovered until he had entered the peninsula between the Savannah and Ogeechee rivers.

The first news received at the North from Sherman was brought by three scouts, who left the Union army just as it was closing in on Savannah. They hid in the rice swamps by day, and paddled down the river by night. Creeping past Fort McAlister undiscovered, they were picked up by the Federal gun-boats.

§ Sherman sent the news of its capture, with 25,000 bales of cotton and 150 cannon, to President Lincoln, as a Christmas present to the nation.