A break had been made in the Confederate line. By the Tennessee River the Union gunboats could make their way nearly to Chattanooga, gaining the rear of the Confederates at Donelson, on the Cumberland, and those at Bowling Green. Albert Sidney Johnston was in command of the Confederate troops in Kentucky. When he learned of what had happened at Fort Henry he resolved to concentrate a large portion of his troops at Donelson, and meet the Union troops at that point. He would make the fight for holding the States of Kentucky and Tennessee there, General John B. Floyd, Gideon J. Pillow, and Simon B. Buckner, with their divisions, numbering from sixteen to eighteen thousand, to hold the works constructed at the little town of Dover, and named Fort Donelson. Floyd had been Secretary of War under Buchanan. He was a Virginian, and had done what he could while Secretary to strip Northern arsenals of arms and ammunition, sending them to the Southern States. He had embezzled money belonging to Government, and was under indictment by a grand jury in Washington from whence he had fled the preceding winter, before the inauguration of President Lincoln. He knew very little about military matters, but had been appointed brigadier-general by Jefferson Davis, and outranked Pillow and Buckner. Pillow had served in the Mexican War, but knew so little about military affairs that he constructed a fortification at Carmargo, with the ditch on the wrong side of the embankment. He was egotistical, and when in Mexico intrigued against General Scott, and thought himself competent to command the army that entered the Mexican Capital. Buckner was younger than his superiors, but was far abler than either of them. Pillow had quarrelled with him and they were not on speaking terms.

General Grant had about fourteen thousand men. He determined with them, aided by the gunboats, to attempt the capture of Donelson. He had no tents, and only a few wagons, yet made preparations to march across the neck of land between the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers, twelve miles, and besiege the Confederates. It was a bold, hazardous movement. The Confederates outnumbered him, but troops were on their way and he would soon have from eighteen to twenty thousand. On the morning of the 12th the army began its march. It was a spectacle not often seen in military operations, an inferior force marching to besiege a superior entrenched behind strong fortifications. General McClernand's division took possession of the roads leading south from Dover, General Lew Wallace's division came next, and then General C. F. Smith's.

The battle began with the advance of McClernand, and his repulse, and then the attack of the four iron-clad gunboats on the afternoon of the 14th, Admiral Foote keeping up the advance till within three hundred and fifty yards of the water batteries, when the wheel of the flagship was shot away, and the tiller ropes of the Louisville, disabling both vessels, and putting an end to the action. The Confederates yelled with delight. The attack of McClernand and that by the fleet had failed.

The day had been warm, suddenly the wind changed, the mercury went down, and a violent snow-storm set in.

We did not know it then, but before the attack by the gunboats General Floyd called his officers to a council of war. He said the place could not be held with less than fifty thousand. He thought it best to make an attack on McClernand, reopen the roads and thus enable the army to abandon the fort and return to Nashville. The proposition was agreed to, but the failure of the gunboats led General Pillow to believe the place could be held, and the order was countermanded. But while the snow-storm was raging Floyd again called his officers to a council. He was nervous. Possibly the thought of his being cooped up in a forti

fication, that he might be taken prisoner, and that an indictment was hanging over him, had something to do with his desire to get away from Donelson, and it was decided that at daybreak Pillow should attack McClernand, and Buckner should advance against Wallace's division.

At daybreak, just as the Union buglers were getting ready to sound the reveillé, the Confederates, under Pillow, assailed Oglesby's brigade, holding the extreme right

of the Union line. The battle raged from daybreak till eleven. o'clock, the Confederates gradually pushing McClernand back, and gaining possession of the roads. The Confederates had won the victory, gained what they had set out to do. Why did they not do it? The vain and egotistical General Pillow had a vision of greatness. He had led the attack, won the battle, henceforth he would stand before the world. a hero, possibly be commanderin-chief of the armies of the Confederacy. He sent a grandiloquent despatch to General Johnston at Bowling Green, ignoring Floyd, and berated Buckner for not doing what he might have

done. Escape retreat? No; he would follow up the victory. Instead of receiving orders from Floyd, he gave orders to Buckner to attack Wallace.

It was mid-afternoon. General Grant through the forenoon had been in consultation with Commodore Foote, not aware of what was taking place. No sound of the cannonades or roar of musketry reached the fleet moored to the trees along the bank of the Cumberland, four miles below Donelson. It was mid-afternoon when he arrived upon the field. General Thayer's brigade had held the Confederates in check.

"Gentlemen," he said, "the position on our right must be retaken." He looked into the haversack of a Confederate prisoner-saw that it was supplied with three days' rations.

"This is a movement to enable them to escape," he said.

It was remarkable tactics which this quiet, silent commander adopted. Instead of ordering the troops to advance against Pillow, he directed

C. F. Smith to assault the works immediately in front of him. Lanman's brigade, the Twenty-fifth Indiana, the Second, Seventh, and Fourteenth Iowa, led the attack, Smith sitting erect on his horse, not behind but in

front of them. Though cut through by solid shot and shell, and mowed down by musketry, they advanced over a meadow, through woods and thick underbrush.

The Confederate cannon opened upon them, but the ranks moved on, the soldiers, stimulated by their brave commander, charging upon the Confederate breastworks and driving the enemy up a steep hill.

Night was coming on and Smith's men crouched behind the works. they had gained. Lew Wallace's troops advanced together with McClernand's, and with the going down of the sun the roads, by which the Confederates might have escaped, were once more closed.

Again Floyd called a council of war. It was agreed by all that they could not escape; that they must surrender. Floyd said he could not become a prisoner. Being commander, he put his troops on two steamers, turned the command of the army over to Pillow, and fled to Nashville. Pillow had no intention of being captured, and fled with Floyd, leaving Buckner in command.

. It was a beautiful Sunday morning, when, just as General Grant was ready to make the assault, a Confederate bugle sounded, and a white flag was seen waving above the Confederate breastworks. Then followed the correspondence between Grant and Buckner, and the demand for unconditional surrender.

The scene at Donelson on Sunday morning, the day of surrender, was exceedingly exhilarating, the marching in of the victorious divisions, -the bands playing, their flags waving, the cheers of the troops,- the gunboats firing a salute,-the immense flotilla of river steamboats gayly decorated. The New Uncle Sam was the boat on which General Grant had established his headquarters. The Uncle Sam, at a signal from Commodore Foote, ranged ahead, came alongside one of the gunboats, and, followed by all the fleet, steamed up river past Fort Donelson, thick with Confederate soldiers, - past the entrenched camp of log-huts, past a schoolhouse on a hill, above which waved a hospital flag,—and on to Dover, the gunboats thundering a national salute the while.

A warp was thrown ashore, the plank run out. I sprang up the bank and mingled among the disconsolate Confederates, a careworn, haggard, melancholy crowd which stood upon the heights above. They all told one story, claiming that they had fought well; that we outnumbered them; that there was a disagreement among their officers; that we had got General Buckner; that Floyd and Pillow had escaped; that Floyd