each other; in Virginia, Lee was gaining ground, and had already won the great victory of Fredericksburg. But in May,

ROBERT E. LEE.

he won the still greater victory of Chancellorsville. The following scene from this battle is thus described by an old Confederate colonel in a speech at Balti

more:

The troops were pressing forward with all the ardor . . . of combat. The white smoke of musketry fringed the front of the line of battle, while the artillery on the hills . . . shook the earth with its thunder and filled the air with the wild shrieks of the shells that plunged into the masses of the retreating foe. To add greater horror and sublimity to the scene, the Chancellorsville house and the woods surrounding it were wrapped in flames. In the midst of this awful scene General Lee, mounted upon that horse which we all remember so well, rode to the front of his advancing battalions. . . . One long, unbroken cheer, in which the feeble cry of those who lay helpless on the earth blended with the strong voices of those who still fought, rose high above the roar of battle and hailed the presence of the victorious chief. . . . But at that moment. a note was brought to him from General Jackson.... The note... congratulated General Lee upon the great victory. . . . With a voice broken with emotion he bade me say to General Jackson that the victory was his, and that the congratulations were due to him. . . . 362

... "

On hearing later that General Jackson was fatally wounded, Lee wrote him:

sieged for two months by the Confederates. To relieve Chattanooga, Grant was obliged to capture two lofty and welldefended heights, Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge, both held by Confederate troops. A soldier who helped take Missionary Ridge thus describes the fight:

At twenty minutes before four the signal-guns were fired. Suddenly twenty thousand men rushed forward, moving in line of battle by brigades. The enemy's rifle-pits were ablaze, and the whole. ridge in our front had broken out like another Etna. Not many minutes afterward our men were seen working through the felled. trees and other obstructions. Though exposed to such a terrific fire, they neither fell back nor halted. By a bold and desperate push they broke through the works in several places.... The enemy was thrown into confusion, and took precipitate flight up the ridge.... The order of the commanding general had now been fully... carried out. But... with a sudden impulse, and without orders, all started up the ridge. . . . Sixty flags were advancing up the hill. ... Sometimes drooping as the bearers were shot, but never reaching the ground, for other brave hands were there to seize them. . . .

The sun had not yet gone down, Missionary Ridge was ours. Dead and wounded comrades lay thickly strewn upon the ground; but thicker yet were the dead and wounded men in gray. Then

followed the wildest confusion, as the victors gave vent to their joy. Some madly shouted; some wept from very excess of joy; . . even our wounded forgot their pain to join in the general hurrah. . . .

In that one hour of assault, they lost 2337 men in killed and wounded, more than twenty per cent of their whole force.365

STUDY ON THIRD YEAR OF THE WAR.

1. What made General Lee a good commander for the South? 2. What was there noble in the way he received Jackson's congratulations? 3. How should Lee imagine that by invading Pennsylvania he could relieve Vicksburg? 4. Why was the battle of Gettysburg important? 5. What was there grand about Pickett's advance? 6. What was there grand about the way it was met? 7. Why did it require great courage to take Missionary Ridge? 8. What proves that Missionary Ridge was stoutly held? 9. Take your Outline Map for this period and mark in red the Confederate victories of the year. 10. Mark in blue the Union victories. 11. What were the seats of war during this period? 12. Who was the leading general on each side? 13. How did the taking of Vicksburg give the Union the control of the Mississippi? 14. How did this cut the Confederacy in two? 15. By the taking of Chattanooga, the railroads were opened to what places?

Supplementary Reading. — Major Penniman's Tanner-boy (General Grant). J. E. Cooke's Gettysburg, in Hammer and Rapier. A Woman's Diary of the Siege of Vicksburg, Century Magazine, September, 1885. P. H. Hayne, Vicksburg, in Library American Literature, VIII. 461. J. W. Palmer, Stonewall Jackson's Way, Poem in Library American Literature, VIII. 259.

Arous'd and angry,

14. WAR-PICTURES.

I thought to beat the alarum, and urge relentless war;

But soon my fingers fail'd me, my face droop'd, and I resign'd myself,
To sit by the wounded and soothe them, or silently watch the dead.

- WALT WHITMAN, in Drum-Taps.

Behind the Lines in Vicksburg.

A lady living in Vicks

burg thus describes her experiences during the siege:

March 20th. -The slow shelling of Vicksburg goes on all the time. ... Those who are to stay are having caves built. . . . [Ours] is well made in the hill that slopes just in the rear of the house, and well propped with thick posts. . . .

June 7th. . . . The weather has been dry a long time, and we hear of others dipping up the water from ditches and mud-holes. This place has two large underground cisterns of good cool water.... One cistern I had to give up to the soldiers, who swarm about like hungry animals seeking something to devour. Poor fellows! my heart bleeds for them. They have nothing but spoiled, greasy bacon, and bread made of musty pea-flour, and but little of that. . . . They come into the kitchen when Martha puts the pan of corn-bread in the stove, and beg for the bowl she mixed it in. They shake up the scrapings with water, put in their bacon, and boil the mixture into a kind of soup, which is easier to swallow than pea-bread. . . . July 3d. nearly gone, that a few more days will bring us to starvation indeed. Martha says rats are hanging dressed in the market for sale with mule meat, there is nothing else. . . .

...

Shells flying as thick as ever.

Provisions so

July 4th. It is evening. All is still. Silence and night are once more united. I can sit at the table in the parlor and write. [Vicksburg has surrendered. About noon,] . . . Mr. J. passed. . . .

"Keep on the lookout," he said; "the army of occupation is coming along," and in a few minutes the head of the column appeared. What a contrast to the suffering creatures we had seen so long were these stalwart, well-fed men. . . . Sleek horses, polished arms, bright plumes, this was the pride and panoply of war.300

366

Domestic Life in the Confederacy. - A Confederate gentleman thus describes the effect of the war on home-life in general:

From first to last, salt was the most precious of all commodities. . . . At times not a pound of salt could be bought at any price. . . .

Iron was now the precious metal. . . . Frequent calls were made for plantation bells to be cast into cannon. Many church bells were also given.... A large society of ladies undertook to furnish material for building an iron-clad by collecting all the broken pots,

pans, and kettles in the Confederacy. . . .

All idle nails were carefully drawn and

the earlier, brighter days of the war had been converted into battle-flags, woolen dresses and shawls had, later on, been made into shirts for the soldiers, as the carpets had been made into blankets, and the linen and curtains into lint and bandages for the wounded.... Sugar, after the fall of Vicksburg, was almost as scarce as coffee. . . .

Every available bit of paper, every page of old account-books, whether already written on one side or not, and even the fly-leaves of printed volumes... [were] ferreted out and exhausted. Envelopes were made of scraps of wall-paper and from the pictorial pages of old books, - the white side out, stuck together in some cases with the gum that exudes from peach-trees. . . .

All these... burdens . . . were cheerfully borne, and . . . through all hardships and grievances the belief of the great mass of people. in the Confederacy survived to the end.367