his failure to follow Lee after Antietam, was ordered to turn over the
Command of the Army of the Potomac to Burnside. As the end of the year
drew nigh, Rosecrans was established with his army at Nashville, and Bragg
was at Murfreesboro, 30 miles south. The events of that season were well
calculated to enthuse the Confederate and to depress the Federal force. On
December 13 was fought the Battle of Fredericksburg, where the Army of the
Potomac was repulsed, with frightful slaughter, by the Army of Northern
Virginia, under Lee. A week later, the immense depot of supplies at Holly
Springs,--supplies that Grant had gathered to aid him in his campaign
against Vicksburg,--was captured. On December 29, Sherman, in a
preliminary movement of this campaign, was hurled back, stunned and
bleeding, from an assault upon Chickasaw Bluffs.

Two days later was to open the pivotal battle in Middle Tennessee.

CHAPTER II

FOREIGN RELATIONS IN 1862

The outbreak of hostilities between the North and the South was greeted
with obvious delight by the majority of public journals, and with thinly
veiled satisfaction by many of the public officials of the more important
nations of Europe. Russia, indeed, showed a substantial and potent
friendship for the United States, and Italy,--where the movement for
liberal institutions had already won important victories,--evinced a
sympathy both general and genuine. But these were the exceptions. In
Austria and the German States the hostile feeling for the American
Republic had little effect at the time. The attitude of France and Great
Britain was vastly more hurtful.

Napoleon III was then at the very height of his power, and his bizarre
performances and dreams of conquest had dazzled the imagination of his
countrymen to an extent that it is difficult to realize at this day. Nay,
more,--he had cast such a spell over the minds of Her Britannic Majesty's
ministers as to have led to a practical allience upon certain important
subjects. The French Emperor saw in the disruption of the United States a
vindication of his own usurpation and an opportunity to plant an Imperial
Government under his own guidance in Mexico. In addition, the shortage of
cotton, due to the blockade of Southern ports, was causing very serious
distress in the textile districts of France; so there was perhaps one real
reason for the Emperor to show some concern in trans-Atlantic affairs, and
repeatedly to proffer his unfrien