ing to a
road a mile off, where the enemy had taken position to shell the Union
line.

"I see it."

The rebel battery opened fire, which was vigorously answered by the other
side. The scene began to increase in interest as the cannonade extended
along the whole line; and, through the entire day, there raged the most
furious artillery conflict of the war. The rebel masses were hurled time
after time against the Union line; but it maintained its position like a
wall of iron, while thousands of the enemy were recklessly sacrificed in
the useless assault. General M---- had probably drunk more than his usual
quantity of whiskey; and, though he was as brave as a lion, hundreds of
his men paid the penalty with their lives of his rashness and
indiscretion.

Night came again upon a victorious field, while hundreds of weeping
mothers in the neighboring city sighed for the sons who would return no
more to their arms; and while mothers wept, fathers groaned and sisters
moaned, the grand army of the Confederacy had been beaten, and the proud
rulers of an infatuated people were trembling for their own safety in the
presence of the ruin with which defeat threatened them.

After the battle commenced the movement of the Army of the Potomac down
the river to Harrison's Landing. The rain fell in torrents, and the
single road was crowded with troops and wagons. Though the exhausted
soldiers slept, even while the guns of the enemy roared in front of them,
and during the brief halts which the confusion in the road caused, there
was no real repose. The excitement of the battle and the retreat, and the
undefinable sense of insecurity which their situation engendered,
banished rest. Tired Nature asserted her claims, and the men yielded to
them only when endurance had reached its utmost limit.

At Harrison's Landing, the work of intrenching the position was
immediately commenced; and it was some days before the army were entirely
assured that defeat and capture were not still possible. The failure of
the campaign was not without its effect upon the troops. They felt, that,
instead of marching under their victorious banners into the enemy's
capital, they had been driven from their position. It was not disaster,
but it was failure. Though the soldiers were still in good condition, and
as ready as ever to breast the storm of battle, they were in a measure
dispirited by the misfortune.

General McClellan and General Lee had each failed to acc