uth. All other battles of the war were but skirmishes to this.

The Confederate losses in killed, wounded and missing were ten thousand
six hundred and ninety-nine. At Bull Run the combined armies of Joseph
E. Johnston and Beauregard lost but one thousand nine hundred and
sixty-four men.

Grant's army lost thirteen thousand one hundred and sixty-two in killed,
wounded and prisoners. McDowell at Bull Run had lost but two thousand
seven hundred, and yet was removed from his command.

The rage against Grant in the North was unbounded. The demand for his
removal was so determined, so universal, so persistent, it was necessary
for Abraham Lincoln to bow to it temporarily.

Lincoln positively refused to sacrifice his fighting General for his
first error, but sent Halleck into the field as Commander-in-Chief and
left Grant in command of his division.

The bulldog fighter of the North learned his lesson at Shiloh. The South
never again caught him napping.

Great as the losses were to the North they were as nothing to the
disaster which this bloody field brought to the Confederacy. Albert
Sidney Johnston alive was equal to an army of a hundred thousand
men--dead; his loss was irreparable.

CHAPTER XXVII

THE LIGHT THAT FAILED

The struggle which Jefferson Davis was making to parry the force of the
mortal blows delivered by the United States Navy at last gave promise of
startling success.

The fight to establish the right of the Confederacy to arm its allies
under letters of marque and reprisal had been won by the Southern
President. The first armed vessel sailing under the orders of Davis
which was captured by the navy had brought the question to sharp issue.
The Washington Government had proclaimed the vessels flying the
Confederate flag under letters of marque to be pirates and subject to
the treatment of felons.

The Captain and the crew of the _Savannah_ when captured had been put in
irons and condemned to death as pirates. If the Washington Government
could make good this daring assumption, the power of the Confederacy to
damage the commerce of the North would be practically destroyed at a
blow.

Davis met the crisis with firmness. He selected an equal number of
Federal prisoners of war in Richmond and threw them into a dungeon below
Libby Prison. He dispatched a letter to Washington whose language could
not be misunderstood.

"Dare to execute an officer or sailor of the _Savannah_, and I will