ppointment to,
perhaps, the most responsible bureau of the War Department was a
mystery to people everywhere.

Suddenly the news from Rich Mountain came. It fell like a thunderbolt
from the summer sky, that the people deluded themselves was to sail
over them with never a cloud! The flood-tide of success, upon which
they had been floating so gaily, was suddenly dammed and flowed back
upon them in surges of sullen gloom.

The southern masses are essentially mercurial and are more given to
sudden extremes of hope and despondency than any people in the
world--except, perhaps, the French. Any event in which they are
interested can, by a partial success, carry them up to a glowing
enthusiasm, or depress them to zero by its approach to failure. The
buzz and stir of preparation, the constant exertion attending it and
their absorbing interest in the cause, had all prepared the people,
more than ordinarily even, for one of these barometric shiftings. The
news from Bethel had made them almost wild with joy and caused an
excessive elation that could ill bear a shock. The misfortune at Rich
Mountain threw a corresponding gloom over the whole face of affairs;
and, as the success at Bethel had been overrated from the Potomac to
the Gulf, so this defeat was deemed of more serious importance than it
really was.

This feeling in Richmond was much aggravated by her own peculiar loss.
Some of her best men had been in the fight, and all that could be
learned of them was that they were scattered, or shot. Garnett was
dead; the gallant DeLagnel was shot down fighting to the last; and
Pegram was a prisoner--the gallant regiment he led cut up and
dispersed!

Only a few days before, a crowd of the fairest and most honored that
Richmond could boast had assembled at the depot to bid them God speed!
Crowds of fellow soldiers had clustered round them, hard hands had
clasped theirs--while bright smiles of cheer broke through the tears on
softest cheeks; and, as the train whirled off and the banner that
tender hands had worked--with a feeling "passing the love of
woman"--waved over them, wreathed with flowers, not a heart was in the
throng but beat high with anticipation of brave deed and brilliant
victory following its folds.

Scarcely had these flowers withered when the regiment--shattered and
beaten--was borne down by numbers, and the flag itself sullied and torn
by the tramp of its conquerors. And the shame of defeat was much
heightened to