an folly--it
would have been suicide! had the people on the line of that retreat
offered a blatant sympathy. Utterly useless to others it must have
been--and even more ruinous to themselves!

And this is the verdict of that Justice who, though slow of foot, fails
not to overtake Truth, in her own good time.

CHAPTER XXV.

THE WAR IN THE WEST.

And misfortunes did not come singly, but in battalions.

The trans-Mississippi was so far distant that only broken echoes of its
troubles could penetrate the web of hostile armies between it and the
Capital. But those echoes were all of gloom. Desultory warfare--with
but little real result to either side, and only a steady drain on
Confederate resources and men--had waged constantly. A trifling success
had been gained at Lone Jack, but it was more than done away with by
aggregate losses in bloody guerrilla fighting. Spies, too, had been
shot on both sides; but the act that came home to every southern heart
was the wanton murder of ten Confederates at Palmyra, by the order of
General McNeil, on the flimsy pretext of retaliation. The act, and its
attendant cruelties, gained for him in the South the name of "The
Butcher;" and its recital found grim response in every southern
camp--as each hard hand clasped tighter round the hard musket
stock--and there was an answering throb to the cry of Thompson's prompt
war song:

"Let this be the watchword of one and of all--
Remember the Butcher, McNeil!"

Meantime, Mississippi had been the scene of new disasters. Vicksburg,
the "Queen of the West," still sat unhurt upon her bluffs, smiling
defiance to the storm of hostile shot and shell; teaching a lesson of
spirit and endurance to which the whole country looked with admiration
and emulation. On the 15th of August the iron-clad ram, "Arkansas," had
escaped out of the Yazoo river; run the gauntlet of the Federal fleet
at Vicksburg and made safe harbor under the town, to aid in its heroic
defense.

Twenty days thereafter, General Breckinridge made a most chivalrous and
dashing, but equally useless and disastrous, attack upon Baton Rouge.
His small force was greatly outnumbered by the garrison, behind heavy
works and aided by a heavy fleet of gunboats: and after a splendidly
gallant fight, that had but one serious result--he was forced to
withdraw. That result was the loss of the ram Arkansas--which went down
to co-operate with this movement. Her machinery became der