over still more scant supply at his distant
home--wax wroth over stories of Southdown mutton, brought in ice from
England; of dinners where the _pates_ of Strasbourg and the fruits of
the East were washed down with rare Champagne.

Bitter, indeed, it seemed, that--while he crawled, footsore and faint,
to slake his thirst from the roadside pool--while the dear ones at home
kept in shivering life with cornbread--degenerate southerners and
foreign leeches reveled in luxury untold, from the very gain that
caused such privation!

This misuse of that blockade-running--which strongly handled had proved
such potent agency for good--bred infinite discontent in army and in
people alike. That misdirection--and its twin, mismanagement of
finance--aided to strangle prematurely the young giant they might have
nourished into strength;--

"And the spirit of murder worked in the very means of life!"

But the Chinese-wall blockade was tripartite; not confined to closing
of the ocean ports. Almost as damaging, in another regard, were the
occupation of New Orleans, and the final stoppage of communication with
the trans-Mississippi by the capture of Vicksburg.

The Heroic City had long been sole point of contact with the vast
productive tracts, beyond the great river. The story were twice-told of
a resistance--unequaled even by that at Charleston and beginning with
first Union access to the river, by way of New Orleans. But, in May,
'62, the combined fleets of Porter and Farragut from the South, and
Davis from the North, rained shot and shell into the coveted town for
six terrible weeks. Failing reduction, they withdrew on June 24th;
leaving her banners inscribed--_Vicksburg victrix!_

In May of the next year, another concentration was made on the "key of
the Mississippi;" General Grant marching his army one hundred and fifty
miles from its base, to get in rear of Vicksburg and cut off its
relief. The very audacity of this plan may blind the careless thinker
to its bad generalship; especially in view of the success that at last
crowned its projector's hammer-and-tongs style of tactics. His reckless
and ill-handled assaults upon the strong works at Vicksburg--so freely
criticised on his own side, by army and by press--were but preface of a
volume, so bloodily written to the end before Petersburg.

Under ordinary combinations, Johnston had found it easy to crush Grant
and prevent even his escape to the distant base behind him. But