id column;
while Polk, with his merely nominal force, was unable to meet him. But
the latter fell back in good order; secured his supplies, and so
retarded his stronger adversary, that he saved all the rolling-stock of
the railroads. When he evacuated Meridian, that lately busy railroad
center was left a worthless prize to the captor.

Meantime Forrest had harassed the cavalry force of Smith and Grierson,
with not one-fourth their numbers; badly provided and badly mounted.
Yet he managed to inflict heavy loss and retard the enemy's march; but
finally--unable to wait the junction of S. D. Lee, to give the battle
he felt essential--Forrest, on the 20th February, faced the Federal
squadrons. Confident of an easy victory over the ragged handful of
dismounted skirmishers, the picked cavalry dashed gaily on. Charge
after charge was received only to be broken--and Forrest was soon in
full pursuit of the whipped and demoralized columns. Only once they
turned, were heavily repulsed, and then continued their way to Memphis.

This check of his co-operating column and the utter fruitlessness of
his own march, induced a sudden change of Sherman's intent. He fell
rapidly back to Vicksburg; his army perhaps more worn, broken and
demoralized by the desultory attentions of ours, than it would have
been by a regular defeat.

Meantime the New Orleans-Pensacola expedition had danced on and off
Mobile without result. Thomas had been so heavily repulsed on the 25th,
that he hastily withdrew to his lines at Chickamauga--and the great
campaign of General Grant had resulted in as insignificant a fizz as
any costly piece of fireworks the war produced.

On the contrary, history will give just meed to Forrest, Lee and Polk
for their efficient use of the handfuls of ill-provided men, with whom
alone they could oppose separate and organized armies. They saved
Alabama and Georgia--and so, for the time, saved the Confederacy. There
could be no doubt that the sole safety of the invading columns was
their numerical weakness. General Grant's practice of a perfectly sound
theory was clearly a gross blunder; and had Polk been in command of two
divisions more--had Lee been able to swoop where he only hovered--or
had Forrest's ragged boys been only doubled in number--the story told
in Vicksburg would have been even less flattering to the strategic
ability of the commander.

As it was, he had simply made a bad failure, and given the South two
months' re