mac was no longer
afraid of Bobby Lee." He had not forgotten his talk with us at Nashville.

Now you have had Grant's opinion of your great Army, and as my toast is
the Army of the Tennessee, I will close by giving you General Grant's
description of that Army when called upon to respond to the same toast at
one of our reunions. He said, "As an Army, the Army of the Tennessee never
sustained a single defeat during four years of war. Every fortification
which it assailed surrendered. Every force arrayed against it was either
defeated, captured, or destroyed. No officer was ever assigned to the
command of that army who had afterwards to be relieved from it or to be
reduced to another command. Such a history is not accident."

[Illustration: PONTOON BRIDGE ACROSS THE TENNESSEE RIVER AT DECATUR, ALA.

Built by the Sixteenth Army Corps in the spring of 1864, Major-General G.
M. Dodge commanding. Copy of painting made at the time by an enlisted man
and presented to General Dodge.]

USE OF BLOCK-HOUSES DURING THE CIVIL WAR

_To the Editor of the Army and Navy Journal_:

I was greatly interested in the communication of Captain Joubert Reitz,
published in your journal March 21, 1903, giving a description of the
block-house system inaugurated by General Kitchener in the Transvaal War.
It was a continuous line of block-houses connected by barbed wire, to
prevent the Boers crossing the railway lines, and virtually corralling
their forces in certain districts until want of food forced them to
surrender. Captain Reitz asserts that the block-house system did more to
end the war than the whole British Army.

In the Civil War our block-house system was just as effective, but in
another direction. We used it for the purpose of protecting our lines of
communication, not as a trocha, or a line connected with wire fencing and
other obstructions, as used by the British and by the Spaniards in the
Cuban War. The British built theirs of bags filled with earth. The
Spaniards erected neat structures of two stories, built of concrete, with
wooden roofs and openings for two lines of fire, one above the other.
These were erected not more than half a mile apart. In the Civil War our
block-houses were usually erected of logs, one and two stories high. The
face of the upper story had an angle of forty-five degrees to the face of
the first story, thus concentrating a direct fire upon an enemy
approaching from any point of the compass. Th