rgy of the Southern commanders in the
east he did not believe that Grant would be allowed to arrange things
as he chose. But several days passed and they heard nothing from the
Confederates, although Donelson was only about twenty miles away.
Johnston himself, brilliant and sagacious, was not there, nor was his
lieutenant, Beauregard, who had won such a great reputation by his
victory at the first Bull Run.

Dick was just beginning to suspect a truth that later on was to be
confirmed fully in his mind. Fortune had placed the great generals of
the Confederacy, with the exception of Albert Sidney Johnston, in the
east, but it had been the good luck of the North to open in the west
with its best men.

Now he saw the energy of Grant, the short man of rather insignificant
appearance. Boats were sent down the Tennessee to meet any
reinforcements that might be coming, take them back to the Ohio, and
thence into the Cumberland. Fresh supplies of ammunition and food were
brought up, and it became obvious to Dick that the daring commander
meant to attack Donelson, even should its garrison outnumber his own
besieging force.

Along a long line from Western Tennessee to Eastern Kentucky there was
a mighty stir. Johnston had perceived the energy and courage of his
opponent. He had shared the deep disappointment of all the Southern
leaders when Kentucky failed to secede, but instead furnished so many
thousands of fine troops to the Union army.

Johnston, too, had noticed with alarm the tremendous outpouring of
rugged men from the states beyond the Ohio and from the far northwest.
The lumbermen who came down in scores of thousands from Michigan,
Wisconsin and Minnesota, were a stalwart crowd. War, save for the
bullets and shell, offered to them no hardships to which they were not
used. They had often worked for days at a time up to their waists in icy
water. They had endured thirty degrees below zero without a murmur, they
had breasted blizzard and cyclone, they could live on anything, and they
could sleep either in forest or on prairie, under the open sky.

It was such men as these, including men of his own state, and men of the
Tennessee mountains, whom Johnston, who had all the qualities of a great
commander, had to face. The forces against him were greatly superior
in number. The eastern end of his line had been crushed already at
Mill Spring, the extreme western end had suffered a severe blow at
Fort Henry, but Jefferson Dav