fer, resigned
his commission, and joined the Confederacy. It should be needless to say
that the qualities displayed by Lee, at the head of the Army of Northern
Virginia, amply justified President Lincoln's measure of his capacity.
The seat of the Confederate Government was removed from Montgomery to
Richmond, and the latter city was thenceforward the headquarters of the
rebellion.

Of the other border States Maryland remained in the Union, and Kentucky,
after an attempt to maintain an impossible neutrality, yielded to the
influence of mountain air, and espoused the cause of freedom. Missouri's
disloyal government sought to drag the State into secession, but Francis
Preston Blair, a lawyer of St. Louis, and Captain Nathaniel Lyon,
commandant of the United States Arsenal in that city, took vigorous
action against the rebel sympathizers, and saved the State to the Union.
The German element in Missouri was so loyal to the old flag that
"Unionist" and "Dutchman" were synonymous terms in that region during the
war. Captain Lyon, promoted to brigadier-general, was defeated and killed
at the battle of Wilson Creek. It is believed that he resolved to win the
battle or die. Of such stuff were the men who rescued the Southwest.

The battle of Bull Run, when General Joseph E. Johnston, commanding the
Confederates, defeated General McDowell with serious loss, and sent the
Union army in disorderly retreat toward Washington, taught the Northern
people that the war was not a parade, and that the overthrow of the
Confederacy would tax all the energies of the loyal States. Fortunately,
General George H. Thomas won an important victory for the Union at Mill
Spring, Kentucky, in January, 1862, and the capture of Fort Henry and
Fort Donelson, in the following month, by General Ulysses S. Grant, aided
by Commodore Foote and his gunboats, tended to efface the depression
caused by defeat in Virginia. General Grant's reply to the Confederate
General Buckner, when the latter wished to make terms for the surrender
of Fort Donelson, was on every tongue in the North. "I have no terms but
unconditional surrender. I propose to move immediately upon your works,"
was a message that spoke the man. Nearly sixteen thousand prisoners were
captured. They belonged mostly to the working classes of Missouri,
Tennessee and Arkansas.

* * *

John Ericsson's Monitor, in March, 1862, sent a thrill of relief and joy
thr