a time they had the advantage. The
usual ethics of defeat had, however, no place in General Grant's military
education, and the enemy were at length forced to give way. General
Albert Sydney Johnston, one of the ablest Confederate commanders, was
killed, and General Beauregard retreated, leaving his dead and wounded in
Union hands. The second line of defence was broken. An amusing incident
of this battle--if anything can be amusing in war--was a message sent by
General Beauregard to General Grant explaining why he had withdrawn his
troops. General Grant was strongly tempted to assure Beauregard that no
apologies were necessary.

The capture of New Orleans in the latter part of April, and of Island
Number Ten in the same month gave the National forces control of the
Mississippi nearly up to Vicksburg and down to Memphis. The Confederate
flotilla was defeated and destroyed in a sharp engagement by the Union
river fleet, two miles above Memphis, on June 6, the battle occurring
in full view of that city. It was one of the most dramatic spectacles
of the war. The combat lasted just one hour and three minutes, and as
the Union fleet landed at Memphis, a number of newsboys sprang on shore
from the vessels, shouting: "Here's your New York _Tribune_ and
_Herald_!"--before the city had been formally surrendered. The Unionists
received the National troops like brothers, and one lady brought out from
its hiding place in her chimney a National flag concealed from the
beginning of the war. "We found Memphis," wrote a correspondent, "as
torpid as Syria, where Yusef Browne declared that he saw only one man
exhibit any sign of activity, and he was engaged in tumbling from the
roof of a house." Salt was rubbed into the wounds of the vanquished by
the military assignment of Albert D. Richardson and Col. Thomas W. Knox,
representatives of the _Tribune_ and _Herald_, to edit the bitterest
secession newspaper in the town.

* * *

In the East the Union cause made no progress. General George B.
McClellan, in command of the Army of the Potomac, was endeavoring to play
the part of a Turenne in a field utterly foreign to European strategy.
Generals Robert E. Lee, Joseph E. Johnston and Thomas Jonathan
("Stonewall") Jackson, the three great Confederate commanders in
Virginia, proved themselves easily the superiors of their antagonists in
the tactics best fitted for American warfare, and but for the stub