eaching the Potomac, they found that a sudden rise had
rendered the fords impassable. Intrenchments and batteries were thrown
up, and for a week the Confederate army held the lines, expecting an
attack from the enemy, who had approached within two miles; but the
Federal generals were too well satisfied with having gained a success,
when acting on the defensive in a strong position, to risk a defeat in
attacking the position of the Confederates, and their forces remained
impassive until pontoon bridges were thrown across the river, and the
Confederate army, with their vast baggage train, had again crossed into
Virginia. The campaign had cost the Northern army 23,000 men in killed,
wounded, and prisoners, besides a considerable number of guns. The
Confederates lost only two guns, left behind in the mud, and 1500
prisoners, but their loss in killed and wounded at Gettysburg exceeded
10,000 men. Even the most sanguine among the ranks of the Confederacy
were now conscious that the position was a desperate one. The Federal
armies seemed to spring from the ground. Strict discipline had taken
the place of the disorder and insubordination that had first prevailed
in their ranks. The armies were splendidly equipped. They were able to
obtain any amount of the finest guns, rifles, and ammunition of war from
the workshops of Europe; while the Confederates, cut off from the world,
had to rely solely upon the make-shift factories they had set up, and
upon the guns and stores they captured from the enemy.

The Northerners had now, as a blow to the power of the South, abolished
slavery, and were raising regiments of negroes from among the free
blacks of the North, and from the slaves they took from their owners
wherever their armies penetrated the Southern States. Most of the
Confederate ports had been either captured or were so strictly blockaded
that it was next to impossible for the blockade-runners to get in or
out, while the capture of the forts on the Mississippi enabled them to
use the Federal flotillas of gunboats to the greatest advantage, and to
carry their armies into the center of the Confederacy.

Still, there was no talk whatever of surrender on the part of the South,
and, indeed, the decree abolishing slavery, and still more the action of
the North in raising black regiments, excited the bitterest feeling of
animosity and hatred. The determination to fight to the last, whatever
came of it, animated every white man in the