the intervals between skirmishes, papers might be received
or messages read, soldiers in blue or soldiers in grey asked eagerly
"What news from Richmond?"--"Stonewall Jackson? Valley of
Virginia?"--"Valley of Virginia! I know!--saw it once. God's country."

At New Orleans, on the levees, in the hot streets, under old balconies
and by walled gardens, six thousand men in blue under Butler watched,
and a sad-eyed captive city watched. From the lower Mississippi, from
the blue waters of the Gulf, from the long Atlantic swells, the ships
looked to the land. All the blockading fleets, all the old
line-of-battle ships, the screw-frigates, the corvettes, the old
merchant steamers turned warrior, the strange new iron-clads and mortar
boats, engaged in bottling up the Confederacy, they all looked for the
fall of Richmond. There watched, too, the ram-fitted river boats, the
double-enders, lurking beneath Spanish moss, rocking beside canebrakes,
on the far, sluggish, southern rivers. And the other ships, the navy all
too small, the scattered, shattered, despairing and courageous ships
that flew the stars and bars, they listened, too, for a last great cry
in the night. The blockade-runners listened, the Gladiators, the
Ceciles, the Theodoras, the Ella Warleys faring at headlong peril to and
fro between Nassau in the Bahamas and small and hidden harbours of the
vast coast line, inlets of Georgia, Florida, Carolina. Danger flew with
them always through the rushing brine, but with the fall of Richmond
disaster might be trusted to swoop indeed. Then woe for all the wares
below--the Enfield rifles, the cannon powder, the cartridges, the
saltpetre, bar steel, nitric acid, leather, cloth, salt, medicines,
surgical instruments! Their outlooks kept sharp watch for disaster,
heaving in sight in the shape of a row of blue frigates released from
patrol duty. Let Richmond fall, and the Confederacy, war and
occupation, freedom, life, might be gone in a night, blown from
existence by McClellan's siege guns!

Over seas the nations watched. Any day might bring a packet with
news--Richmond fallen, fallen, fallen, the Confederacy vanquished, suing
for peace--Richmond not fallen, some happy turn of affairs for the
South, the Peace Party in the North prevailing, the Confederacy
established, the olive planted between the two countries! Anyhow,
anyhow! only end the war and set the cotton jennies spinning!

Most feverishly of all watched Washington on th