ed miles farther from Cairo than New York, yet all New
England had read Carleton's account in the _Journal_ before any
correspondent's letters from Fort Donelson or Henry appeared in the
newspapers of Manhattan.

After the fall of Columbus, the next point to which army and navy were
to give attention was the famous Island Number Ten. Here the
Confederates were concentrating all that were available in men and
cannon. Thousands of negroes were at work upon the trenches, and it
was believed that the fight would be most desperate. After long
waiting for his armament and the training of his men, Commodore Foote
was ready. Carleton wrote at Cairo, March 10, 1862, in the
exhilaration of high hopes:

"Like the waves of the Atlantic is the tide of events. How they sweep!
Henry, Donelson, Bowling Green, Nashville, Roanoke, Columbus, Hampton
Roads, Manassas, Cedar Creek,--wave upon wave, dashing at the
foundation of a house built upon the sand.

... The gigantic structure is tottering. A few more days like that of
the immediate past, and the Confederacy will have a name and a place
only in history. And what a history it will be! A most stupendous
crime. A conspiracy unparalleled, crushed out by a free people, and
the best government of all times saved to the world! How it sends
one's blood through his veins to think of it! Who would not live in
such an age as this? Before this reaches you, the telegraph, I hope,
will have informed you that the Mississippi is open to New Orleans."

So thought Carleton then. Who at that time was wiser than he?

Island Number Ten, so named quite early in history, by the pilots
descending the river, was a place but little known in the East. To the
writer it was one of interest, because here had lived for a year or so
a beloved sister whose letters from the plantation and home at which
she was a guest were not only frequent, but full of the fun and keen
interest about things as seen on a slave plantation by a bright young
girl of twenty from Philadelphia. Well do I remember the handsome
planter of commanding form and winning manners who had made my
sister's stay in the family of the Merriwethers so pleasant, and who
at our home in Philadelphia told of his life on the Mississippi. This
was but two or three years before the breaking out of the war. This
same plantation on Island Number Ten was afterwards sown thickly with
the seed of war, shot, and shell. In front of it took place the great
naval b