from the government, and in the progress of events had now become
the next in natural order. Grant and Farragut were of the same
mind; but other ideas had arisen, and now the government, anxious
to avert the impending risk of European complications, deemed it
of the first importance that the flag of the nation should, without
delay, be restored at some point in Texas. The place and the plan
were left discretionary with Banks, but peremptory orders were
given him to carry out the object.(2)

Texas had no military value at that moment. To have overrun the
whole State would hardly have shortened the war by a single day.
The possession of Mobile, on the other hand, would, besides its
direct consequences, have exercised an important if not a vital
influence upon the critical operations in the central theatre of
war; would have taken from the Confederates their only remaining
line of railway communication between the Atlantic seaboard and
the States bordering on the Mississippi; would have weakened the
well-nigh fatal concentration against Rosecrans at Chickamauga and
Chattanooga; would have eased the hard task of Sherman in his
progress to Atlanta; and would have given him a safe line of retreat
in the event of misfortune. What was it, then, that persuaded the
government to put aside its designs on Mobile, to give up the
offensive, to refrain from gathering the fruits of its successes
on the Mississippi, in order to embark in the pursuit of objects
avowedly "other than military"?

A series of acts and events, more or less menacing in character,
seemed to indicate a concerted purpose on the part of some, at
least, of the leading nations of Europe to interfere in the domestic
affairs of the United States against the government of the United
States. The powerful rams, intended for the recapture of New
Orleans, that were being almost openly built to the order of the
Confederacy in the port of Liverpool, in the very shipyards whence
the _Alabama_ had gone to sea, were approaching completion. Other
iron-clads, not less powerful, were under construction in France,
with the personal connivance of the Emperor, under the flimsy
pretence that they were intended for the imperial government of
China. Finally, on the 10th of June, casting all promises and
pretexts to the winds, the French troops had marched into the
capital of Mexico, made themselves masters of the country, vamped
up a sham throne, and upon it set an Austrian p