through the heart of Georgia on the other it might as well have
been a shipless island. The same was true of all Confederate places
beyond Virginia and the Carolinas. The last shots were fired in
Texas near the middle of May. But they were as futile against the
course of events as was the final act of war committed by the
Confederate raider _Shenandoah_ at the end of June, when she sank
the whaling fleet, far off in the lone Pacific.

For the last two months of the four-years' war Davis made Lee
Commander-in-Chief. Lee at once restored Johnston to his rightful
place. These two great soldiers then did what could be done to
stave off Grant and Sherman. Lee's and Johnston's problem was of
course insoluble. For each was facing an army which was alone a
match for both. The only chance of prolonging anything more than a
mere guerilla war was to join forces in southwest Virginia, where
the only line of rails was safe from capture for the moment. But this
meant eluding Grant and Sherman; and these two leaders would never
let a plain chance slip. They took good care that all Confederate
forces outside the central scene of action were kept busy with
their own defense. They also closed in enough men from the west
to prevent Lee and Johnston escaping by the mountains. Then, with
the help of the navy, having cut off every means of escape--north,
south, east, and west--they themselves closed in for the death-grip.

By the first of February Sherman was on his way north through the
Carolinas with sixty thousand picked men, drawing in reinforcements
as he advanced against Johnston's dwindling forty thousand, until
the thousands that faced each other at the end in April were ninety
and thirty respectively. On the ninth of February (the day Lee
became Commander-in-Chief) Sherman was crossing the rails between
Charleston and Augusta, of course destroying them. A week later he
was doing the same at Columbia in the middle of South Carolina.
By this time his old antagonist, Johnston, had assumed command;
so that he had to reckon with the chances of a battle, as on his
way against Atlanta, and not only with the troubles of devastating
an undefended base, as on his march to the sea. The difficulties of
hard marching through an enemy country full of natural and artificial
obstacles were also much greater here than in Georgia. How well these
difficulties could be surmounted by a veteran army may be realized
from a recorded instance which, thoug