as utterly demoralized and ripe for destruction. But this
army was permitted to escape, and its 19th corps reached Chesapeake Bay
in time to save Washington from General Early's attack, while the 13th,
16th, and 17th corps reenforced Sherman in Georgia. More than all, we
lost Porter's fleet, which the falling river had delivered into our
hands; for the protection of an army was necessary to its liberation, as
without the army a dam at the falls could not have been constructed.
With this fleet, or even a portion of it, we would have at once
recovered possession of the Mississippi, from the Ohio to the sea, and
undone all the work of the Federals since the winter of 1861. Instead of
Sherman, Johnston would have been reenforced from west of the
Mississippi, and thousands of absent men, with fresh hope, would have
rejoined Lee. The Southern people might have been spared the humiliation
of defeat, and the countless woes and wrongs inflicted on them by their
conquerors.

It was for this that Green and Mouton and other gallant spirits fell! It
was for this that the men of Missouri and Arkansas made a forced march
to die at Pleasant Hill! It was for this that the divisions of Walker
and Polignac had held every position intrusted to them, carried every
position in their front, and displayed a constancy and valor worthy of
the Guards at Inkermann or Lee's veterans in the Wilderness! For this,
too, did the handful left, after our brethren had been taken from us,
follow hard on the enemy, attack him constantly at any odds, beat off
and sink his gunboats, close the Red River below him and shut up his
army in Alexandria for fifteen days! Like "Sister Ann" from her watch
tower, day after day we strained our eyes to see the dust of our
approaching comrades arise from the north bank of the Red. Not a camp
follower among us but knew that the arrival of our men from the North
would give us the great prize in sight. Vain, indeed, were our hopes.
The commander of the "Trans-Mississippi Department" had the power to
destroy the last hope of the Confederate cause, and exercised it with
all the success of Bazaine at Metz.

"The affairs of mice and men aft gang aglee," from sheer stupidity and
pig-headed obstinacy. General Kirby Smith had publicly announced that
Banks's army was too strong to be fought, and that the proper policy was
either to defend the works protecting Shreveport, or retreat into Texas.
People do not like to lose their reputa