stretching away from the Potomac to the Sierra
Madre, in Mexico, and swallowing up all tropical America in one mighty
nation, devoted to the interests of cotton and slavery alone, over
which they should reign, were not yet satisfied to relinquish their
cause as desperate, and abandon their glorious dreams. With a
wonderful energy that must command our admiration, though it be only
of the kind that is accorded to Satan as pictured in "Paradise Lost,"
they passed the conscription law, abandoned the posts they still held
on the frontier, and concentrated their forces on a shorter line of
defence.

The eastern part of this line extended from Richmond, through
Lynchburg, to East Tennessee. In the west, it was represented by the
Memphis and Charleston Railroad, extending from Memphis, through
Corinth, Huntsville, Chattanooga, and Atlanta, to Charleston. Here
they poured forward their new levies, and began to prepare for another
desperate contest.

The unaccountable inertness of the Eastern army of the Union, under
McClellan, gave them time to strengthen their defences, and reinforce
their army, which had dwindled to a very low ebb during the winter.
But while the commander of the East was planning strategy that, by the
slowness of its development, if by nothing _worse_, was destined to
dim the lustre of the Union triumphs, and lose the results of a year
of war, the West was in motion. Down the Mississippi swept our
invincible fleet, with an army on shore to second its operations. Up
the Tennessee steamed Grant's victorious army, and Buell, with forty
thousand men, was marching across the State of Tennessee, to reach the
same point. My own division, under the lamented General O. M. Mitchel,
was also marching across the State, but in a different direction,
having Chattanooga as its ultimate aim, while Morgan, with another
strong force, many of whom were refugees from East Tennessee, lay
before Cumberland Gap, ready to strike through that fastness to
Knoxville, and thus reach the very heart of rebellion.

To meet these powerful forces, whose destination he could not
altogether foresee, Beauregard, who commanded in the west,
concentrated his main army at Corinth, with smaller detachments
scattered along the railroad to Chattanooga. The railroads on which he
relied for supplies and reinforcements, as well as for communication
with the eastern portion of rebeldom, formed an irregular
parallelogram, of which the northern side e