irginia it had
so long and valiantly defended. Meade followed with alert but prudent
vigilance, but did not again find such chances as he lost on the fourth
of July, or while the swollen waters of the Potomac held his enemy as in
a trap. During the ensuing autumn months there went on between the
opposing generals an unceasing game of strategy, a succession of moves
and counter-moves in which the opposing commanders handled their great
armies with the same consumate skill with which the expert
fencing-master uses his foil, but in which neither could break through
the other's guard. Repeated minor encounters took place which, in other
wars, would have rated as heavy battles; but the weeks lengthened into
months without decisive results, and when the opposing armies finally
went into winter quarters in December, 1863, they again confronted each
other across the Rapidan in Virginia, not very far south of where they
lay in the winter of 1861.

XXVII

Buell and Bragg--Perryville--Rosecrans and Murfreesboro--Grant's
Vicksburg Experiments--Grant's May Battles--Siege and Surrender of
Vicksburg--Lincoln to Grant--Rosecrans's March to Chattanooga--Battle of
Chickamauga--Grant at Chattanooga--Battle of Chattanooga--Burnside at
Knoxville--Burnside Repulses Longstreet

From the Virginia campaigns of 1863 we must return to the Western
campaigns of the same year, or, to be more precise, beginning with the
middle of 1862. When, in July of that year, Halleck was called to
Washington to become general-in-chief, the principal plan he left behind
was that Buell, with the bulk of the forces which had captured Corinth,
should move from that place eastward to occupy eastern Tennessee. Buell,
however, progressed so leisurely that before he reached Chattanooga the
Confederate General Bragg, by a swift northward movement, advanced into
eastern Kentucky, enacted the farce of appointing a Confederate governor
for that State, and so threatened Louisville that Buell was compelled
abruptly to abandon his eastward march and, turning to the north, run a
neck-and-neck race to save Louisville from rebel occupation. Successful
in this, Buell immediately turned and, pursuing the now retreating
forces of Bragg, brought them to bay at Perryville, where, on October 8,
was fought a considerable battle from which Bragg immediately retreated
out of Kentucky.

While on one hand Bragg had suffered defeat, he had on the other caused
Buell to give up all