of incalculable mischief. But the march of Sherman from Atlanta to
the sea, and his northward progress through the Carolinas, had
predisposed the great interior region to make an end of strife: a
tendency which was greatly promoted by the masterly raid of General J.H.
Wilson's cavalry through Alabama, and his defeat of Forrest at Selma.
An officer of Taylor's staff came to Canby's headquarters on April 19 to
make arrangements for the surrender of all the Confederate forces east
of the Mississippi not already paroled by Sherman and Wilson, embracing
some forty-two thousand men. The terms were agreed upon and signed on
May 4, at the village of Citronelle in Alabama. At the same time and
place the Confederate Commodore Farrand surrendered to Rear-Admiral
Thatcher all the naval forces Of the Confederacy in the neighborhood of
Mobile--a dozen vessels and some hundreds of officers.

The rebel navy had practically ceased to exist some months before. The
splendid fight in Mobile Bay on August 5, 1864, between Farragut's fleet
and the rebel ram _Tennessee_, with her three attendant gunboats, and
Cushing's daring destruction of the powerful _Albemarle_ in Albemarle
Sound on October 27, marked its end in Confederate waters. The duel
between the _Kearsarge_ and the _Alabama_ off Cherbourg had already
taken place; a few more encounters, at or near foreign ports, furnished
occasion for personal bravery and subsequent lively diplomatic
correspondence; and rebel vessels, fitted out under the unduly lenient
"neutrality" of France and England, continued for a time to work havoc
with American shipping in various parts of the world. But these two
Union successes, and the final capture of Fort Fisher and of Wilmington
early in 1865, which closed the last haven for daring blockade-runners,
practically silenced the Confederate navy.

General E. Kirby Smith commanded all the insurgent forces west of the
Mississippi. On him the desperate hopes of Mr. Davis and his flying
cabinet were fixed, after the successive surrenders of Lee and Johnston
had left them no prospect in the east. They imagined they could move
westward, gathering up stragglers as they fled, and, crossing the river,
join Smith's forces, and there continue the war. But after a time even
this hope failed them. Their escort melted away; members of the cabinet
dropped off on various pretexts, and Mr. Davis, abandoning the attempt
to reach the Mississippi River, turned again toward th