uld only try to hold as much country as possible, and occupy as
large a force of the enemy as could be kept in front of us. The
movement against Cheat Mountain, which failed, was undertaken with
a view of causing the enemy to contract his lines, and enable
us to unite the troops under Generals Jackson (of Georgia) and
Loring. After the failure of this movement on our part, General
Rosecrans, feeling secure, strengthened his lines in that part of
the country, and went with a part of his forces to the Kanawha,
driving our forces across the Gauley. General Lee then went to
that line of operations, to endeavor to unite the troops under
Generals Floyd and Wise, and stop the movements under Rosecrans.
General Loring, with a part of his force from Valley Mountain,
joined the forces at Sewell Mountain. Rosecrans's movement was
stopped, and, the season for operations in that country being
over, General Lee was ordered to Richmond, and soon afterward sent
to South Carolina, to meet the movement of the enemy from Port
Royal, etc. He remained in South Carolina until shortly before the
commencement of the campaign before Richmond, in 1862."

The months spent by General Lee in superintending the coast defences
of South Carolina and Georgia, present nothing of interest, and we
shall therefore pass to the spring of 1862, when he returned to
Richmond. His services as engineer had been highly appreciated by the
people of the South, and a writer of the period said: "The time will
yet come when his superior abilities will be vindicated, both to his
own renown and the glory of his country." The time was now at hand
when these abilities, if the individual possessed them, were to have
an opportunity to display themselves.

XII.

LEE'S LAST INTERVIEW WITH BISHOP MEADE.

A touching incident of Lee's life belongs to this time--the early
spring of 1862. Bishop Meade, the venerable head of the Episcopal
Church in Virginia, lay at the point of death, in the city of
Richmond. When General Lee was informed of the fact, he exhibited
lively emotion, for the good bishop, as we have said in the
commencement of this narrative, had taught him his catechism when he
was a boy in Alexandria. On the day before the bishop's death. General
Lee called in the morning to see him, but such was the state of
prostration under which the sick man labored, that only a few of his
most intimat