Memphis. Eight
of their fighting craft were strongly built and heavily armored,
though very deficient in speed. The Federal flotilla was very well
manned by first-class naval ratings, and was reinforced early in
June by seven fast new rams, commanded by their designer, Colonel
Charles Ellet, a famous civil engineer.

At sunrise on the lovely sixth of June the Federal flotilla, having
overcome the Confederate posts farther north and being joined by
Ellet's rams, lay near Memphis. The Confederates came upstream to
the attack, expecting to ram the gunboats in the stern as they
had at Fort Pillow. But Ellet suddenly darted down on the eight
Confederate ironclads, caught one of them on the broadside, sank
her, and disabled two others. The action then became general. The
overmatched Confederates kept up a losing battle for more than an
hour, in full view of many thousands of ardent Southerners ashore.
The scene, at its height, was appalling. The smoke, belching black
from the funnels and white from the guns, made a suffocating pall
overhead; while the dark, squat, hideous ironclad hulls seemed to
have risen from a submarine inferno to stab each other with livid
tongues of flame--so deadly close the two flotillas fought. When
the awful hour was over the Confederates were not only defeated but
destroyed; and a wail went up from the thousands of their anguished
friends, as if the very shores were mourning.

For the next month Grant held the command at Memphis. Then, on
the eleventh of July, Halleck was recalled to Washington as
General-in-Chief of the whole army; while Pope was transferred to
Virginia. The Federal invasion of Virginia under that "Young Napoleon,"
McClellan, had not been a success against Lee and Stonewall Jackson.
Nor did it improve with Pope at the front and Halleck in the rear,
as we shall presently see; though Halleck had declared that Pope's
operations at Island Number Ten were destined to immortal fame, and
Pope himself admitted his own greatness in sundry proclamations
to the world.

The campaign now entered its second phase. The Virginian wing (of
the whole front reaching from the Mississippi to the sea) was checked
this summer; and was to remain more or less checked for many a long
day. The river wing, under the general direction of Halleck, had
also reached its limit for '62 about the same time, after having
conquered Kentucky and western Tennessee as well as the Mississippi
down to Memphis.