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.