which so far had shown more aptness at learning than skill in waging war,
may be said to have passed through its apprenticeship in arms. The
broad plan of operations, intelligently but rudely conceived at the
outset by the greater spirits among our commanders, began to be more
clearly grasped. The political strategy of both contestants made
Virginia the field on which the left wing of the Federal armies pivoted,
while the right swung farther and farther south and east, and the
Confederates gallantly struggled for every foot of territory, yielding
only to the inexorable. This right wing had already possession of the
Mississippi as far south as Vicksburg, around which place Grant was
preparing to tighten his coils; it had occupied the line of the
Tennessee River, and had rendered useless to the Confederates the
railroad from Memphis to Chattanooga, which had been the great central
artery between Richmond and the trans-Mississippi States. The Southern
partisans, with Morgan and Forrest as typical chiefs, had up to this
period played, in the West especially, a very important part. They as
much exceeded our cavalry in enterprise as they had advantage over it in
knowledge of the country and in assistance from its population. They
had on more than one occasion tapped the too long and slender lines of
operation of our foremost armies. They had sent Grant to the right-
about from his first march on Vicksburg, thus neutralizing Sherman's
attempt at Chickasaw Bayou. They had compelled Buell to forfeit his
hardly-earned footing, and to fall back from the Tennessee River to
Louisville at the double-quick in order to beat Bragg in the race
towards the gate of the Northern States, which disaster was happily soon
retrieved by the latter's bloody check before Murfreesborough. Yet,
despite these back-sets, the general course of events showed that
Providence remained on the side of the heaviest battalions; and the
spring of 1863 saw our armies extended from the pivot midway between the
rival capitals in a more or less irregular line, and interrupted by the