For, proud and dashing as the Louisiana Tigers and Texan Rangers
prove, steady and vindictive the rugged Mississippians, dogged and
undaunted the Georgians, fierce the Alabamans--the honest candor
of Valois tells him no human valor can excel the never-yielding
Western troops. Their iron courage honors the blue-clad men of Iowa,
Michigan, and the Lake States. No hired foreigners there; no helot
immigrants these men, whose glittering bayonets shine in the
lines of Corinth, as steadily as the spears of the old Tenth Roman
Legion--Caesar's pets.

With unproclaimed chivalry and a readiness to meet the foe
which tells its own story, the Western men come on. Led by Grant,
Sherman, Rosecrans, Sheridan, Thomas, McPherson, and Logan, they
press steadily toward the heart of the Confederacy. The rosy dreams
of empire in the great West fade away. Farragut, Porter, and the
giant captain, Grant, cut off the Trans-Mississippi from active
military concert with the rest of the severed Confederacy.

To and fro rolls the red tide of war. Valois' soldierly face,
bronzed with service, shows only the steady devotion of the soldier.
He loves the cause--once dear in its promise--now sacred in its
hours of gloomy peril and incipient decadence. Gettysburg, Vicksburg,
and Port Hudson are terrible omens of a final day of gloom. Letters
from his wife, reports from Judge Hardin, and news from the Western
shores give him only vague hints of the future straggling efforts
on the Pacific. The only comforting tidings are that his wife and
child are well, by the peaceful shores of Lagunitas. The absence
of foreign aid, the lack of substantial support from the Northern
sympathizers, and the slight hold on the ocean of the new government,