"You must be right. I think that all the reasons you give apply
together. But our command of the water has surely been a tremendous
help. And then we've got to remember, Dick, that there was never a
navy like ours. It goes everywhere and it does everything. Why, if
Admiral Farragut should tell one of those gunboats to steam across the
Mississippi bottoms it would turn its saucy nose, steer right out of the
water into the mud, and blow up with all hands aboard before it quit
trying."

"You two fellows talk too much," said Pennington. "You won't let
President Lincoln and Grant and Halleck manage the war, but you want to
run it yourselves."

"I don't want to run anything just now, Frank," rejoined Dick. "What I'm
thinking about most is rest and something to eat. I'd like to get rid,
too, of about ten pounds of Mississippi mud that I'm carrying."

"Well, I can catch a glint of white pillars through those trees. It
means the 'big house' of a plantation, and you'll probably find somewhere
back of it the long rows of cabins, inhabited by the dark people, whom
we've come to raise to the level of their masters, if not above them.
I can see right now the joyous welcome we'll receive from the owners of
the big house. They'll be standing on the great piazza, waving Union
flags and shouting to us that they have ready cooling drinks and
luxurious food for us all."

"It's hardly a joke to me. Whatever the cause of the war, it's the
bitterness of death for these people to be overrun. Besides, I remember
the words of that old fellow in the blacksmith shop before we fought the
battle of Stone River. He said that even if they were beaten they'd