1@ clearly seen that could these rivers be forced, the great rebel strongholds at Columbus and Bowling Green would be taken in reverse and their evacuation made a matter of absolute compulsion. But these rivers was barred by two strong works—Fort Henry on the Tennesee and Fort Donelson on the Cumberland. The former fell a prey to the gallantry of Foote’s naval attack, surrendering on the 6th of February, with its armament of sixty guns. A wee^after the surrender of Fort Henry, General Grant drew his lines of investment around Fort Donelson, and after a conflict running through four days and nights, and rendered memorable by the hardest fighting that yet'occurred in the war, the rebels were forced to accede to General Grant’s demands for that 4‘ unconditional-surrender ” which has become so inseparably associated with his name. The surrender included fifteen thousand prisoners and forty pieces of artillery. The fall of Forts Donelson and Henry promptly produced its anticipated effect Columbus, which the rebels had styled the “ Gibraltar of America,” was immediately abandoned. At the same time Johnston evacuated his intrenched position at Bowling Green and falling back to Nashville, or rather through Nashville, (for the opening of the Cumberland to our gunboats which resulted from the fall of the fort made Nashville untenable;) General Buell, whose army had been threatening the rebel force at Bowing Green, immediately- followed up and took possession of that city. Thus it was that by the magnifi cent series of successes that illustrated the spring of 1862, the rebel line on a stretch of over five hundred miles was pushed back from the Ohio to the Cumberland and Che whole state of Kentucky and a third of Tennessee were recovered to the dominions of the Union. Simultaneous with these operations the waters of the Mississippi were lit up by the splendors of Farragut’s astonishing combat below New Orleans with the forts, gunboats, steam rams, floating batteries, fire rafts, obstructions, booms and chains which the rebels had prepared for the defense of the great metropolis of the gulf, ending ih the fall of that city, whose capture the London Times, doubting, with its usual cynicism its possibility, had declared would be w putting the toumequet on the main artery of the confederacy.” After their retreat from Columbus the rebels under Folk took up a new position on the Mississippi at Island No. Ten. This stronghold was able for many weeks able to hold out against all the Operations directed against it, till finally the gunboats run the gauntlet of the batteries and the stronghold with a hundred heavy guns fell into our hands. From this point they fell back to Memphis only to be compelled to abandon that city which in June following came under oon- trol of the Union forces. After the retreat of the central army of the rebellion from Nashville, it took up a strongly fortified position at Corinth, under Beauregard. There he was beseiged by the Union army under Halleck, whose siege operations, pushed on to such a point as to make the capture of the whole force a matter of high probability, compelled the evacuation of this position also. The result of the victories of 1862 was thus to leave the situation in this gratifying positions Butler was at New Orleans, Curtis was pushing his way to Little Rock, the capital of । Arkansas, the chief points on the coast was in our hands, HaBeek was at Corinth, the Union
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