11 flag waved over Memphis and Nashville, while Mitehell in Alabama was advancing from victory to victory. This was glory enough for one year, for if we turn our eye to the theatre of war in the East, we are presented with the spectacle of a campaign towards Richmond, in which the finest qualities of heroism in the army, gaining victories wherever it met the armed enemy, and driving him back to his capital were neutralized and rendered fruitless by &e imbecility of its head. Turning upon McClellan, Lee terminated the offensive campaign by himself assuming the initiative, and carrying his army for the first time into the territory of the loyal States. The issue was at length tried out at Antietem, where the absence of directing generalship could not prevent our soldiers from winning a victory of which their commander had nqt the capacity to take advantage. Neveitheless, the first invasion of the rebels ended disastrously by their retreat into Virginia. VI. THE THIRD YEAR OF THE WAR—THE BATTLE SUMMER. The first day of the third year of the war (1863) was signalized by the battle of Stone River or Murfreesboro, fought by General Rosecrans on the Union side and by Bragg on the part of the rebels. The most desperate battle of the war up to that period, it inaugurated the year of great actions by an engagement which resulted in. placing our army in Murfreesboro, with the prodigious loss to the enemy of 14,560 men. This was to bedbllowed up from this base by a brilliant campaign in Tennessee, destined to culminate in the possession of Chattanooga, which had long been recognized by military heads as the key to the whole theatre of war in the West. In the meanwhile General Grant was drawing his lines of investment around the last great stronghold of the rebels on the Mississippi, at Vicksburg. After many attempts against this point, he finally, by an audacious stroke of strategy, unparalleled save by Napoleon’s passage of the Splugen, crossed his army over the Mississippi at Grand Gulf, and, dividing the army of Johnston from the possibility of reinforcing the garrison at Vicksburg, beat the rebels in half a dozen battles, and ended by throwing his army as a besieging force around this position. The siege of Vicksburg will take its place in history as among the most wonderful engineering operations on record. It was crowned by its unconditional surrender on the. 4th of July, with 31,720 prisoners and 234 guns. At the same time the garrison at Port Hudson surrendered to General Banks, thus adding 7,000 prisoners and 40 pieces of artillery to the account. The effect of these two victories was to restore the national authority along the whole vast stretch of the Mississippi, and that great continental highway was thrown open to its embouchure in the Gulf of Mexico. At the very time that the right wing of our immense line of battle, stretching from the Potomac to the Mississippi, was thus engaged, its left wing, the army of the Potomac, was manoeuvering to meet Lee’s second invasion of the loyal States. The rebel army was brought to bay at length at Gettysburg where a three days battle, the most colossal of the war was fought, ending in the utter defeat of Lee8 who
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