12 was lain again to make good his retreat into Virginia with a loss of 23,000 in killed and wounded and 6,000 prisoners. The centre of our great line, held by General Rosecrans, was at the same time on the advance. By a beautiful series of flanking movements, that commander drove Bragg from his two powerfully entrenched positions at Shelbyville and Tulahoma, and advancing from this point, planted his army, at one splendid stroke, in the central citadel of the South—Chattanooga. On the coast, the operations were being pushed on with equal vigor. General GillmofS had effected a landing on Morris Island, whence, with his long range seige-guns, he was able to batter down Fort Sumter, leaving that memorable stronghold, whose reduction by the rebels was the first overt act of the war, a mass of ruins. Assisted by the co-operation of the. iron-clad fleet, the works on Morris Island—Forts Wagner and Gregg—were also reduced, and they with their armament fell into our hands. The possession of Morris Island has enabled our fleet ever since to keep up a blockade of Charleston which hermetically seals that place. Leaving out of view the single exception of that brief period during which the Napoleonic war involved all Europe in its conflagration, you will search all history in vain for a parallel of that great battle summer, whether as respects the vastness of the theatre of war, the proportions of the contending forces, or the substantial greatness of the results. During a single period of thirty days embraced in this titanic epoch, not less than sixty thousand prisoners were captured. The losses to the enemy in this respect, added to his prodigious sacrifices in killed and wounded, left the Confederacy at the close of the year bleeding, prostrate, and exhausted. VII. THE FOURTH YEAR OF THE WAR. The opening of the fourth year of the war saw the forces of the rebellion driven from the whole circumference of the Confederacy, and brought to definite pointsjn two armies—the army of Bragg on the mountain ridges south of Chattanooga, and the army of Lex on the Rapidan. The former assailed by General Grant in his mountain fastnesses, saw himself driven from his stronghold, and his arm; broken and routed in the most disastrous defeat since Waterloo. He left in our hands 10,000 prisoners and 60 guns, suffered a loss of 8,000 in killed and wounded, and sought shelter for his shattered force by a disordered retreat to Dalton. ^This review brings the catalogue of Union victories up to the time of the commencement of the great campaign of this summer, the events of which are too fresh in the memory of all to require any detailed recital. During the early days of May ftie two grand armies of the Union, under, the supreme control, of the Lieutenant General commandim all the armies of the United States, began their advance—the on from Chattanooga the other fromthe Rapidan. General Sherman a ;er an advance from Chattanooga, over a hundred miU’, marked »y a series of brilliant manoeuvres and actions s
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