A Friendly Caution.

251

speed you. I have no fears of the result. I notice how publicly you praise Will you pardon a friend for observing that he is on the staff of the general who holds you back and ignores you. These engineer officers are puffed up with a contempt for the Navy, and have all their lives been trying to prove impossible what you have demonstrated possible, viz., to attack forts successfully with vessels. If I did not feel for you sincere admiration and friendship, and have your reputation most dear to me, I should not beg of you to be careful and not lavish praise upon any person in your dispatches, unless for distinguished conduct that must also be apparent to those who are distant from the scene. I don't know how the mail now is between here and Cairo, but it has been bad; and Mr. Blair has sent out two agents to right matters. We all feel proud of your work, attained without the efficient co-operation of any one, which renders your labors the more faithful. If you do rain 13-inch shells upon them, be sure to give us full particulars early. "Very truly yours,

"Flag-Officer A. H. Foote."

G. V. Fox.

We have noticed, and shall notice frequently hereafterwhat it would be folly to ignore-the soreness that Foote felt at what he considered the great injustice done him, and the false position in which he was placed by those high in command, whose sympathies were wholly given to the other arm of the service-the Army. He had, indeed, come to the decision to obey no more orders issuing from Army officers. The Secretary, whose watchful eye was over the Navy, and who exercised a judicious rule of its affairs, notices with anxiety the development of this feeling, and cautions him against it. Mr. Welles says to him in a letter dated May 7th:

Step by step I have watched your proceedings, and marked the persistency, patience, and determination, under many and great discouragements, with which yourself and those associated with you have met and surmounted every difficulty. Rest assured the country knows and justly appreciates your services. I am confident you will permit no jealous feeling, or any appearance of such feeling, against our branch of the service to annoy you; and I trust that it will at no time be cause of embarrassment. Under your orders and acts the Navy has vindicated its charac

ter before the country, and contributed its full share in planting again the Union standard, and restoring the Union feeling in the great central valley. The rapid and successive blows you have struck with such effect have electrified the nation, and animated our people with higher hopes than I have before witnessed since the outbreak of this rebellion. This very hasty letter I have written, and so send it because of inexcusable delay in saying to you privately and as an old schoolmate-'Friend, how gratified I have been and am with what you have done.'"

CHAPTER XX.

THE MISSISSIPPI AS THE SCENE OF OPERATIONS.-GENERAL POPE'S

MOVEMENTS AT NEW MADRID.

ORDER.

CHARACTERISTIC

CORRESPONDENCE.

THE two gun-boats Taylor and Lexington had been sent by the commodore back to the Tennessee River, to guard captured posts and to act as patrols in preventing the enemy from erecting new fortifications upon the shores. A spirited little engagement took place at Pittsburg, Tennessee, on the 1st of March, and another at Chickasaw, Alabama, at a later date, between the gun-boats and small detachments of the enemy's troops, who were attempting to fortify at those places, resulting in the breaking up of their plans, and showing the ability of the iron-clads not only to open the river, but to keep it open. But the vessels belonging to the Western flotilla were now called to a greater achievement-to unlock the Mississippi itself, that it might be a free stream in all its vast

extent.

The Mississippi has been frequently described, but we doubt if any powers of description would be equal to convey an impression of this "Great River," as its name signifies. The words of the Psalmist occur to one as he sails upon its broad bosom: "Thou visitest the earth and waterest it; thou greatly enrichest it with the river of God, which is full of water. Thou preparest the corn and wine when thou hast so provided for it." It rolls along its exhaustless abundance of water like a sea, through territories of boundless agricultural wealth, while hundreds of cities, some of them already of considerable magnitude, and many of them destined to be densely populated, stud

its banks. When one is at St. Paul, in Minnesota, with a great river still above him, there are more than two thousand miles of river below him; and that part of it which is called the "Upper Mississippi," from Dubuque to St. Paul, where the water is clear and pure, is equal in some respects to the Rhine or the Danube in beauty, and will hereafter be visited and built upon for its noble scenery. At St. Louis, a thousand miles and more above its mouth, and at points where was the chief scene of operations of "Foote's Flotilla," the river at places is more than two miles wide, turbid with the yellow flood of the muddy Missouri, and strong in current with the mingled force of two mighty streams. It is a thoroughly masculine river, an impetuously rolling and uncontrollable flood, sometimes devouring in its insatiate, destructive will large sections of the land, and changing its channel at pleasure. Its banks are like those of the Nile-mud-banks that break off suddenly, not slope off gradually—and one can frequently see great masses of soil detaching themselves and falling into the river. For hundreds of miles continuously there is sometimes nothing but forest-sombre, almost impenetrable primeval forest; and through such as this the men of Foote and Pope had to hew their way at Island No. Ten. The broad current at times separates into three or four channels, now chafing the foot of high bluffs on one side, and losing itself on the other in swampy forests or bayous, in whose endless vistas the eye vainly wanders. Upon the shores of this river an empire is growing, and the dullest mind can see that in the future the great rivers of the East-the Nile, the Euphrates, and the Ganges-will be equaled, perhaps surpassed, in what will probably be here realized in the populousness and magnitude of its magnificent states. It is now comparatively without a history-it runs for hundreds of miles through almost savage and unrecorded wildernesses; but already, since the last war, it is becoming an historic river, and a human inter

est, romantic and powerful, is blending with the majesty of its natural features. New Orleans, Vicksburg, Island No. Ten, have fastened the charm of valor, faith, and patient endurance, for the sake of great principles and the interests of humanity, upon its shores.

Henceforth-to return to our narrative-the short remaining active career of Commodore Foote is confined to his unremitting efforts to clear away the forts and barriers that the enemy had placed upon this pathway of the nation, which the West had decreed should be free, and had consecrated to freedom forever. He expected to do this with his own fleet. He declared more than once that he intended to descend the Mississippi to its mouth; and this accounts for the deliberateness of all his preparations for a task that he knew, better than others, was so great. He fairly began this work, which was finished by Farragut, together with the blows of Grant at Vicksburg, so that the names of the two naval heroes must hereafter be associated with the mighty stream which they were instrumental in opening anew to freedom, sweeping away every obstruction upon its broad waters. He was not permitted to do all he wished to do, but what he did was genuine work, and was what gave the impulse to final complete success.

After Columbus was made untenable by the breaking up of the first line of the Southern defense, or, in view of this anticipated event, the rebel leaders had pitched upon a position some forty miles below, on the river, at the now famous Island No. Ten, which they fortified with every device of military engineering skill, under the immediate personal supervision of General Beauregard, who had been then recently appointed to the command of the Department of Mississippi.

Island No. Ten* is situated at the turn of a long bend in the

* Below the mouth of the Ohio River the islands in the Mississippi are designated by successive numbers.