fire in front, until suddenly Colonel Dumont's men, having scaled the bluff, appeared on the right, and poured in a volley. The appearance of our troops there was the signal for a retreat, and the enemy instantly broke up in rout and disorder, precipitately flying from the field.

Our regiments and artillery then crossed the river in hot pursuit. At a distance of a quarter of a mile the road again crosses the stream, and General Garnett sought in vain to rally his troops at this point. Major Gordon of the Seventh Indiana led the advance, and soon reached the spot where General Garnett, on the opposite side of the river, was endeavoring to rally his forces around him. Gordon called upon Captain Ferry's company, and ordered them to fire. The rebels greeted Major Gordon with one volley and fled. General Garnett turned to call his men, and motioned them back, but al in vain. At this moment, Sergeant Burlingame, of Captain Ferry's company, raised his piece, took aim, and fired. General Garnett fell backward, his head lying towards our forces, and with open mouth, as though gasping for breath. He uttered not a groan, and when Major Gordon reached him, a few moments afterwards, he was just expiring. The Major stooped down, tenderly closed his eyes, disposed his limbs, and left a guard of loyal soldiers around him to protect all that remained of the chivalrous and honored, but mistaken leader of Western Virginia.

Every Virginian among the followers of this gallant man fled, and left him to fall and expire alone. But a young soldier wearing the Georgia uniform and button, sprang to his side, only to share his fate, for a musket shot answered this devotion with death, and he fell side by side with his commander. The Federal troops, even in the glow of victory, stopped to pay a tribute of respect to this generous youth. They placed a board at his grave and cut rudely upon it, "A brave fellow, who shared his General's fate and fell fighting by his side. Name unknown."

The loss of our troops was killed, two; wounded, twelve. The enemy lost eight on the field, three died in hospital, and ten others were wounded. A large number of. prisoners were taken, including six Georgia captains and lieutenants, a surgeon, and a number of noncommissioned officers. Beside prisoners, there were also captured two stands of colors, one rifled cannon, forty loaded wagons, hundreds of muskets and side arms, with other effects of various kinds.

This action is honorable in the highest degree to all engaged in it. They had pursued and overtaken an enemy who had twelve hours advance; they had made a forced march of nearly thirty miles in less than twenty-four hours, over the worst of roads, and with scarcely any food, some of the men having been without nourishment for thirty-six hours. They then fought a battle, cut off the enemy's baggage train, captured

their cannon, routed their army, and found themselves in full possession of the field. The day and the event will ever be memorable, and Ohio and Indiana may well be proud of their sons.

The remainder of General Garnett's army effected their escape through the Cheat Mountain Gap, which was seized and fortified by General McClellan. In these two engagements 150 of the enemy were killed, 300 wounded, upwards of 1000 prisoners were taken, and nearly all their war material fell into the hands of the victors.

The loyal troops were too much exhausted by the incessant labors and privations of their three days' struggle to pursue the scattered and dispirited enemy any further through the mountains, and went into camp at Huttonville and Laurel Hill, to await the next call to duty. General McClellan closed his dispatch of July 14th, with the words, "I firmly believe that secession is killed in this section of the country.” During the battle an incident illustrating the coolness, bravery and generosity of Colonel Lander towards a brave foeman occurred, that deserves honorable mention. The horse of the Colonel had been shot from under him, and he, dismounted, had taken his stand upon a rock directly in front of a rebel gun. Discharging musket after musket, as fast as they could be loaded for him, he remained a noted mark for the enemy to shoot at. At a short distance, all the men belonging to a cannon of the Confederates had been shot down or fled, and their Lieutenant was undauntedly serving and firing it, single-handed. Three times had it belched forth flame and ball, when Colonel Lander, noticing the bravery of the man, called out to him

"If you fire that gun again you are a dead man!"

"Sir, I shall fire it as long as I have life in my body!" was the cool, fearless and curt reply.

This was an instance of noble courage well calculated to be appre ciated by a true soldier, and the Union Colonel, leaping from the rock, shouted to his men

"Boys, that is too brave a man for me to kill.”

On the 21st of July the Federal army under General McDowell, having suffered severely, and retreated from Manassas, General McClellan, who by his achievements had earned a brilliant prestige, was ordered, on the 22d, to Washington, to take command of the Department of the Potomac, and General Rosecranz was appointed to succeed him in the Department of the Ohio.

THE WEST.

Comprehended within the boundaries of that noble portion of our country called "The West," is a people who can justly claim to be not only of the best muscle and nerve of the land, but second to none in intellectual vigor and sterling integrity of character. A single thought tells us how just this claim is. The West was settled by the picked men and women of the old States. When the sloping-roofed farmhouses of New England became too circumscribed for the sons and daughters that filled them, the most enterprising members of a household left the rest to till the homestead acres while they went forth into the wilderness to cut the forest trees away, and let sunshine into the shadowy bosom of the woods, to build their log cabins in the first clearing, and so work out a sure independence for themselves, as they became benefactors to the world.

In the end both position and wealth followed these daring pioneers. As the roving Indian slowly retreated from the frontier which was stretching westward every hour, sweeping the wilderness away with it, he found the rich earth lavish of her returns for his self-sacrifice and his labor. He drank in enlargement of thought and purpose from amid the luxuriant prairies and vast wilderness which spread its untrodden bosom between his home and the Rocky Mountains. He watched the Father of Rivers cleaving the best portions of a continent with his broad waters, and drank in lessons of true freedom which will never lose their value to his descendants. With a rifle for his companion and an axe for his best friend, the backwoodsman of America learned the art of border warfare, and trained himself in a school of hardship that made his sinews firm as iron and capable of resisting any fatigue.

With hearts and minds expanding with the boundless scenes around them, these adventurous men grew so careless of danger that the word fear was blotted from their lexicon long before the present generation came into existence.

Is it strange that the descendants of such men should be open-handed, grand-hearted and brave, as we have found them in this war for our common Union? The enthusiasm of the old men who have dropped quietly away into their western graves, has broken forth anew in this younger generation. Like a spark of fire dropped upon a prairie in the autumn, their enthusiasm is easily enkindled. A single word against the old flag, one sacrilegious touch upon its flag-staff, was enough to rouse them into action. Nowhere on earth is the stars and stripes held more sacred than in the West. The first ball that cut through the flag

at Fort Sumter aroused the old pioneer blood into determined and terrible resistance.

The history of the Mexican war is a record of what western men can do on the battle-field-charges at which even their countrymen who knew them wondered-sufferings patiently endured, marches that taxed the strongest-all these things have proved of what true metal the West is made. With war-wreaths dyed in blood at Cerro Gordo, baptized in fire at Chapultepec, and rendered immortal at Buena Vista, these men were not likely to see their own Government turned upon without rising as one man to defend it.

Through the golden grain and the rustling corn-fields of the West, the news of the bombardment of Sumter, the attack at Baltimore, and the call of the President, rushed like one of its own tornadoes from city to village, from farm-house to cabin. The news ran and the answer came thunder-toned. The old man took down his rifle from the antler bracket on the cabin wall. His son left the plow in its furrow, and all classes and conditions of men came forward with brave hearts and ready hands, and laid them on the altar of their country.

The watchfires of freedom were kindled, and on every hill and through the valleys poured a tide of armed men, unconquerable and resistless. These western men took the field, ready at once for the deadly strife. Their entire lives had been one incessant training for the hardships and dangers of war. They had but one regret-that their march was against brothers armed against the nation-all else was merged in the glorious thought that they, the very children of liberty, had the power to yield up everything, even life, and home, that a great country should be maintained in every inch of its soil and every right of its people.

Long had the great West toiled to feed the starving nations of the earth. Long had she poured from her overflowing storehouses countless millions of food into the waiting lap of the needy manufacturing countries. From her great wealth of food she had always been ready to feed the world. When the war-cry aroused her, she was just as strong and just as prompt to fight the world. The national honor was hers to reverence and avenge. The old flag-its emblem and its glory—who should spring to its rescue if not the West? Did not a chain of crystal lakes crown her at the north, clasped together by the eternal emeralds of Niagara? Was not the Mississippi, her great highway to the gulf, a mighty thoroughfare, which no force should wrest from her while she had power to hold its banks with serried walls of steel? Was this river, the pathway of her greatness, one source of her renown, to be blocked up while she could cleave her own mountains asunder, and force them to give forth iron for gunboats, or gather lead from her bosom to mould into bullets? Not while these people could turn their

workshops into manufactories of war-missiles, and their prairie steeds into chargers, should an enemy-brother or stranger-take one right from the West by force. This was the stern resolve of our pioneer men when the war-trumpet rang over the prairies of the West, and quick to act as prompt to resolve, her people arose as one man. There was no cavil about trifles then. Her fertile fields were stripped of their wealth, and her prairies of their cattle to furnish food-not alone to furnish food for themselves, but for the armies of the East. Soon her rivers swarmed with iron-clad gunboats, and her railways became military roads-her cities tented fields, her palaces recruiting offices, her cabins free homes for soldiers when their faces turned toward the war.

The West was impatient of nothing but delay-but she chafed wildly at any obstacle that impeded the progress of her armies.

How well 'these men have fought, and with what heroism they have suffered, let the record we are about to make of Henry, Donelson, Pittsburgh Landing, and many another bravely contested point, answer. Let the noble hearts stilled in death, and countless graves upon which the tender grass is now springing, answer.

With battle songs on their lips they marched away from their homes, with battle cries upon their lips many of them fell gloriously, never to see those homes again. If the West has been brave in war, so will she prove generous when Peace shall come. The nation they have helped to save, and those in revolt, when true brotherhood comes back, will yet give the West a monument worthy of its fame.

MISSOURI.

The geographical position of Missouri is such, that if thrown into the scale, she would weigh heavily either for or against the Union. When the war broke out her people were divided, though the majority were believed to be loyal to the Constitution; and when the Governor refused to meet the requisition of the President for troops to sustain the national flag, Hon. Frank P. Blair and other prominent citizens of the State, replied, on their personal responsibility, that the quota of four regiments should be raised, without either the aid of the Governor or his consent. In order to give character and legality to their proceedings, and to guard against the power of the State rulers, Captain Nathaniel Lyon, of the United States army, then in command of the Arsenal at St. Louis, was directed by the Government, on the 30th of April, to enrol in the military service of the United States, from the loyal citizens of the city and vicinity, 10,000 men, for the purpose of maintaining the authority of the Government-for the protection of the peaceable in