every hour he hopes for Sherman's corps. But four hundred miles are just as long when in our impatience we would annihilate distance as when we move reluctantly to some undesired goal.

But such desire leaves its mark. "If I should die to-day," wrote Nelson to the admiralty, "Want of frigates' would be found engraven on my heart."

As Sherman approaches nearer to Chattanooga, Grant's solicitude increases. He is picking out the best roads, and would doubtless level all the hills and fill up the valleys to make smooth travelling, and bring in his army in fine condition. in fine condition. On the 10th he writes, “I learn that by the way of New Market and Maysville you will avoid the heavy mountains, and find abundance of forage. If a part of your command is now at Winchester, and a part back, that portion behind had better be turned on the New-market route.”

The preparations, which had been made on a gigantic scale, were about completed, and the drama was soon to open. The numbers to be engaged in the coming battle, the transcendent interests involved, the natural grandeur of the scene of the great contest, would forever render it one of the most memorable battles in the annals of our country.

CHAPTER XIX.

G

PREPARATIONS AT CHATTANOOGA.

EN. GRANT'S department was truly an im

perial domain. As we have seen, it included ten States, covering nearly half a million square miles, and comprised more than eleven millions of people. It stretched from Lake Superior to Louisiana, and from Pennsylvania to the Valley of the Mississippi. It is not an exaggeration to say, that, during this time, there was scarcely a corner of this vast region, which, directly or indirectly, was not stirred by the preparations of the campaign. The cattle on a thousand hills were moving to feed the army; a million hands were at work to clothe it, furnaces glowed by night and day. The railroads from Lake Erie to Natchez toiled hourly with their enormous labor. The Mississippi, the Ohio, the Tennessee, the Cumberland Rivers, were crowded with fleets of steamers loaded with all the munitions of war; and tens of thousands of soldiers, who were to decide the contest, were winding in long lines over mountain and plain, but all marching to the field of glory or the grave of honor.

And the man whose active brain and indomitable will are organizing and directing this vast and complicated

machinery is apparently all unconscious of his power. He looks sober; talks but little to any one. Not yet recovered from his recent accident, he limps around Chattanooga, smoking a brier-wood pipe, wearing a blouse and slouched hat. He often rides off to study the country, taking one or two of his staff with him; but with no plumed troops, and flying pennons, and gorgeous pageantry of war. But the inexorable will, the fixed purpose to do or die, are all there.

66

Sherman arrived at Chattanooga on the morning of the 15th in advance of his column, having reached Bridgeport the night previous. Grant, Sherman, and Thomas rode out on the high ground on the north of the Tennessee, whence the tents of the enemy and the whole theatre of operations were in full view, “a mighty amphitheatre, where the actors were nearly ready to assume their parts, with distant mountains for spectators; while cloud-capped hills, and valleys shrouded in mist that was lifted to display the movements of armies, formed the stage.'

Europe

It was indeed a vast natural colosseum. does not offer so grand a battle-field from Gibraltar to Moscow. It resembled more those granite gates of Greece of which fame has told us for two thousand years, where Leonidas and the three hundred sons of Sparta waited all night to offer up their lives with the morning's sun.

Here Sherman was shown the eastern extremity of Missionary Ridge, which he was to attack. He entered at once with enthusiasm into all Grant's plans, and, the

* Badeau.