ridge, Wetzel, Marshall, Ohio, Brooke, and Hancock. A provision was incorporated permitting certain adjoining counties to come in if they should desire, by expression of a majority of their people to do so. The infinite absurdity was committed at Washington, of acknowledging as the State of Virginia a band of disaffected counties; and the Federal government, although conducting its war on the theory that the withdrawal of the States from the Union was heresy and treason, did not hesitate when it suited its purposes to put itself into the most glaring and grotesque inconsistency of adopting and confirming a very caricature of secession.

The defence of Northwestern Virginia was first undertaken by Gen. Lee, in dispatching Col. Porterfield to that region, for the purpose of raising there a local force. The results of the recruiting service were small, and to meet the occupation by McClellan, who in the latter part of May was throwing a force across the Ohio, reinforcements to the amount of about six thousand men were directed upon Northwestern Virginia, under command of Gen. Garnett, who had belonged to the Federal service. On the 11th July, this little army, threatened by fourfold numbers and resources, and while imprudently divided-Gen. Garnett having detached Pegram from the main position at Laurel Hill, which commanded the turnpike from Staunton to Wheeling, to hold Rich Mountain, five miles below-was assailed by two columns of the enemy. Both parts were compelled to retreat across the Alleghanies, with the loss of their baggage and artillery, and about a thousand prisoners; and at Carrick's Ford, at the passage of the Cheat River, Gen. Garnett himself was killed, while attempting to rally the rearguard of the retreat.

After this disaster, it was determined that Gen. Lee himself should take the field; and he at once proceeded to organize a campaign, with the object of obtaining possession of the Valley of the Kanawha, as well as the country to the northward, from which Gen. Garnett had been driven. He took immediate command of the remains of Garnett's army at Monterey, and also directed the movements of Gens. Floyd and Wise in the lower country; the latter, after the affair of Rich Mountain, having retreated to Lewisburg, on the Greenbrier River, and Floyd's force of about four thousand men having been sent to his relief.

The field was one of little promise for Lee. He found himself

in the midst of a hostile population; the wild ranges in which he was to operate, were known only to the most experienced woodsmen and hunters frequenting them; and although he endeavoured to shorten the arduous line of communication over the mountain roads, by leaving the Central Railroad at a point forty miles west of Staunton, and penetrating the northwest, through the counties of Bath and Pocahontas, at the Valley Mountain, he found that a season of unusual rains robbed him even of this success.

Gen. Rosecrans was at this time commander-in-chief of the enemy's forces in Western Virginia, and had left Gen. Reynolds at Cheat Mountain to hold the passes, and the roads to Weston and Grafton. The month of August and the early part of September were consumed by a series of skirmishes, between the force under Gen. Lee and that under Gen. Reynolds, at Cheat Mountain. These actions were of but little account; Lee's main object being to dislodge the enemy by manœuvres, rather than by direct attack, and to get a foothold on his flanks or on his rear. At one time he had endeavoured to surround and capture the enemy's forces which occupied a block-house on one of the three summits of the Cheat Mountain, and were also strongly intrenched at a place called Elk Water, the junction of Tygart's Valley River and Elk Run. The plan was well formed; but Col. Rust, with a number of Arkansas troops, having failed to attack what was known as the Cheat Summit Fort, Gen. Lee found the whole day disconcerted, and was compelled to withdraw his troops without any results whatever.

The disappointed commander now resolved to march to the relief of Gens. Floyd and Wise, and to unite the whole Confederate army in the Kanawha Valley. The movement was successfully accomplished, and Lee concentrated his forces at Sewell Mountain about the end of September, having left a detachment of about 2,500 men, under Gen. Henry A. Jackson, to guard the road leading to Staunton, and the line of the Greenbrier River. He had now in hand an army of quite 15,000 men; he undoubtedly outnumbered Rosecrans, who had followed him, and was now daily engaged in skir mishing with Wise's troops at Sewell Mountain; and it was thought that Lee might now deliver battle with effect, and bring to some sort of issue a hitherto fruitless and desultory campaign. Expectation was high, and at last became feverish. For twelve days the

two armies remained in position, each waiting an attack from the other. Finally, one morning, it was discovered by Lee that his enemy had disappeared in the night, and reached his old position on the Gauley River, thirty-two miles distant. Gen. Lee was unable to follow. The swollen streams and the mud made anything like hopeful and effective pursuit impossible; and the advent of winter was soon to close active operations, and to leave the campaign exactly where it started-the Federals holding the country west of the Alleghanies, the Confederates occupying the mountains and the Greenbrier Valley.

Even this slight tenure was to be abandoned; the Confederate troops were recalled to other fields, and in November Gen. Lee returned to Richmond with a sadly diminished reputation. The campaign west of the Alleghanies was a sorry affair, and an undoubted failure. It had accomplished nothing; it had expended much of time and troops; it had not only surrendered the country which it was to contest, but it had done so without giving to the enemy a single lesson of resolution, or dealing him one important stroke of arms; and it had sacrificed to disease alone, thousands of men who had fallen victims to pneumonia and other sickness, consequent upon exposure to cold and rain. A just explanation of Gen. Lee's failure is perhaps to be found in the circumstances against which he had to contend-the disconcert of subordinate officers; and the principal fact, which history has abundantly illustrated, that the greatest abilities often fail in small and petty work, where the field is not commensurate with the man, is not suited for the display of his characteristics, and is destitute of any great inspiration. But there were many persons in Richmond who were not inclined to a generous view of the disappointment Gen. Lee had given the public in his first campaign, and who at once fell to ridiculing and decrying him. He was twitted as "Letcher's pet." He was described as a man living on a historical name and a showy presence, with no merit of mind-one who, puffed by what his family had done, had cultivated a heavy dignity and a superiour manner, with no brains to support the display. It was remembered that on his first assumption of command, he had advised that the volunteer spirit of the country was unsteady and excessive-that it needed repression. It was said that he was tender of blood, and sought to accomplish his campaign in the mountains by strategy,

rather than by fighting; it was assumed that he was the representative of West Point in opposition to the school of "fighting Generals; " and all these things were readily put to his discredit in the early and flushed periods of the war, when the Southern populace clamoured for bloody battles, and were carried away by the imagination that a sudden rush of raw men to arms would be sufficient to overpower the adversary and accomplish their independence. Lee's views were not generally appreciated; his failure in mountain warfare was taken by many persons as decisive of his military reputation; and at the period referred to in Richmond, he was the most unpopular commander of equal rank in the Confederate service. A rumour was circulated about this time, that the one ambition of Lee's life was to be Governor of Virginia after the war, and to manufacture reputation in the contest to recommend him for the position. The writer recollects with what derision the rumour was received in certain quarters in Richmond; how Mr. Daniel, the editor of the Examiner, hooted it, and made it part of his quarrel with John Letcher, who was supposed to be nursing Lee's conceit; and how the claim of the reputed candidate was generally put down as absurd and insolent. And yet, a few years later, and the man thus derided might have had the Dictatorship of the entire Southern Confederacy, if he had but crooked his finger to accept it!

Happily the Government did not share and refused to reflect this early popular injustice towards Lee. But in view of his loss of so much of the public confidence, it was thought advisable to put him into no very active and conspicuous command; and he was accordingly sent South, and appointed to the charge of the coast defences of South Carolina and Georgia. His duties consisted in superintending the fortifications along the coast, and exercising his engineering skill to add to their security. These duties were efficiently performed; the district of South Carolina was placed in an admirable state of defence; and Gen. Lee appears to have won in this department a new accession of popularity and personal esteem. In February, 1862, there was some motion to make him Secretary of War; but it was considered by Congress that he did not command enough of the public confidence for this important position. It was then decided by President Davis to recall him to Richmond, and to confer on him the new appointment of "Commanding General," to take charge of the military movements of the war. The

title of the new office was a sonorous one; but as Mr. Davis had practically annihilated the bill creating it by requiring the miscalled generalissimo "to act under the direction of the President," it may be briefly remarked that the new position of Gen. Lee was not an important one, and was scarcely an honourable one. He was nothing more than a supernumerary in the hands of Mr. Davis. But the great man waits the proper call of events, and the occasion commensurate with his power. In this uncertain period of Lee's reputation a Southern journal ventured to declare that "the time would yet come when his superiour abilities would be vindicated both to his own renown and the glory of his country."