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an army under Canby, and a large fleet, commenced to move against it, in March, 1865. Canby's immediate force was over 45,000 troops, besides a fleet of about twenty war vessels. Gen. Maury's forces were less than 8,000 effectives, with four or five inefficient gunboats. The enemy having got in position, attacked the lines of Spanish Fort and Blakely, while he threatened Mobile itself. The effective force of the positions attacked numbered about 4,000 of all arms; the besiegers numbered more than 45,000, and the works were light field-works. The supply of Confederate ammunition was scant, and had to be very sparingly used. After two weeks of defence, not surpassed in courage and skill by any in the war, the position of Spanish Fort was abandoned to the enemy, and most of the garrison saved. Next day, Blakely was carried by assault. Gen. Maury then decided, in pursuance of his general instructions, to attempt no defence of the city, but to save his garrison. He occupied two days, April 10th and 11th, in removing his stores and destroying his armament, etc., and during the night of the 11th, he removed the troops from their positions in the city, except the rear-guard of 300 Louisiana infantry. On the 12th he marched out of Mobile, on the road to Meridian. The Army of Mobile reached Meridian about 4,500 strong, and was organized into a division under Gen. Maury, and prepared to march across the country into Carolina, to join Gen. Johnston. But this design was overruled by events which had occurred elsewhere.

On the 12th May, 1865, Gen. Maury and the Army of Mobile were paroled prisoners of war, under the terms of the surrender made by Gens. Taylor and Canby. The Army of Mobile was the only organized body of troops on that day in the Confederacy, and bore on their serried bayonets the last hope of the South.

MAJ.-GEN. JOHN B. MAGRUDER.

CHAPTER LXXVII.

Brilliant service of Magruder's batteries in the Mexican War.-Interesting incident at Contreras. He makes the tour of Europe.-Offers his sword to Virginia.Battle of Bethel.-Important and critical services on the Peninsula.-How he deceived McClellan, and defied his "grand army."-Another desperate situation in front of Richmond.-Transferred to Texas.-Recapture of Galveston.-Affair of Sabine Pass.-Address to the people of Texas.-The enemy compared to "the ravenous cat."-Gen. Magruder resists a surrender.-His exile in Mexico.-The tribute of a companion-in-arms to his accomplishments and virtues.

JOHN BANKHEAD MAGRUDER was born at Port Royal, in the county of Caroline, Virginia, in 1808. He graduated at West Point in the class of 1830, and his earliest campaign was against the Indians in Florida, where he served under Gen. Scott and his uncle, Gen. James Bankhead. In the Mexican war his services were historical and brilliant, and he was remarkable there for the splendid performance of his light artillery—an arm the value of which he illustrated in no less than nine battles. The stormy music of his battery was heard in the very first combat at Palo Alto, and its vibrations scarcely ceased until they shook the buildings in the Grand Plaza of the capital! It was in the rapid and effective management of field-pieces, and the combinations with which they were applied to accomplish immediate and important results, that his genius shone and his brilliant courage was most strikingly manifested.

The severest test of the valour and efficiency of this comparatively new arm occurred at Contreras, where Capt. Magruder was ordered to entertain the powerful concentration of the enemy's batteries under Gen. Valencia, while the brigades of Riley and Persifer F. Smith were painfully and slowly gaining his rear. His battery held its ground desperately; it was crippled

by the heavy and murderous fire of Valencia; his horses lay around the guns in pools of gore; but he did not withdraw his broken and suffering ranks until the columns of infantry had succeeded in flanking the enemy. One of his guns was commanded on this day by Lieutenant Thomas Jonathan Jackson, afterwards the world-renowned "Stonewall."

Singular and startling are the vicissitudes of war! When Capt. Magruder had lost half his officers and men in the terrible exposure for three hours at Contreras, and was looking about him for such assistance as he could get in his extremest need, he saw, at a little distance, a young gentleman in the uniform of the United States army, apparently not engaged in the battle. Riding up to him without a moment's delay, Capt. Magruder proposed to the youthful stranger that he should take charge of one of the pieces disabled by the loss of its officer. The invitation was unhesitatingly accepted, and the volunteer lieutenant served the piece with the utmost self-possession, and with telling effect, until the end of the fight. When his name was asked for, that it might be properly mentioned in the official report, he gave it as George B. McClellan! There, upon that Mexican battle-field, under the blazing fire of the enemy, did these two men meet for the first time, fifteen years later to be confronted as deadly enemies on the already historic intrenchments of Yorktown, Virginia, in a war between the sundered sections of the Union! Did the "forlorn hope" of the memorable day of Contreras, its common glory, ever come to the memory of these leaders of hostile armies when each watched the camps of the other and plotted his destruction; and what must have been its lessons, what its inspirations, in this strange confront and emulation of arms!

Magruder came out of the Mexican War a Lieutenant-Colonel by brevet. Soon after its close, he went abroad, and spent some time in England and on the Continent, every where perfecting his acquaintance with the art of war in the arsenals and camps of the different nations of Europe, and everywhere received in the most polished circles of society. This foreign tour he repeated, just before the political difficulties of the United States ripened into secession, under a commission from the War Department to prepare a report on the light artillery practice of European estab

lishments, and to translate from the French the best manual of artillery tactics extant in that language, for the use of the United States army. When he returned to Washington he found the clouds of war gathering, and on the instant that the proclamation of President Lincoln roused the people of Virginia into armed resistance, he laid down his regulation sabre and his colonel's commission, and drawing the sword which had been presented to him by his native county of Caroline, he came to offer his skill and devotion to the cause of the Southern Confederacy.

He was made a Brigadier-General; and it was his good fortune to win one of the earliest successes of the war, upon a soil of historic inspirations-his command of about 1,800 men checking at Bethel a column which Butler had sent from Fortress Monroe to try the threshold of the Peninsular approach to Richmond. But this affair was trifling compared to the service which he was afterwards called upon to perform in covering this approach to the Confederate capital-a service which was not noisily advertised in the gazette, but which consisted in the ceaseless vigilance and untiring energy that during thirteen long months of hardship and exposure occupied the enemy, and at last kept an immense invading army in check, and made the inconsiderable force of less than 10,000 men impress the "Young Napoleon" of the North, and his grand army, with the idea of 100,000. It was a service which saved Richmond.

When McClellan commenced the transportation of his army to the Peninsula, and Gen. Johnston yet lingered in the neighbourhood of the Rappahannock and the Rapidan, Gen. Magruder found himself, with the small force under his command, confronting an army which gradually grew before his eyes to 75,000 men, before he received a single reinforcement. Every day fleets of transports arrived in Hampton Roads, and the extension of the long line of tents at Newport News told of the gathering host. At this time Gen. Magruder's line extended from Gloucester Point, on the north side of the York River, across the peninsula to Mulberry Island, in the James River, a distance of seventeen miles, on which was strung a force scarcely exceeding 8,000 men. At one time it was proposed in a council of war to retreat towards Richmond; but Gen. Magruder rejected the

advice of his officers, and determined on the desperate enterprise of entertaining McClellan and his great army until Gen. Johnston's forces could arrive upon the scene. He inspired his men by eloquent appeals. He issued an address to be read to each command in his army, in which he declared: "The enemy is before us-our works are strong our cause is good-we fight for our homes and must be careful. Every hour we hold out brings us reinforcements." It was not a mere idle audacity, a blind desperation; he was active every day in impressing the enemy with a show of strength and alarming him with signs of battle; he adroitly extended his little force to every point open. to observation, so as to give the appearance of numbers to the enemy; he made almost daily feints of attack; there were marchings and counter-marchings, the hurryings to and fro, the midnight calls, the movements down one road and up another. McClellan actually believed that an army of a hundred thousand men was on his front. Night after night did the Federal officers sleep restlessly in their encampment at Newport News, expectant of the alarm that Magruder was upon them. Morning after morning did they strain their eyes along the road leading to New Market, for the dust of his approaching columns. Such was the alarm and uncertainty of McClellan until Johnston's army reached the critical ground, and assured the safety of Richmond. The service of Magruder had been vital and heroic; it was almost incredible, in the simplest statement of the facts. With a force of about 10,000 he had checked the whole of McClellan's army, and paralyzed the power for mischief of a great host, supported by an immense naval armament, with two wide water courses open to them, by which, at any moment, they might have assailed him on both sides at once!

It appears to have been the peculiar fortune of Gen. Magruder to enact the most desperate parts in the defence of Richmond. In the memorable battles of 1862 around that city, we again find him in circumstances somewhat similar to those at Yorktown, holding a thin and critical line, and playing upon the enemy's credulity as to the magnitude of his forces. When Gen. Lee crossed the Chickahominy with the larger part of his army to fight the battle of Gaines' Mills, the divisions of Gen. Magruder and Huger were all that remained on the other side

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