found Grant still before Petersburg, and still endeavoring to extend his lines to the south-west, while Lee held Petersburg, and Richmond behind it, apparently secure. Yet Lee had been weakened not only by the imGeorgia. mediate pressure of Grant, but by other movements at a distance. The next day but one after the army of the Potomac began to move, General Sherman led the three armies of the Tennessee, the Cumberland, and the Ohio, the first under McPherson, the second under Thomas, and the third under Schofield, against the confederate army under Johnston, (May 6.) The army was Sherman's immediate object; his final object being Atlanta, in Georgia, a centre of supplies to the confederates, and about one hundred and fifty miles, by lines of march, from Chattanooga. By constantly flanking the enemy, and frequently fighting him, Sherman crossed the Alleghany range and the Chattahoochee River- a success so great, in the opinion of the confederate authorities, that Johnston was removed, and Hood put in his place, (July 17.) He was a bold, if not a skilful commander, and attacked Sherman in three successive engagements near Atlanta, (July 20, 22, 28,) McPherson falling in the second, but the Union troops victorious in all three. Then followed a month's siege of Atlanta by Sherman, then his movement towards the south, culminating in the victory of Jonesboro', (August 31,) and the evacuation of Atlanta by the confederate army, (September 2.) “Atlanta is ours, and fairly won," Sherman telegraphed to Washington. He ordered the inhabitants to leave the city, destroyed the manufactories and machine shops which had been supplying the confederate forces, and held it simply as a military position. Finding that the enemy intended to break his communications, and move towards Tennessee, Sherman sent back his best general, Thomas, to defend that state, and afterwards despatched a large part of his army for the same purpose. Meantime, he followed Hood northward and westward, until satisfied with regard to the preparations for meeting him, when he turned back to Atlanta, destroying the railroads, cutting the telegraph wire, and finally firing Atlanta, as he started on a march to the sea, (November 14.) This was his own plan, and one to which General Grant had been slow to consent. Sherman led three divisions, General Howard commanding the right, or the army of the Tennessee; General Slocum the left, or army of Georgia; and General Kilpatrick the cavalry; in all, sixty-five thousand men, moving in four columns. The distance was between two hundred and fifty and three hundred miles, and it was traversed in four weeks, without any severe fighting or serious loss. Savannah was invested December 12; Fort McAllister was taken by assault, under General Hazen, on the next day; and communications were opened with the fleet by General Sherman in person. On the 22d, Savannah surrendered, and on the 26th, the triumphant general telegraphed to the president, "I beg to present you, as a Christmas gift, the city of Savannah." His objects had been completely obtained, the Georgia railways being broken up, the manufactories, crops, and cattle of the people being swept away, "as well as," he said, a countless number of slaves." Nor was this all. Thomas had done his part. As Hood marched northward, he was checked, in a severe battle, at Franklin, by Schofield, or rather by one of Schofield's brigadiers, Opdycke, (November 30;) and Schofield joining Thomas, the enemy pressed on to Nashville. Grant became impatient, and started from the James River, but on reaching Washington received such information from Thomas as quieted his apprehensions. That general took the offensive, and falling on Hood's left wing, defeated his whole army at Nashville, in a battle 66 which lasted two days, (December 15, 16,) and was followed by a pursuit of the broken confederates for two hundred miles. Their Georgia army was no more. Kearsarge From the military operations of this year we turn and Ala- to the naval. Foremost stands the victory of the bama. Kearsarge over the Alabama. This steamer which sailed from Liverpool in the summer of 1862 had been for nearly two years capturing and destroying American vessels on the Atlantic, in the Gulf of Mexico, and in the Indian seas. While she was lying in the French port of Cherbourg, the United States steamer Kearsarge, Captain Winslow, arrived in pursuit, and Semmes, in command of the Alabama, accepted the opportunity of battle, (June 19, 1864,) confident that his vessel of British build, and his guns manned by gunners from a British ship of war, would win. It was, in fact, an engagement between British and American steamers, and the sympathies not only of Great Britain, but of France, were on the side of the Alabama. But in vain. An hour's conflict, off Cherbourg, and the Alabama ran up the white flag, then sank beneath the waters of the Channel, her commander escaping in a British yacht, to be honored with a public dinner and the gift of a sword by his admirers in England. The tribute to Winslow and his men was the gratitude of every heart among their loyal countrymen. Mobile On the 5th of August, in the early morning, Admiral Farragut brought his fleet against three forts and a confederate squadron defending the entrance to Mobile Bay. The ram Tennessee was one of the squadron, and a more powerful vessel than any of the assailants, while the channel was obstructed with piles and torpedoes. It mattered not to Farragut. Lashed to the maintop of his flagship, the Hartford, and giving his orders through a speaking tube to the deck, the admiral led the way to victory, destroying or scattering the confederate fleet in less than four hours, causing the abandonment of one of the three forts immediately, and the surrender of the other two upon the appearance of a land force. The closing of Mobile left but one port, Wilmington, where the blockade could be run. Reëlec Lincoln. In the midst of war a new state, Nevada, was tion of admitted to the Union, (October 31.) The presidential election followed, (November 8.) This was justly regarded as deciding whether the war should be continued or stopped. The democratic party, or the majority of them, wanted it stopped, and declared it a failure. They put forward, however, a candidate, General McClellan, who might think it a failure, but could not wish it stopped until it succeeded. Mr. Lincoln was the republican candidate, nominated not without open and secret opposition, and receiving a half-hearted support from many of the most earnest men in the party. But he stood for the Union, and the Union chose him its president for another term, by two hundred and twelve out of two hundred and thirty-three electoral votes, and a popular majority of more than four hundred thousand. All things considered, the long sufferings and the life-long losses of the war, and the uncertainty in which its issues were still involved, the will of the people to continue it is as really sublime as any thing in our history. Thirteenth It soon appeared how much more than the elecamend- tion itself had been at stake. Congress repealed ment. the fugitive slave law before the election, (June, 1864;) but only the Senate would consent to the proposition of an amendment to the Constitution prohibiting slavery within the United States. After the election, the House adopted it by more than a two thirds' vote, amid rejoicings which have few parallels in congressional annals, (January 31, 1865.) This amendment, known as the Thirteenth, was ratified in the course of the year by three fourths of the state legislatures, and became a part of the Constitution. Slaves en Singular as it may seem, the confederate Conlisted by gress itself was moving towards emancipation. We the con- have passed over the straits to which the governfederates. ment at Richmond was gradually reduced its want of means, its want of men. As the campaign of 1864 became more and more disastrous, the measures to which it brought the confederates became more and more remarkable. At length, Jefferson Davis proposed, and General Lee recommended, the employment of slaves as soldiers, and that those so employed should be freed, either on entering or quitting service. A bill was brought before Congress, adopted by the House, rejected by the Senate, but on the Virginia senators voting for it, in obedience to the legislature of that state, the bill was carried, (February, 1865.) "It is an abandonment," said one of the senators from Virginia, “ of the ground on which we seceded from the old Union. If we are right in passing this measure, we were wrong in denying to the old government the right to interfere with the institution of slavery and to emancipate slaves." There could be no clearer proof that the confederates were vanquished. Fort But battles remained to be fought. One had Fisher. already occurred at the mouth of the Cape Fear River, where Fort Fisher and other strong fortifications protected the approach to Wilmington. This it became. important to reduce, not merely to complete the blockade at the only point where it was incomplete, but to prepare for General Sherman's advance from Georgia through the Carolinas. The first attempt failed. The fleet under Admiral Porter bombarded the fort vigorously; but General |