with blood and fire! It is idle to talk of conquering a union with a disaffected people. It never was done, and never will be done. Ireland, and Italy, and Hungary, ought to convince us of that.

But how, while every able-bodied Southern man is in the Rebel army, can we reach these people? I answer, by fighting them with a sword in one hand and a Union newspaper in the other-by giving them ideas as well as bullets. By scattering loyal publications broadcast over the conquered districts; and by starting a free press wherever we hold a foot of Southern soil. If the men are away in the army, the women will be at home, and will read these things, and that will be enough. If we convert them, the country is saved. Woman, in this century, is every where that "power behind the throne" which is mightier than the throne itself, and the Southern women have been, and are, the mainspring of this Rebellion. Every dollar that we thus plant in the South will spring up a man, in tattered hat and ragged butternuts, it may be, but still a man, hardy, earnest, brave, who, for what he thinks is right, will march straight up to the cannon's mouth, and meet death “ as if he loved it."

I have been led into this long digression by an earnest desire to disabuse the Northern mind in regard to those people. For this reason I have drawn, at full length, the portraits of "Long Tom" and "Bible Smith" in this volume, and of "Andy Jones" and the farmer "Barnes" in the book " Among the Pines." They are all representatives of this class. I have endeavored to sketch their characters faithfully-extenuating nothing and setting nothing down in malice-that the reader may believe, what I know, that there is not in the whole North a more worthy, industrious, enterprising, honest, brave, and liberty

loving class of people than the great body of poor Southern whites. Take the heel of the man-buying and woman-whipping aristocrat from off their necks, give them free schools and a chance to rise, and they will make the South, with its prolific soil, its immense water-power, and its vast mineral wealth, such a country as the sun never yet looked upon, and this Union such a Union as will be "the light of the nations and the glory of the earth!"

CHAPTER XVI.

A DAY WITH ROSECRANS.

THAT afternoon I sent my letters to the Commanding General, and the next morning, after breakfast, taking particular direction from the "culled gemman" who had been my bearer of dispatches, I set out in search of his quarters. On a side street at a little distance from the centre of the town, I found a modest brick building, from the balcony of which a large flag was flying. Before this house a solitary sentinel was pacing to and fro with a musket on his shoulder, and in the court-yard beyond it, in the shade of a group of tents, half a dozen officers were reading newspapers, or lazily puffing away at their meerschaums. Near by, in the door-way of a smaller building,—an edifice about as large as a half grown hen-coop, with his body balanced on the legs of a rosewood chair, and his feet braced against the door jam, another soldier was indulging in the delightful employments of his superiors. Approaching this soldier, I said to him:

"Are these the General's quarters ?"

"Yaw, yaw, General Rosey. Dat is he, dat is he,” replied the "adopted citizen," pointing to an officer on a powerful gray, at the head of a squadron of cavalry, which just then was thundering down the road. The escort halted abreast of the principal entrance, and the officer-a straight, compactly built, quick motioned man, in a rusty uniform, a worn slouched hat,

and mud-encrusted cavalry boots-sprang to the ground. A few other officers followed him, and then, without a word being spoken, the cavalry wheeled, and thundered down the road again.

"And that is the General?" I said to the soldier.

“Yaw, yaw, dat is old Rosey. I fights mit him.”

"Then, you don't fight mit Sigel?" I rejoined, smiling.

"Yaw, yaw, I fights mit Segel py-me-by (before.) 1 fights mit Rosey now. Him better as Sigel."

Not pausing to discuss the respective merits of the two commanders, I entered the wide hall of the larger building, and said to an orderly on duty near the door-way:

"Will you take my name to the General ?"

"Av coorse, yer honor," replied the soldier, his mouth distending into a good-natured grin; "but as ye knows it an' I don't, hedn't ye better be after takin' it ter him yerself. Ye'll

find him in there."

Following the direction in which he pointed, I entered a room at the left, on the door of which were posted, in large letters, the words "Aides-de-Camp." It was a square, spacious apartment, with a huge fire-place surmounted by a wooden mantel, a smoke-begrimed ceiling, dingy walls, covered with gaudy paper hangings, and two wide windows looking out upon the street. A camp cot, dressed in a soldier's blanket, and a pair of jackboots, stood in one corner, and in the others were a miscellaneous assortment of swords, spurs, muskets, knapsacks, and kindred articles known to modern warfare. A variety of dilapidated chairs, and canvas-bottomed stools, straggled about the floor, and between the windows was a large round table, littered over with maps, newspapers, and writing utensils. At

this table were two or three young gentlemen in the uniform of staff officers, and addressing one of them, I asked if the General were "visible" so early. in the day. He replied that he was then at breakfast, but that the Chief of Staff could be seen at once. Expressing a desire to meet that gentleman, I was conducted into an adjoining room, of smaller dimensions but furnished in much the same manner as the other. In a corner by the window, seated at a small pine desk,—a sort of packing box, perched on a long-legged stool, and divided into pigeonholes, with a turn-down lid-was a tall, deep-chested, sinewy built man, with regular, massive features, a full, clear blue eye, slightly dashed with gray, and a high, broad forehead, rising into a ridge over the eyes as if it had been thrown up by a plough. There was something singularly engaging in his open, expressive face, and his whole appearance indicated, as the phrase goes, "great reversed power." His uniform, though cleanly brushed, and setting easily upon him, had a sort of democratic air, and every thing about him seemed to denote that he was a man of the people." A rusty slouched hat large enough to have fitted Daniel Webster, lay on the desk before him, but a glance at that was not needed to convince me that his head held more than the common share of brains. Though he is yet young-not thirty-three-the reader has heard of him, and if he lives, he will make his name long remembered in our history. He glanced at me as I approached, and when I mentioned my name, rose, and extending his hand in a free, cordial way, said:

"I am glad to meet you. I have seen your handwriting his (X) mark."

"And I have seen yours," I replied, grasping his hand with