The Confederates felt that Birnam wood had come to Dunsinane. Declaring that it was useless to fight men who would deliberately float gunboats by the very muzzles of their heavy guns, and could run steamers sixteen miles over dry land, they began to evacuate Island Number Ten. But Pope had already ferried the greater part of his army across the river, and he replied to my inquiries:
"I will have every mother's son of them!"
The Rebels Effectively Caged.
He kept his promise. The Rebels were caged. They fled in haste across the country to Tiptonville, where they supposed their steamboats awaited them. Instead, they found two of our iron-clads lying in front of the town, and learned that Pope held the river even ten miles below. The trap was complete. On their front was Tiptonville, with the cavernous eyes of the Carondelet and the Pittsburgh ominously scrutinizing them. At their left was an impassable line of lake and slough; at their right a dry region, bounded by the river, and held by our troops; in their rear, Pope's army was hotly pursuing them. Some leaped into the lake or plunged into the swamps, trying to escape. Three times the Rebel forces drew up in line of battle; but they were too much demoralized to fight, and, after a weary night, they surrendered unconditionally.
At sunrise, long files of stained, bedraggled soldiers, in butternut and jeans, began to move sadly into a great corn-field, and stack their arms. The prisoners numbered twenty-eight hundred. We captured upward of a hundred heavy guns, twenty-five field-pieces, half a dozen steamboats, and immense supplies of provisions and ammunition. The victory was won with trifling loss of life, and reflected the highest credit both upon the land and water forces. The army and the navy, fitting together like the two blades of the scissors, had cut the gordian knot.
Pope telegraphed to Halleck that, if steamboats could be furnished him, in four days he would plant the Stars and Stripes in Memphis. Halleck, as usual, engrossed in strategy, declined to supply the transportation.
The Northern Flood Rolling on.
But the great northern flood rolled on toward the Gulf, and in its resistless torrent was no refluent wave.