New regiments of volunteers came pouring in from Indiana, Michigan, and the other Northwestern States. The farmers, young and old, arrived by thousands, with their shot-guns and their old squirrel-rifles. The market houses, public buildings, and streets, were crowded with them. They came even from New York and Pennsylvania, until General Wallace was compelled to telegraph in all directions that no more were needed.
One of these country boys had no weapon except an old Revolutionary sword. Quite a crowd gathered one morning upon Sycamore street, where he took out his rusty blade, scrutinized its blunt edge, knelt down, and carefully whetted it for half an hour upon a door-stone; then, finding it satisfactorily sharp, replaced it in the scabbard, and turned away with a satisfied look. His gravity and solemnity made it very ludicrous.
Buell, before starting northward in pursuit of Bragg, was about to evacuate Nashville. Andrew Johnson, Military Governor of Tennessee, implored, expostulated, and stormed, but without effect. He solemnly declared that, if all the rest of the army left, he would remain with his four Middle Tennessee regiments, defend the city to the last, and perish in its ashes, before it should be given up to the enemy. Buell finally left a garrison, which, though weak in numbers, proved sufficient to hold Nashville.
"The Siege of Cincinnati."
The siege of Cincinnati proved of short duration. Buell's veterans, and the enthusiastic new volunteers soon sent the Rebels flying homeward. Then, as through the whole war, their appearance north of Tennessee and Virginia was the sure index of disaster to their arms. Southern military genius did not prove adapted to the establishment of a navy, or to fighting on Northern soil.
Gloomiest Days of the War.
Maryland invaded, Frankfort abandoned, Nashville evacuated, Tennessee and Kentucky given up almost without a fight, the Rebels threatening the great commercial metropolis of Ohio—these were the disastrous, humiliating tidings of the hour. These were, perhaps, the gloomiest days that had been seen during the war. We were paying the bitter penalty of many years of National wrong.
"God works no otherwise; no mighty birth
But comes with throes of mortal agony;
No man-child among nations of the earth
But findeth its baptism in a stormy sea."