"There's Stanton's navy," said Lincoln.
[CHAPTER IV]
Tom Goes West—Wilkes Booth Hunts Him—Dr. Hans Rolf Saves Him—He Delivers Dispatches to General Grant.
At the end of the next month, April, 1862, Admiral Farragut gallantly forced open the closed mouth of the Mississippi. He took his wooden ships into action against forts and iron-clad gunboats and captured New Orleans. Within fifteen months thereafter, the North was in practical control of the whole Mississippi. By July, 1863, the Confederacy had been split into two parts, east and west of the "Father of Waters." That was the poetic Indian name of the Mississippi. Farragut's fleet began the driving of the wedge. Grant's army drove it home. When the driving home had just begun, Tom, to his intense delight, was sent West with dispatches for Grant. He left on an hour's notice.
ADMIRAL FARRAGUT
During that hour, a colored servant employed in the White House, whose heart was blacker than his sooty skin, had left the mansion, had sought a tumble-down tenement in the slums, and had found there a vulture of a man, very white as to face, very black as to the masses of hair that fell to his shoulders.