In the events first preceding the disaster, too, as well as in his independent raid during July, John H. Morgan had added additional luster to his rising star, that was only to culminate in his exploits of the next year. These were the brighter gleams; but the whole picture was, indeed, a somber one; and there can be no wonder at the people's anger and distrust when they looked upon it. For it showed a vast and rich territory, teeming with those supplies needed most, yielded up to the full uses of the enemy; a people one with the South at heart given over to oppression of an alien soldiery and unable to co-operate with their own long days to come; and across the face of the somber picture was drawn the track of the blood of hundreds of brave men; sacrificed needlessly, the people said—and in a manner stupid, if not barbarous.
A grave injustice had been done the people of Kentucky, because of their conduct during the retreat. Baseless charges of their cowardice and treachery had been bandied about in the mouths of the unreflecting; the many had been made to suffer for the baseness of the few; and the shield of the state had been tarnished because of an inaction her people could not avoid.
Crushed, bound and deserted, as they were—with their only reliance fading away from their eyes, and a bitter and triumphant enemy in hot pursuit at their very doors—it would have been worse than folly—it would have been suicide! had the people on the line of that retreat offered a blatant sympathy. Utterly useless to others it must have been—and even more ruinous to themselves!
And this is the verdict of that Justice who, though slow of foot, fails not to overtake Truth, in her own good time.
CHAPTER XXV.
THE WAR IN THE WEST.
And misfortunes did not come singly, but in battalions.
The trans-Mississippi was so far distant that only broken echoes of its troubles could penetrate the web of hostile armies between it and the Capital. But those echoes were all of gloom. Desultory warfare—with but little real result to either side, and only a steady drain on Confederate resources and men—had waged constantly. A trifling success had been gained at Lone Jack, but it was more than done away with by aggregate losses in bloody guerrilla fighting. Spies, too, had been shot on both sides; but the act that came home to every southern heart was the wanton murder of ten Confederates at Palmyra, by the order of General McNeil, on the flimsy pretext of retaliation. The act, and its attendant cruelties, gained for him in the South the name of "The Butcher;" and its recital found grim response in every southern camp—as each hard hand clasped tighter round the hard musket stock—and there was an answering throb to the cry of Thompson's prompt war song:
"Let this be the watchword of one and of all—