Remember the Butcher, McNeil!"
Meantime, Mississippi had been the scene of new disasters. Vicksburg, the "Queen of the West," still sat unhurt upon her bluffs, smiling defiance to the storm of hostile shot and shell; teaching a lesson of spirit and endurance to which the whole country looked with admiration and emulation. On the 15th of August the iron-clad ram, "Arkansas," had escaped out of the Yazoo river; run the gauntlet of the Federal fleet at Vicksburg and made safe harbor under the town, to aid in its heroic defense.
Twenty days thereafter, General Breckinridge made a most chivalrous and dashing, but equally useless and disastrous, attack upon Baton Rouge. His small force was greatly outnumbered by the garrison, behind heavy works and aided by a heavy fleet of gunboats: and after a splendidly gallant fight, that had but one serious result—he was forced to withdraw. That result was the loss of the ram Arkansas—which went down to co-operate with this movement. Her machinery became deranged, and there was only the choice of surrendering her to the enemy, or of sending her the road that every Confederate iron-clad went sooner, or later—and she was blown up.
But the gloom was only to grow deeper and deeper, with thickening clouds and fewer gleams of light.
After the fight at Iuka, in which that popular darling had been defeated and forced to fall back before superior numbers, Price had combined his army with that of Van Dorn; and on the 3d of October, the latter led them to another wild and Quixotic slaughtering—standing out among the deeds even of that stirring time, in bold relief for brilliant, terrible daring, and fearful slaughter—but hideous in its waste of life for reckless and ill-considered objects. The forces of the enemy at Corinth were in almost impregnable works; and Van Dorn—after worsting them in a hot fight on the 3d, and driving them into these lines, next day attacked the defenses themselves and was driven back. Officers and men behaved with a cool and brilliant daring that savored more of romance than of real war; deeds of personal prowess beyond precedent were done; and the army of Mississippi added another noble page to its record—but written deep and crimson in its best blood.
And another piteous cry was wrung from the hearts of the people to know how long, O, Lord! were these terrible scenes—killings, not battles; and with no result but blood and disaster!—to be re-enacted.
After its retreat from Kentucky, Bragg's army rested for over a month at Murfreesboro, the men recruiting from the fatigues of that exhausting campaign; and enjoying themselves with every species of amusement the town and its kindhearted inhabitants offered—in that careless reaction from disaster that ever characterized "Johnny Reb." There was no fresh defeat to discourage the anxious watchers at a distance; while the lightning dashes of John Morgan, wherever there was an enemy's railroad or wagon train; and the flail-like blows of Forrest, gave both the army and the people breathing space.
But fresh masses of Federals were hovering upon the track of the ill-starred Bragg, threatening to pounce down upon and destroy him—even while he believed so much in their inaction as to think of forcing them into an advance. The Federals now held West and Middle Tennessee, and they only needed control of East Tennessee to have a solid base of operations against Northern Georgia. Once firmly established there, they could either force their way across the state and connect with their Atlantic seaboard fleets; or could cut the sole and long line of railroad winding through the Confederate territory; thus crippling the whole body by tapping its main vital artery, and causing death by depletion. Rosecrans, with an army of between forty and fifty thousand men, was lying in Nashville, watching and waiting the moment for his telling blow.
This was the posture on Christmas, 1862. Three days after the enemy struck—heavily and unexpectedly.
The first intimation General Bragg had of the movement was cavalry skirmishes with his advance. These continued daily, increasing in frequency and severity until the 30th of December, when the contending armies were near enough for General Polk to have a heavy fight with the Federal right.