The action
of the war was now chiefly in the Southwest, where Grant, taking the
place of Rosecrans, was seeking to recover all that was lost at
Chickamauga.
Harry had another letter from his father, telling him that his own had
been received, and giving personal details of the titanic struggle on the
Chickamauga. He did not speak out directly, but Harry saw in his words
the vain regret that the great opportunity won at Chickamauga at such a
terrible price had not been used. In his belief the whole Federal army
might have been destroyed, and the star of the South would have risen
again to the zenith.
Here Harry sighed and remembered his own forebodings. Oh, if only a
Stonewall Jackson had been there! His mighty sweep would have driven
Thomas and the rest in a wild rout. A tear rose in his eye as he
remembered his lost hero. He sincerely believed then and always that the
Confederacy would have won had he not fallen on that fatal evening at
Chancellorsville. It was an emotion with him, a permanent emotion with
which logic could not interfere.
Harry was conscious, too, that the long quiet on the Eastern front was
but a lull. There was nothing to signify peace in it. If the North had
ever felt despair about the war Gettysburg and Vicksburg had removed
every trace of it.
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