Heavy marching-From Rome to Atlanta-Battle of Kennesaw Mountain-Peach Tree Creek-Fighting around Atlanta-Death Hood's march to Tennessee-Price's "invasion of Missouri "-Hero- ism of Harry DeJarnette and sergeant John M. Ragland-Death of Major Waddell-Gen. Pleasonton fights some brilliant battles Dreadful slaughter of the Missourians—Lieutenant Gillespie and his battle-axe-Gen. Cockrell and Col. Gates wounded-Hood's de- feat at Nashville-Magnificent gallantry of Bledsoe and his bat- PART SECOND. D CHAPTER I. WHY THEY FOUGHT-THE SOUTHERN CAUSE. URING over two thousand years, in many languages and every clime, the brave deeds of the sturdy and disciplined Greeks who had lost their leaders by treachery-whose allies were turned to bitterest foes, and who retreated through an hostile and unfriendly countryhave been celebrated in verse and in prose. The heroism of the Anabasis recounted by Xenophon, which has been crystallized in history and in song, was not one whit more worthy of that distinction than was the prowess, the patriotism and the daring of the Missouri Brigades in behalf of the wavering fortunes of the "Lost Cause." Among their members were counted the bravest hearts, the wisest heads, and the best blood of Missouri, who had voluntarily abandoned the peaceful delights of happy homes and the urgent ties of business and family duties, to obey the mandates of their governor, Jackson, and his commanding general, Sterling Price, and engage in the vicissitudes of an uncertain and bloody conflict. They left a State which was justly accorded a high position among the sisterhood that composed the starry group of the Great Republic, at a period when its prosperity was more pronounced, its grand and imperial resources being more successfully and rapidly developed, and its near future looming up into more magnificent proportions than ever before in all the history of its noble career. During the four long, toilsome years the weary warfare was waged, this grand domain, the home and abiding place of these brave men, where were planted the hearthstones of their wives and little ones and the graves of their sires, was the scene of every misery and outrage that a ruthless, internecine war could inflict. But with unfaltering courage and Romanesque heroism, in spite of daily diminishing numbers, they kept at the front and faced the foe unflinchingly in almost every bloody Western battle of the war. They extorted the admiration of the enemy, won the highest encomiums from the Confederate leaders, and were accorded a position among the Southern armies similar to that proclaimed by their contemporaries as having been achieved by the Macedonian Phalanx, the Tenth Legion of Cæsar, and the Old Guard of the Great Napoleon. With their aspirations turned back lovingly towards the household altars they had been compelled to abandon, they never once neglected the call of duty, filled every sanguinary breach to which they were ordered, and with their life-blood bedewed the soil of States and countries that to them were stranger lands. When the roll was called at Fort Blakly, low down in the farthest swamps of distant Alabama, where their last gun was fired, but a few pale, gaunt specters answered to their names-the battle-scarred and war-worn veterans of nearly an hundred fights. The bones of many missing comrades had been left to bleach beneath the soil of almost every Southern State, whilst others were tossing upon the fever-stricken couches of almost every Southern hospital, and yet others, still more unfortunate, were wasting and fretting their young lives away behind the prison bars of almost every Northern bastile. Surely some great principle lay behind all this splendid courage and self-abnegation! It was resistance to sectional aggression and conquest; it was a protest against that worst of all tyrannies-an irresponsible majority-and a cry for "liberty" as earnest, as sincere, as conscientious and as honest as was that of the "Great Rebellion" which Washington headed. Mr. Lincoln's election was purely geographical. The |