fifteen thousand strong, was launched in desperate charge upon the centre of Meade's line.

It was the greatest charge in the war. It was apparently a hopeless one, for Meade awaited it with a hundred cannon and the flower of his army. As the line advanced it was torn and rent by shot and shell. From the front and both flanks an awful storm of bullets fell on the long column of attack. Men fell dead and wounded in multitudes, hardly a handful of the mighty force reached the Union lines, and great numbers of them were forced to throw down their arms and surrender, scarcely a fourth of them reaching their own lines again. The mighty charge had utterly failed.

General Lee had made his supreme effort and had lost. Meade, the victor, was hailed as the nation's hero. He had lost in the battle over twenty-three thousand men, but he had won. Lee had lost some thirty thousand, fourteen thousand of them being prisoners, and he had lost the battle as well. On the following day, July 4, 1863, he left the field and began his retreat. It was the greatest 4th of July since the signing of the Declaration of Independence, for on that same day Vicksburg was surrendered to General Grant.

General Meade did not follow up his victory in a way to satisfy the impatient people of the North. He was severely blamed by newspaper critics for delaying his pursuit until Lee had crossed the Potomac, but was rewarded for his great victory by promotion to brigadiergeneral in the regular army-he had been only major before. It was the 18th of July before he finally crossed the Potomac, and the army, which had before pursued Lee northwardly, now pursued him to the south. Of this nothing came. During the remainder of the year there were marches and countermarches, each of the vigilant

commanders seeking to obtain some advantage over the other. Meade more than once advanced on the enemy, seeking to take him at a disadvantage, the last movement being on November 27-30. He found Lee so strongly posted on the rugged banks of Mine Run that an attack seemed suicidal. The army was withdrawn and went into winter-quarters between the Rapidan and the Rappahannock and the year's work was at an end. Meade had failed to add to the laurels he had gathered at Gettysburg.

General Meade was thus the hero of one battle. In the next spring General Grant took command and Meade was lost sight of in the brilliant work of his superior. He was left in command, all orders to the army came through him, and as Grant has said he was "the right man in the right place." But everyone knows that Grant was the soul of all the events that followed and Meade stood as his lieutenant, to carry his plans into effect.

In August, 1864, he was promoted to major-general, and continued to command the army of the Potomac, under General Grant's directing hand, until the end of the war. The war over, he was made in 1867 commander of the third military district, comprising Georgia, Florida, and Alabama. There were no other notable events in his life, and he died at Philadelphia, November 6, 1872. An equestrian statue of him stands, in a somewhat secluded situation, in Fairmount Park.

JOSEPH E. JOHNSTON, COMMANDER OF

THE LAST CONFEDERATE ARMY

THE Confederate general with whom we are now concerned was a victim of circumstances, and was prevented by fate and official thick-headedness from playing the distinguished part in the Civil War that might otherwise have been his. A severe wound received before Richmond took from him the command of the army and turned it over to General Lee. Later, while still weak from his wound, he was sent to oppose Grant and Sherman before Vicksburg with a much smaller force. Finally, while pursuing a Fabian policy before Sherman on the road to Atlanta, he was removed from command in the midst of his efforts by the cabinet officials at Richmond and a man put in his place who had not half his ability. If Johnston had been left alone Sherman probably would never have made his "march to the sea."

Joseph Eggleston Johnston was born in Prince Edward County, Virginia, February 3, 1807, his mother being a niece of Patrick Henry, the famous orator of the Revolution. He was a cadet at West Point in the same class with Robert E. Lee, graduated in 1829 with that famous soldier, and, like him, entered the engineering branch of the service. In this line of duty he was kept busy at map-making until the war with the Seminole Indians of Florida broke out, in which he took part as a lieutenant, being eventually rewarded for his services by the rank of captain.

After he had done fighting with the Indians, Johns

ton went back to his old employment of map-making and surveying, taking part in 1843 in the survey of the boundary line between the United States and Canada, and afterwards in the work of surveying the sea-coasts of the country.

His quiet labors over maps and with surveying instruments were again broken into in 1846, when hostile relations with Mexico called our armies once more into the field. Johnston took part in the war that followed as a captain of topographical or mapmaking engineers in General Scott's army, but his time seems to have been devoted more to fighting than to office work, he taking an active part in the various battles of the campaign, and receiving two wounds in the engagement at Cerro Gordo. It may be said here that during his years of fighting Johnston received no fewer than ten wounds, a fact which goes to show that he did not, like so many generals, keep safely in the rear while the bullets were flying. Few of the leaders in the service succeeded in stopping as many bullets as he.

All we need to say further of his Mexican service is that his skill and courage were so marked as to bring him distinction and promotion, he being gradually raised in rank until he was made colonel. In 1860 he was appointed quartermaster-general of the army, with the rank of brigadier-general. During the years that followed the Mexican war he had been engaged in his old engineering duties, surveys and river improvements occupying him until he was given the work of quartermaster-general. This was shortly followed by the outbreak of the Civil War, when Johnston, like nearly all the Virginia officers of the army, sent in his resignation and offered his services to his State. In

the true Southern spirit of State-rights partisanship, the State was to him the nation.

He began his work in the war as brigadier-general in command of the Confederate army of the Shenandoah. As such he was opposed in May, 1861, at Harper's Ferry by General Patterson, who had been sent there with a numerous Union command. Being not strong enough to hold the Ferry, he did his utmost to destroy the canal and railway by blowing up the cliffs and hurling large masses of stone upon these works. Stonewall Jackson was one of his subordinates and saw his first active service in the Shenandoah Valley in the sharp little fight at Falling Waters that quickly followed the Harper's Ferry affair.

But Johnston's and Jackson's first notable service came in July, when Beauregard was facing McDowell at Bull Run and sent hasty word for aid from the army of the Shenandoah. Johnston was then in face of Patterson, whose force had now been much weakened, troops being taken from him for the defence of Washington. Johnston adroitly eluded him, marched a considerable part of his force in all haste to the field where the first important battle of the war was then in progress and the Confederate forces were in peril, and by his timely reinforcement helped Beauregard to drive back the Union forces in a defeat that soon became a panic. Johnston was superior in rank to Beauregard, but he waived his right of command and permitted that officer to finish the fight he had so well begun.

During the months that followed Johnston remained on the field of Manassas, threatening Washington and holding the Union troops there for its defence. After the experience of Bull Run no inclination was felt to