across rivers, where the arm of the law was now powerless to
protect them. Outlaws, defiant of the authorities both civil and
military,--ruthless men of whom we shall hear again,--roved those
great unoccupied spaces so characteristic of the Southern
countryside. Many a family legend preserves still the sense of
breathless caution, of pilgrimage in the night-time intently
silent for fear of these masterless men. When the remote
rendezvous had been reached, there a colony of refugees drew
together in a steadfast despair, unprotected by their own
fighting men. What strange sad pages in the history of American
valor were filled by these women outwardly calm, their children
romping after butterflies in a glory of sunshine, while horrid
tales drifted in of deeds done by the masterless men in the
forest just beyond the horizon, and far off on the soul's
horizon fathers, husbands, brothers, held grimly the lines of
last defense!



Chapter VII. The Turning Of The Tide

The buoyancy of the Southern temper withstood the shock of
Gettysburg and was not overcome by the fall of Vicksburg. Of the
far-reaching significance of the latter catastrophe in particular
there was little immediate recognition. Even Seddon, the
Secretary of War, in November, reported that "the communication
with the Trans-Mississippi, while rendered somewhat precarious
and insecure, is found by no means cut off or even seriously
endangered." His report was the same sort of thing as those
announcements of "strategic retreats" with which the world has