Pope. His son was in our university and his sister, a most kind and gracious lady, was a near friend. Pope seems destined to go down in our history merely as a braggart and an incompetent. Probably no man of that time meant better or was more abused by capricious fate. Cox, whose daughter married the son of Pope and who therefore came to know him well in his later years, defends him vigorously. In the early years of the war he showed himself bold and active. The capture of Island Number Ten with its garrison was rather a naval and engineering exploit than an achievement of the army, but Pope seems to have done well what was required of him and probably deserved his promotion to the command of a corps at Corinth when an advance southward was meditated in the early summer of '62. It was with deep unwillingness that he received the summons of the Administration to command an army in Virginia, and only assumed the place from the feeling that a soldier must stand where he is put. Arrived at Washington, he found himself in an atmosphere hot with wrath and mortification. The Peninsular campaign had failed and strong spirits like Stanton and Ben Wade, Chairman of the Committee on the Conduct of the War, were on fire through disappointment. The new General, whose position until within a few months had been a humble one, was brow-beaten and dominated by powerful personalities and forced to stand for acts and words which were not really his own. He declared, said Cox, that his bombastic and truculent orders were practically dictated by others. The declaration that his headquarters would be his saddle, which Lee so wittily turned, saying, "then his headquarters would be where his hindquarters ought to be," Pope declares he never made. When his environment had in this way aroused prejudice against him, he was set to command an army whose higher officers felt outraged at his sudden rise over their heads and whose soldiers were discouraged by defeat. He was expected to oppose skilful and victorious foes with instruments that bent and broke in the crisis as he tried to wield them. Only supreme genius could have wrought success in such a situation, and that Pope did not at all possess. He was only a man of resolution, with no exceptional gifts, who desired to do his best for his country. In the West he had proceeded usefully and honourably, and it was the worst misfortune for him that he was taken for the new place. I hope that history will deal kindly with him and that, since he was a worthy and strenuous patriot, he will not live merely as an object of execration and ridicule.

In August, 1863, my too brief term of service having expired, I came home to the Connecticut Valley and resumed my pulpit, which I had left for a vacation and powder-smoke. Gettysburg and Vicksburg had taken place, and we at the North too fondly hoped that all was over and that we might confidently settle down to peace. When going west to Buffalo for a visit I was delayed a few hours at Syracuse and took the occasion to call on an intimate friend of my father and myself, the Rev. Samuel J. May. Mr. May, a bright and beautiful spirit, was by nature a strong peace man, but, fired by the woes of the slave, he had become an extreme abolitionist and was ready to fight for his principles. Entering Mr. May's quiet study I found him in intimate talk with a man of unassuming demeanour, in citizen's dress, marked by no distinction of face or figure. He might have been a delegate to a peace convention, or a country minister from way-back calling on a professional brother. What was my astonishment when Mr. May introduced him as Major-General Henry W. Slocum, commander of the Twelfth Corps, who, taking a short furlough after Gettysburg, was at home for the moment and had dropped in for a friendly call. Slocum had been in the thick of most of the bitter Virginia battles from the first, and all the world knew that at Gettysburg, by beating back the thrust of the Stonewall division toward the Baltimore pike, he had secured the threatened rear of the army of the Potomac and averted defeat. This had taken place in the preceding month, and I naturally marvelled that the unpretending, simple man could be that victorious champion, but for the time being we were there plain citizens, and, American fashion, the Major-General and the Corporal shook hands and fraternised on equal terms. It probably helped me with Slocum that I too had been in danger. About the time he was defending Culp's Hill, I had been in the ditch at the foot of the Port Hudson rampart.

While reticent as to his part at Gettysburg, he spoke with feeling of what his corps had been through, and knowing that both Mr. May and I were Massachusetts men took an evident pleasure in commending the regiments from that State. Of the 2d Massachusetts he spoke with high appreciation; it was an admirable body of men and thoroughly disciplined. It was always ready; its losses were fearful and he felt that he ought to spare it if he could, but a crisis always came when only the best would answer, and again and again the 2d Massachusetts was thrown in. Particularly at Gettysburg its services had been great and its sacrifice costly. He spoke feelingly of the young officers who had been slain and also of humbler men. Since that time I have stood by the simple stone at the "bloody swale at the foot of Culp's Hill," which marked the position held that day by the 2d Massachusetts. It takes no trained eye to see that it was a point of especial difficulty and importance. Some of the men of that regiment who fell that day were my own college comrades. I was glad to know from his lips that the commander thought their work heroic.

One naturally brackets the name of Slocum with that of Howard, secondary figures of course in the great Civil War drama and yet both steadfast and worthy soldiers. They rose together into places of responsibility during the Peninsular campaign, became commanders of corps about the same time, served side by side at Gettysburg, went together to the West, and finally, one at the head of Sherman's right wing and the other at the head of the left, made the march to the sea and through the Carolinas. Neither perhaps was a brilliant soldier. So far as the records show, Slocum always did his work well, was increasingly trusted to the last, and nowhere made a grave mistake. In Howard's case, the rout at Chancellorsville will always detract from his fame; he was, however, on that day new in his place, and the infatuation of Hooker by an evil contagion passed down to his lieutenants. But he too steadily improved, refusing resolutely to be discouraged by his mistakes and always doing better next time. Perhaps no one act during the war was more important than the occupation of Cemetery Hill on the morning of July 1, 1863, by a Federal division. I think that the credit of that act cannot be denied to Howard. In a later time he passed under the control of Sherman in the West, a shrewd and relentless judge of men, and Sherman trusted him to the utmost. To a group of officers in their cups who were chaffing Howard for being Puritanical, Sherman curtly said: "Let Howard alone; I want one general who doesn't drink."

I saw General Howard at Gettysburg on the fortieth anniversary of the battle. We were under the same roof, and during the evening I sat close to him in the common room and heard him talk,—a strenuous old man, his empty sleeve recalling tragically the combats through which he had passed. Close by under the stars could still be traced the lines occupied by Steinwehr's division, the troops which with such momentous results Howard had posted on Cemetery Hill. I might easily have talked with him, for he was affable to old and young, but I preferred to study the good veteran from a distance and let others draw out his story while I listened.

In the winter of 1861 I went to Port Royal, through the good offices of my friend Rufus Saxton, then a captain and quartermaster of the expedition under which Dupont had taken possession of the Sea