the Confederate commander in the West, attacked him suddenly and with great fury.  Soon the Union army was pushed back to the river.  In his place many a leader would have withdrawn.  But Grant, with amazing courage, held on.  In the afternoon Buell’s leading regiments reached the other side of the river.  In the night they were ferried across, and Grant’s outlying commands were brought to the front.  The next morning Grant attacked in his turn and slowly but surely pushed the Confederates off the field.  Halleck then united Grant’s, Buell’s, and Pope’s armies and captured Corinth.

[Sidenote:  General Bragg invades Kentucky.]

[Sidenote:  Battle of Perryville, October, 1862.]

[Sidenote:  Murfreesboro’, December, 1862. Eggleston, 331.]

401.  Bragg in Tennessee and Kentucky.—­General Braxton Bragg now took a large part of the Confederate army, which had fought at Shiloh and Corinth, to Chattanooga.  He then marched rapidly across Tennessee and Kentucky to the neighborhood of Louisville on the Ohio River.  Buell was sent after him, and the two armies fought an indecisive battle at Perryville.  Then Bragg retreated to Chattanooga.  In a few months he was again on the march.  Rosecrans had now succeeded Buell.  He attacked Bragg at Murfreesboro’.  For a long time the contest was equal.  In the end, however, the Confederates were beaten and retired from the field.

CHAPTER 39

THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION

[Sidenote:  The blockade.]

402.  The Blockade.—­On the fall of Fort Sumter President Lincoln ordered a blockade of the Confederate seaports.  There were few manufacturing industries in the South.  Cotton and tobacco were the great staples of export.  If her ports were blockaded the South could neither bring in arms and military supplies from Europe, nor send cotton and tobacco to Europe to be sold for money.  So her power of resisting the Union armies would be greatly lessened.  The Union government bought all kinds of vessels, even harbor ferryboats, armed them, and stationed them off the blockaded harbors.  In a surprisingly short time the blockade was established.  The Union forces also began to occupy the Southern seacoast, and thus the region that had to be blockaded steadily grew less.

[Sidenote:  Effect of the blockade.]

403.  Effects of the Blockade.—­As months and years went by, and the blockade became stricter and stricter, the sufferings of the Southern people became ever greater.  As they could not send their products to Europe to exchange for goods, they had to pay gold and silver for whatever the blockade runners brought in.  Soon there was no more gold and silver in the Confederacy, and paper money took its place.  Then the supplies of manufactured goods, as clothing and paper, of things not produced in the South, as coffee and salt, gave out.  Toward the end of the war there were absolutely no medicines for the Southern soldiers, and guns were so scarce that it was proposed to arm one regiment with pikes.  Nothing did more to break down Southern resistance than the blockade.