but brigade after brigade was fruitlessly flung against the strong works of the rebel army, only to be driven back like their predecessors. The whole division. was thus used in vain, and all Couch's corps having now been employed and defeated, was withdrawn, Butterfield's corps of Hooker's grand division relieving it and maintaining our lines. On this day General Howard's command lost in killed, wounded, and missing one thousand men. The remaining six thousand were, however, untouched in morale or spirit, and as their General rode along their lines on Sunday, when they were momentarily expecting to be ordered into the fight again, they received him with cheers loud and long. The battle was not renewed, and on Monday night the army recrossed the Rappahannock.

At the time of the Chancellorsville campaign General Howard's steady soldiership and trustworthiness raised him to the command of the Eleventh corps, though he and his troops had not, at the time of the battle, been long enough together for a proper acquaintance with each other. The part borne by General Howard in the defeat of Chancellorsville was like that in the defeat of Fredericksburgh, very creditable to his own bravery and soldiership. Howard's position on the day of the battle was strongly intrenched on its direct front, looking south. An attack was made on this front on Friday evening, May first, 1863, but the strength of the works and the commanding positions of General Howard's artillery enabled him to repulse them easily. All through that night confused sounds of voices, wagons, axe-strokes, and military movements were heard off in the woods to the south and west of Howard's line. The only interpretation placed upon these sounds seems to have been that the enemy were cutting a road by which to escape to Gordonsville past our right front. But this over-confident theory was terribly refuted on Saturday. On that day, in the afternoon, the enemy were reported moving "across the plank-road," that is, on a line across Howard's right flank and parallel with a line passing at right angles through the centre of our main position from front to rear. General Howard was at nearly the same time notified from headquarters that the enemy was in retreat to Gordonsville. Just afterward, Sickles, whose corps was well out in the advance to Howard's left, sent to him for support, and he at once prepared to move up and join Sickles's right. Lastly, at this moment, Hooker sent him orders to send Sickles a brigade. This was a sufficiently confused and misleading condition of affairs, and was the more unfortunate because Hooker's order, which General Howard promptly obeyed, deprived him of his best brigade, and his whole reserve, Bolan's; the length of his line preventing him from keeping back a larger force. He himself took Bolan's brigade to its new position, and hurried back to his headquarters at full gallop, arriving five minutes before Jackson's attack. Two cannon-shot and a tremendous musketry fire announced the attack of the rebels, and before General Howard could ride to the right of his line the furthest brigade, Von Gilsa's, a German

one, was totally routed, and he met it pouring back in utter disorder. The next brigade caught the panic. General Devens, commanding the division, was wounded while trying to rally his men. General Schurz's division, posted next, became disordered in its turn. The whole position was effectually lost, three stout German regiments only, under Colonel Buschbeck, at the extreme left, standing to their colors and fighting it out until completely outflanked. All efforts to rally the corps entirely failed. General Hooker ordered up General Berry's division. of veterans, who took and held bravely a defensible line some distance to the rear, and General Howard quickly rallied a large part of his corps behind Berry, and when the rebels made another attack at midnight was able to bring his troops up in good order and assist in repulsing them.

In the new line, to which General Hooker withdrew his forces on Sunday morning, the Eleventh corps was given the extreme left, on the Rappahannock, where it strongly intrenched itself, and repulsed several attacks during Monday and Tuesday. During these two days General Howard was constantly under fire, refusing to go out of sight of his front line, and frequently the mark for deliberate rebel sharp-shooting. While holding this post, he took decisive precautions against any unnecessary repetition of Saturday's misfortune by posting one of his old Fair Oaks regiments, the Sixty-fourth New-York, directly in the rear of Gilsa's brigade, with strict orders to shoot down any man who. should run back. In the night of Tuesday General Hooker recrossed the Rappahannock General Howard had again borne a noble and soldierly part in the front of a battle where the army was defeated without any fault of his.

Still remaining in command of the Eleventh corps, General Howard accompanied the army of the Potomac in its marches, during June, 1863, after Lee toward the field of Gettysburgh, and, as at Fredericksburgh and Chancellorsville, was well up in the front. Major-General Reynolds, with the First corps, was first in the advance, and when, on July first, he engaged the rebels. beyond Gettysburgh, on the Cashtown road, in order to support Buford's cavalry, he sent back to Howard, whose corps was next behind, to hasten up. About ten A.M. General Reynolds fell mortally wounded, and the command, after devolving for an hour and a half on General Doubleday, was assumed by General Howard, who reached the field at half-past eleven, and maintained the battle with the First and Eleventh corps until four P.M., when the accumulating rebel force outflanked him and made it necessary to fall back through Gettysburgh to the Cemetery Hill south of the town. General Hancock now coming up and taking command with General Howard, posted the troops so strongly in this very defensible position that no further attack was made that day. The brave fighting of the Eleventh corps during this day relieved it from the unpleasant imputations which had lain against it since its defeat at Chancellorsville. General Howard's own charac

teristic traits of steady and ready bravery and prudence were also once more conspicuous in the resolute manner in which he held his position beyond Gettysburgh up to the latest possible moment, and in the coolness, foresight, and skill with which he first fixed on the key-point of the Cemetery, and at the proper time withdrew fighting, occupied his new position and held it against all comers. the next day, the second, at eight P.M., the Eleventh corps again repulsed a desperate assault upon its position at Cemetery Hill, inflicting immense loss, and its fighting was brave and effective throughout the whole battle.

On

When Rosecrans was superseded by Grant, General Howard and his corps were sent, as tried and proved soldiers, to reënforce the army of the Cumberland, and have since formed part of General Hooker's command. After midnight, on the night of October twenty-eighth, General Howard's corps, then encamped under the west slope of Lookout Mountain, repulsed a fierce night attack by Longstreet's corps. In this fight three regiments of the Eleventh corps (Seventy-third Ohio, Thirty-third Massachusetts, and One Hundred and Thirty-sixth New-York) charged, routed, and drove from their works the whole of McLaws's brigade of two thousand men, making forty prisoners. The brilliant manœuvre of which this attack was part resulted in the substantial opening of the water communication of the Tennessee to General Grant's army. In the sharp affair of November twenty-third, which gave us the key position of Orchard Knob, in front of Chattanooga, the Eleventh corps was in reserve. On the twenty-sixth, it was operating along with Sherman against Bragg's right, not effecting any direct advantage, but drawing the rebel troops that way and leaving their centre weakened for the wonderful charge up the Missionary Ridge, which gave us the Ridge, the position, and the victory.

A cool exploit of the General here deserves recording. At the time of the · repulse of Longstreet west of Lookout, General Howard, in moving across the field with a small cavalry escort, came suddenly upon a body of rebel infantry, answered their hail with "All right!" ordered them to approach, and then so sternly and peremptorily ordered them to surrender that they promptly did so.

Since the brilliant victory of Chattanooga General Howard and his faithful and veteran corps have remained with the army of the Cumberland, under the immediate command of General Hooker, participating in its various operations; but these have not, so far, been of a nature to furnish any further history of importance.

In closing this sketch, it should be added that General Howard, beside his professional abilities as a soldier, is of singularly pure and upright private character, and a professed and consistent Christian.

N°

SALMON P. CHASE.

O public man of the day, the President alone excepted, holds so prominent a position as the present head of the Treasury Department. Occupying a post always one of the most important under our system of government-though popularly accounted less honorable than the Premiership-the present war has multiplied a thousand-fold the powers and responsibilities of the place, making it palpable that, while military affairs might stumble yet afterward recover ground, upon the successful management of the finances hinged not the war only, but the very existence of the body politic. Hence Mr. Chase has been constantly in the public eye, and his policy has been the object of attention for all classes. Though his public life does not extend through so many years as some, his services have been such as to make his name familiar to his countrymen. Like many of those who have achieved eminence in the West, he is of New-England stock and birth, having been born in the little town of Cornish, New-Hampshire, on the thirteenth of January, 1808. When he had reached his seventh year, his father removed to Keene, in the same State, where he died two years later. At twelve years of age young Chase was sent to Worthington, Ohio, to be educated in the care of his uncle Philander, who was at that time Bishop of the State. His uncle having accepted the presidency of Cincinnati College, he entered that institution, but at the end of a year he returned to his former home in New-Hampshire. In 1824 he entered the Junior class of Dartmouth College, from which he graduated in 1826. In the fall of that year he left his blind mother and his home at Keene, at eighteen years of age, to make his first essay at practical life, friendless and poor, with only the capital of courage and his recent education. He made his way to Washington, provided with a few letters of introduction, and advertised in the National Intelligencer for pupils, intending to open a select private school. Not finding pupils, he applied to his uncle Dudley Chase, then a Senator from Vermont, for assistance in gaining a clerkship in the Treasury Department, but his uncle refused to aid him in that respect, and at length, after several months of idleness, he received from a Mr. Plumley the offer of the transfer to him of a flourishing boys' school. Accepting this, the success of his first attempt in life was established, and three years after (1829) he was admitted to the bar of the District of Columbia, having read law, while teaching in the interim, with