[2] lest he might intercept us on the Mobile and Ohio railroad, by which we ultimately moved away unmolested.
Had Canby landed on Dog river, west of Mobile, and invested the city, he would have found his work shorter and easier, and might have captured my whole army. The city was level and exposed throughout the whole extent to fire from any direction. There were near 40,00 non-combatants within its lines of defence, whose sufferings under a seige would soon have paralyzed the defence by a garrison so small as ours was; and the early evacuation would have been inevitable, while it would have been exceedingly difficult of accomplishment. Had Canby not made the indefensible blunder of landing his army at Fish river to attack Mobile, the sending of Steele's corps towards Pollard would not have been a blunder, for then I might have been forced to try to bring out my garrison on that side, and to lead it to Montgomery, and have had to drive Steele from my path or surrender to him.
On page 41 we have an illustration of the Puritan origin of our author, in the following:
Such of the soldiers as were disposed assembled in religious meetings when circumstances permitted. One pleasant evening, in Gilbert's brigade 1,000 men were assembled and * * * * * * poured forth their fervent prayers and joined their voices in sacred hymns. Nor will those who remember such heroes as Havelock deny that piety is a help to valor.
A little reflection on its illogical results would, perhaps, have caused General Andrews to spare us this appeal to the cant-loving community for whom he writes, and adopt the more simple style becoming a military historian of his opportunities.
Canby was moving with 60,000 soldiers and Farragut's fleet to attack 8,000 ill-appointed Confederates, and to capture them. And after our little army had withstood his great armament and armada for three weeks, and had then bravely made good its retreat, Gen. Andrews calls upon his readers to admire the great valor, supplemented by the piety, of the attacking army, because one pleasant night they had prayers and sang hymns in their bivouac in the piney woods.
He tells us Canby's base on Fish river was only twenty miles below Spanish Fort; that he occupied nine days in marching that distance; that his wing entrenched itself every night — all in a strain of grandiloquence conformable with his illustration of its piety, and rendered especially absurd to us, who knew that there
