"Then reinforcements from all the eastern and southeastern portion of the country would have been cut off from Beauregard. The enemy have Huntsville now, and with all these designs accomplished his army would have been effectually flanked. The mind and heart shrink back appalled at the bare contemplation of the awful consequences which would have followed the success of this one act. When Fuller, Murphy, and Cain started from Big Shanty _on foot to catch that fugitive engine_, they were involuntarily laughed at by the crowd, serious as the matter was,--and to most observers it was indeed most ludicrous; but _that foot-race saved us_, and prevented the consummation of all these tremendous consequences. "We doubt if the victory of Manassas or Corinth were worth as much to us as the frustration of this grand _coup d'etat_. It is not by any means certain that the annihilation of Beauregard's whole army at Corinth would be so fatal a blow to us as would have been the burning of the bridges at that time and by these men. "When we learned by a private telegraph dispatch a few days ago that the Yankees had taken Huntsville, we attached no great importance to it. We regarded it merely as a dashing foray of a small party to destroy property, tear up the road, etc., _a la_ Morgan. When an additional telegram announced the force there to be from seventeen to twenty thousand, we were inclined to doubt it,--though coming from a perfectly upright and honorable gentleman, who would not be likely to seize upon a wild report to send here to his friends. The coming to that point with a large force, where they would be flanked on either side by our army, we regarded as a most stupid and unmilitary act. We now understand it all. They were to move upon Chattanooga and Knoxville as soon as the bridges were burnt, and press on into Virginia as far as possible, and take all our forces in that State in the rear. It was all the deepest-laid scheme, and on the grandest scale, that ever emanated from the brains of any number of Yankees combined. It was one, also, that was entirely practicable for almost any day for the last year. There were but two miscalculations in the whole programme: they did not expect men to start out afoot to pursue them, and they did not expect these pursuers on foot to find Major Cooper's old 'Yonah' standing there already fired up. Their calculations on every other point were dead certainties.