At night they would take down fence-rails and such like to make fires to keep themselves warm. General Hood fled away, and returned no more. The Confederacy was now beginning to shake in every limb of its body. The North determined to hold on. Thus our own 200,000 colored men contributed to the grand result. As the songs of the day said, "The colored troops fought bravely!" [Illustration: _COTTON PICKING._] About the 20th of April, 1864, after I had given the children their breakfast, and sent them to school, the letter-carrier came up the steps with another missive from my own dear Tom, and just as I had opened it to begin to read it, who came into the room but dear mother! So to work we went and read the letter together: "NEW ORLEANS, April, 1864. "Mrs. Beulah Lincoln, "My Dear Beulah:—With great pleasure I sit down to answer all the delightful letters I have received from yourself and the girls. Your letters have been a very great joy to me indeed all the time I have been in the hospital. They have actually helped me to mend by keeping up my spirits! At least that is what the doctors and nurses say, who have read some of your letters, and they liked them so much. They were greatly delighted over your letters on your trip to Canada! If it had not been for my wound, my residence at this beautiful hospital in the Sunny South would have been almost as great a treat to me as the month you and the girls spent at Richmond Hill. Because here comes neither frost nor snow, and the sun is always bright and genial, and the flowers scent the air all the year round, and the winds come through the open windows just laden with their fragrance. But, thank God, I shall soon be well now, and then I will go back to the war if it is not all over by the time I receive my discharge from this good hospital. If the war is not over then, I will go back to the field; but, if it is all over, then I am likely to get my discharge from the army and come home. I have taken 'notes’ of all the active operations in which I was engaged in the field up to the time I was wounded; and I think I will write and publish a book when I come home! All the events, let things be going as they may, I am sure that they are going ten times better now that our glorious Grant has got the chief command over all the armies in the field throughout the far-extended seat of war in the South. Before he took command even a child could see how our own Northern generals and colonels themselves wrangled, and were jealous of one another, and carried on. It always appeared to me that before Grant took command they wasted as much strength and national resources as the rebels themselves did! Too many cooks spoil the broth; and they also resembled a balky team of cross-grained mules pulling, kicking and flinging against one another! Indeed they had a great deal to learn, and that was how to agree. But Grant put them all to rights with a few shuffles of national