General Earl Van Dorn was born in Mississippi in 1821; he was graduated from West Point in 1842, and was killed in a personal quarrel in 1863. Early in the war General Van Dorn had distinguished himself by capturing the steamer "Star of the West" at Indianola, Texas. He was of a tempestuous nature and had natural fighting qualities. During the month of August he commanded all the Confederate troops in Mississippi except those under General Price, and it was his idea to form a combined movement with the latter's forces and expel the invading Federals from the northern portion of his native State and from eastern Tennessee. The concentration was made and the Confederate army, about 22,000 men, was brought into the disastrous battle of Corinth. Brave were the charges made on the entrenched positions, but without avail. [Illustration: GENERAL STERLING PRICE, C. S. A.] THE CONFEDERATE SECOND IN COMMAND General Sterling Price was a civilian who by natural inclination turned to soldiering. He had been made a brigadier-general during the Mexican War, but early allied himself with the cause of the Confederacy. At Pea Ridge, only seven months before the battle of Corinth, he had been wounded. Of the behavior of his men, though they were defeated and turned back on the 4th, he wrote that it was with pride that sisters and daughters of the South could say of the officers and men, "My brother, father, fought at Corinth." And nobly they fought indeed. General Van Dorn, in referring to the end of that bloody battle, wrote these pathetic words: "Exhausted from loss of sleep, wearied from hard marching and fighting, companies and regiments without officers, our troops--let no one censure them--gave way. The day was lost." [Illustration: BEFORE THE SOD HID THEM COPYRIGHT, 1911, REVIEW OF REVIEWS CO.]