In May some Confederate cotton curtains, striped with rough military lines, were hung before Washington. They concealed much real weakness and want of furniture behind them, and enabled those, who kept up a confused shouting in the darkened recesses and away from the front, to convey an impression of numbers which did not exist. Thirteen thousand Federal troops,—part of the seventy-five thousand,—led by General Mansfield, desiring to get a nearer view of the curtain, crossed over the Potomac to Arlington Heights. The Virginia soil, it was found, no more spurned Northern feet than its cultivation was spurned by the hands of its white owners. The next day Colonel Ellsworth, with a Zouave regiment, entered the ancient town of Alexandria. Seeing the new flag swaying in its sluggish air, he tore down, as he supposed, the fetich symbol; but received almost on the instant a fatal shot, and was borne away with slow requiems to the vast Northern cemetery, in which new graves were soon rapidly to be opened. The struck symbol of the Confederacy was not cut down, but only lowered to half-mast, emblem of American hopes and pride. May 9, Mr. Lincoln made a new call for forty-two thousand men. As quickly as May blossoms come to the expected call of the shower they came in rosy-hearted responses. General Butler hastened with twelve thousand men to Fortress Monroe, whence on the 9th of June he sent a detachment to Big Bethel. No wrestling-match, however, came off there, and no pillar of stone, of course, set up. Meanwhile, Missouri, Maryland, and Kentucky,—resisting the second secession cleavage, started by Virginia, and which had drawn after her Tennessee, Arkansas, and North Carolina,—trembled with the forces contending for ascendency in their several borders. In the first State, General Jackson attempted in vain to mesmerize Lyons. Failing in these passes, he made several upward strokes, destroying railroads, bridges, and telegraph wires. But the Federal commander, pursuing him to Boonesville, disabled his arm from renewing such tricks. Uniting his forces with General Sigel’s,—making from their junction six thousand men,—General Lyons attacked at Wilson’s Creek, near Springfield, Ben McCullough and Sterling Price, with a force of twenty thousand. The attacking party was repulsed, and its brave leader killed, but the followers of the Ranger were too weary to pursue them.