What the Confederate Stool—not of Repentance, but of Mars—stood on, and how braced and steadied.—The Daisies and Corn-blooms beneath it.—The broken Industries, harried Life, and disrupted Ties of Unionists in the Border States.—Tragedies.—Grant Commander-in-Chief.—His Plan to break up the Nightmare.—Work ahead.—Jubal E. Early and his Raids.—The Year of Jubal E.—Sherman at Atlanta.—The Southern Knob seized, and the main Door burst open.—An unprotecting Hood; how it was pounded and cleft.—Sherman’s Swath through Georgia.—A Christmas Gift to Mr. Lincoln of a Sheaf.—The Scorpion Alabama; its Hatching out; its slimy, wriggling Course, and sulphureous End.—The Iron Jaws of Mobile pried open, and its Teeth drawn.—Autumn brands at the North.—Tokens of the coming Fall.—Andrew Johnson and the Goose.—Grant breaks Things at Petersburg and disturbs J. Davis in Church at Richmond.—Flight of the Latter with corruptible Treasures.—Negro Troops enter Richmond.—Light Suggestions thereupon.—A Meeting at Appomattox Court-House.—Leaving bloody Instructions, Lee goes to College.—J. Davis in Court and his Sentence.—A Thunder-Clap and its Victim.—Death of Abraham Lincoln. The Confederate stool—not of repentance, but the iron stool of grim Mars—now stood on three legs. One rested on Southern Arkansas, braced by some eighty thousand regular soldiers; one on Georgia, propped by General Johnston and a large force, drawing their supplies from the corn-cribs of that empire State of the South; and the third and strongest, planted on the Rapidan, and steadied up by the well-sinewed arm of General Lee. Between these rude legs, however, were springing already along the furrows made by the ploughshare of strife the sweet-eyed daisies. Corn gathered its golden blooms out of the dreadful phosphates which had been strewn over so many fields.