by precipitation, a collision.” To improve the Confederate Fort McRae was not to be considered! Certainly the contempt which the Southern people of that day felt for men of the North was not without some justification. These facts seem worth giving because they show the difference between the state of mind on the Union side and that on the Confederate. The Confederates knew what they wanted and were reaching after it ceaselessly: The Union forces at this time were not much short of mental demoralization, anywhere, and the quick-witted Confederates took advantage of it. This letter was carried to Washington by Lieut. Washington Gwathmey, who afterwards joined the Confederates. It took him five days to cover the distance, and the reinforcement of Fort Pickens was delayed by that much. The department could hardly tell whom to trust, but Lieut. John L. Worden was chosen to carry an order to Adams for the landing of the troops; and no mistake was made in his case, for he was the Worden who afterward commanded the _Monitor_. He reached Pensacola on April 11th, and on telling Gen. Braxton Bragg, of the Confederate forces, that he had an oral order for the captain of the _Brooklyn_, was allowed to go off to her on the 12th. He had committed the order to memory and destroyed the document. That night, April 12, 1861, Fort Pickens was reinforced. Bragg had planned an attack on Fort Pickens for the night of the 13th--an attack that must have succeeded, because the Union force had been only eighty-three men, all told; but when the artillerymen and the marines were landed the face of matters was changed and the attack postponed indefinitely. The flag has never ceased to float over Fort Pickens. The Confederates were greatly exasperated, and Worden was arrested in Montgomery and held a prisoner for seven months. In September the general dulness of affairs about Pensacola was relieved by a brilliant dash which a force from the blockader _Colorado_ made into the harbor. The Confederates had been strengthening their works along shore gradually, and had at last started fitting out a schooner called the _Judah_ at the navy yard for use as a privateer. This schooner was guarded by a ten-inch columbiad (a columbiad being a gun half-way between a carronade and a long gun) and a field-piece, both being placed to sweep her deck. There was also a large force of men camped in the yard--some accounts say 1,000--while the schooner had a full crew on board, with a long pivot gun and two broadside guns in place. It is a remarkable fact that the yard where she was fitted and the schooner herself were within easy range and plain sight of Fort Pickens, and the fact that she intended to sail out after American merchant ships was obvious. But not a shot was fired from the fort to disturb her owners or the workmen. [Illustration: John G. Sproston. (Who commanded one of the boats in the attack on the _Judah_.) _From a photograph at the Naval Academy, Annapolis._]