"In other words a little more promptness on one side, a little less resolute decision on the other--and the tables would have been turned!" "That's just it," was the short answer. It was an ominous day for the South. Bigger than the loss of the capital of Tennessee which Johnston evacuated the next day, bigger than the loss of fifteen thousand men and their guns loomed the figure of a new Federal commander. Out of the mud, and slush, ice and frozen pools of blood--out of the storm cloud of sleet and snow and black palls of smoke emerged the stolid, bulldog face of Ulysses S. Grant. Lincoln made him a major general. CHAPTER XXII JENNIE'S RECRUIT Socola lost no time in applying for a position. The one place of all others he wished was a berth in the War Department. It was useless to try for it. No foreigner had ever been admitted to tiny position of trust in this wing of the Confederate Government. He would try for a position in the Department of State. His supposed experience in the Diplomatic Service and his mastery of two languages besides the English would be in his favor. The struggle for recognition from the powers of Europe was the card he could play. Once placed in the Department of State he would make the acquaintance of every clerk and subordinate who possessed a secret of the slightest value to his cause. He wished to enter the Department of State for another reason. He had learned from absolutely reliable sources that Judah P. Benjamin, the present Secretary of War, was slated for Secretary of State in the new Cabinet which would be named when Jefferson Davis was inaugurated as permanent President. He knew Benjamin to be the ablest man in the Cabinet, the one man on whose judgment Davis leaned with greatest confidence. It would he of immense value to his cause to be in daily touch with this man. Fortunately he had mastered shorthand the last year of his stay in Washington. This accomplishment, rare in the South, would be an additional argument with which to secure his appointment.