and dead, and the ponderous artillery wheels crushed limbs and skulls. It was an awful sight to behold weak, wounded men lifting their feeble hands beneath the horses' hoofs. The village of Dover, which was within our lines, contained in every room in every house sick, wounded, or dead men. Bloody rags were everywhere, and a door could not be opened without hearing groans.

"I could imagine," says an eye-witness of the field of carnage, "nothing more terrible than the silent indications of agony that marked the features of the pale corpses which lay at every step. Though dead and rigid in every muscle, they still writhed and seemed to turn to catch the passing breeze for a cooling breath. Staring eyes, gaping mouths, clinched hands, and strangely contracted limbs, seemingly drown into the smallest compass, as if by a mighty effort to rend asunder some irresistible bond which held them down to the torture of which they died. One sat against a tree, and, with mouth and eyes wide open, looked up into the sky as if to catch a glance at its fleoting spirit. Another clutched the branch of an overhanging tree, and hung half-suspended, as if in the death-pang he had raised himself partly from the ground; the other had grasped his faithful musket, and the compression of his mouth told of the determination which would have been fatal to a foe had life ebbed a minute later. A third clung with both hands to a bayonet which was buried in the ground. Great numbers lay in heaps, just as the fire of the artillery mowed them down, mangling their forms into an almost undistinguishable mass."

The display of courage on the part of the Federal troops was unquestionable. The battle, however, was fought against us by Western men, there not being in the ranks of the enemy, as far as known, any men east of the Ohio. The Southern people, while contemning the fighting qualities of the New England "Yankee" and the Pennsylvania Dutchman, were constrained to give to the Western men credit for their bravery; and many of our own officers did not hesitate to express the opinion that the Western troops, particularly from southern Illinois, Minnesota, and Iowa, were as good fighting material as there was to be found on the continent. A Confederate officer relates a story of an extraordinary display of spirit on the field of Donelson by a regiment of Zouaves from southern Illinois-the "Egypt" regiment, as it was called. It had been completely shattered by the fire of artillery, and was scattered over the fields in what the Confederates supposed to be an irretrievable rout. A few sharp rallying words from their color-bearer, and the men, who a few minutes ago were fugitives, flocked to their colors, at the double quick, from differen: parts of the field, and re-formed in the very face of the advancing foe.

The fall of Fort Donelson developed the crisis in the West, which had long existed. The evacuation of Bowling Green had become imperatively necessary, and was ordered before and executed while the battle was being fought at Donelson. Gen. Johnston awaited the event opposite Nashville. The re sult of the conflict each day was announced as favorable. At midnight on the 15th February, Gen. Johnston received news of a glorious victory-at dawn of a defeat.

The blow was most disastrous. It involved the surrender of Nashville, which was incapable of defence from its position, and was threatened not only by the enemy's ascent of the Cumberland, but by the advance of his forces from Bowling Green. Not more than 11,000 effective men had been left under Gen. Johnston's command to oppose a column of Gen Buell, of not less than 40,000 troops, while the army from Fort Donelson, with the gunboats and transports, had it in their power to ascend the Cumberland, so as to intercept an communication with the South. No alternative was left but to evacuate Nashville or sacrifice the army.

The evacuation of Nashville was attended by scenes of panic and distress on the part of the population unparalleled in the annals of any American city. The excitement was intensified by the action of the authorities. Governor Harris mounted a horse and galloped through the streets, proclaiming to everybody the news that Donelson had fallen; that the enemy were coming and might be expected hourly, and that all who wished to leave had better do so at once. He next hastily convened the Legislature, adjourned it to Memphis, and, with the legislators and the State archives, left the town.

An earthquake could not have shocked the city more. The congregations at the churches were broken up in confusion and dismay; women and children rushed into the streets, wailing with terror; trunks were thrown from three-story windows in the haste of the fugitives; and thousands hastened to leave their beautiful city in the midst of the most distressing scenes of terror and confusion, and of plunder by the mob.

Gen. Johnston had moved the main body of his command to Murfreesboro' -a rear-guard being left in Nashville under Gen. Floyd, who had arrived from Donelson, to secure the stores and provisions. In the first wild excitement of the panic, the store-houses had been thrown open to the poor. They were besieged by a mob ravenous for spoils, and who had to be dispersed from the commissariat by jets of water from a steam fire-engine. Women and children, even, were seen scudding through the streets under loads of greasy pork, which they had taken as prizes from the store-houses. It is believed that hundreds of families, among the lower orders of the population, secured and secreted government stores enough to open respectable groceries. It was with the greatest difficulty that Gen. Floyd could restore order and get his martial law into any thing like an effective system. Blacks and whites had to be chased and captured and forced to help the movement of government stores. One man, who, after a long chase, was captured, offered fight, and was in consequence shot and badly wounded. Not less than one million of dollars in stores was lost through the acts of the cowardly and ravenous mob of Nashville. Gen. Floyd and Col. Forrest exhibited extraordinary energy and efficiency in getting off government stores. Col. Forrest remained in the city about twenty-four hours, with only forty men, after the arrival of the enemy at Edgefield. These officers were assisted by the voluntary efforts of several patriotic citizens of Nashville, who rendered them great assistance.

These shameful scenes, enacted in the evacuation of Nashville, were nothing more than the disgusting exhibitions of any mob brutalized by its fears or excited by rapine. At any rate, the city speedily repaired the injury done its reputation by a temporary panic, in the spirit of defiance that its best citizens and especially its ladies, offered to the enemy. We discover, in fact, the most abundant evidence in the Northern newspapers that the Federals did not find the "Union" sentiment that they expected to meet with in the capital of Tennessee, and that, if there were any indications whatever of such senti. ment, they were "found only among the mechanics and labor ing classes of the city." The merchants and business men of Nashville, as a class, showed a firm, unwavering, and loyal attachment to the cause of the South. The ladies gave instances of patriotism that were noble testimonies to their sex. They refused the visits of Federal officers, and disdained their recognition; they collected a fund of money for the especial purpose of contributing to the needs of our prisoners; and, says a recipient of the bounty of these noble women, as soon as a Confederate prisoner was paroled, and passed into the next room, he found pressed in his hands there a sum of money given him by the ladies of Nashville. Many of the most respectable of the people had been constrained to leave their homes rather than endure the presence of the enemy. The streets, which, to confirm the predictions of Northern newspapers of the welcomes that awaited the "Union" army in the South, should have been gay and decorated, presented to the enemy nothing but sad and gloomy aspects. Whole rows of houses, which, but a short while ago, were occupied by families of wealth and respectability, surrounded by all the circumstances that make homes happy and prosperous, stood vacant, and the gaze of the passer-by was met, instead of, as in former days, with fine tapestry window-curtains and neatly polished marble steps, with panes of dust-dimmed glass.

On the whole, the experience of the enemy in Nashville was vastly instructive. The fact that, wherever he had gone, he had converted lukewarm Southern districts into Secession strongholds, or had intensified the sentiment of opposition to him, was as unexpected to him as it was gratifying to us. This experience was universal in the war, from the date of the occupation of Alexandria, which had voted overwhelmingly for the Union in the preliminary stages of the revolution, and was subsequently as thoroughly Southern as any town in the Confederacy, down to the occupation of Nashville, which had at first given some signs of weak submission to its fate, and afterwards spurned its invaders with a spirit of defiance, reckless of consequences.

In the neighborhood of Nashville, the enemy was constantly harassed by local parties of adventurers, who shot his pickets, watched Lis movements, and attacked detached portions of his forces at various points. The whole country rang with the exploits of the gallant and intrepid cavalier, Captain John H. Morgan and his brave men, in the vicinity of Nashville. His squadron belonged to Gen. Hardee's command, and he had been left in command of the forces at Murfreesboro to watch the movements of the Federals, which he not only did effectually, but enacted a number of daring adventures within the lines of the enemy.

Scarcely a day passed without some such exploit of Capt. Morgan and his intrepid partisans. Once he nearly succeeded in capturing a Federal general. Another day he attacked a party of scouts, and killed the captain. The next exploit was to rush into the camp of some regiment, and carry off a train of wagons. The most daring of his adventures was his sudden appearance in the rear of the enemy, entering with forty brave followers the town of Gallatin, twenty-six miles north of Nashville, on the Louisville and Nashville railroad. On entering the town, Capt. Morgan immediately seized upon the telegraph office and the depot. He had presented himself at the telegraph office, carelessly asking the operator what was the news, when that individual, never for a moment imagining who it was that addressed him, replied that there were rumore that "the rebel scoundrel" Morgan was in the neighborhood, and proceeded to illustrate his own valor by flourishing a revolver, and declaring how anxious he was to encounter the man who was creating so much uneasiness and alarm in the country. "You are now speaking to Captain Morgan" was the quiet reply of the partisan: "I am he!" At these words, the pistol dropped from the hands of the operator, who entreated the mercy of his captor. The poor fellow easily submitted to the task assigned to him of sending a dispatch, in the name of Capt. Morgan, to Prentice, the notorious editor of the Louisville Journal, politely offering to act as his escort on his proposed visit to Nashville. After this amusement, Capt. Morgan and his men awaited the arrival of the train from Bowling Green. In due time the train came thundering in; Capt. Morgan at once seized it, and taking five Federal officers who were passengers and the engineer of the train prisoners, he burned