IV.

THE PENINSULAR CAMPAIGN.

MARCH-AUGust, 1862.

I.

BEFORE YORKTOWN.

To take up an army of over one hundred thousand men, transport it and all its immense material by water, and plant it down on a new theatre of operations near two hundred miles distant, is an enterprise the details of which must be studied ere its colossal magnitude can be adequately apprehended. It was an undertaking eminently characteristic of the American genius, and of a people distinguished above all others for the ease with which it executes great material enterprisesa people rich in resources and in the faculty of creating resources. Yet, when one reflects that at the time the order was given to provide transportation for the Army to the Peninsula, which was the 27th of February, this had first of all to be created; and when one learns that in a little over a month from that date there had been chartered and assem

* Perhaps the best light in which such an operation may be read is furnished in Napoleon's elaborate Notes on his intended invasion of Great Britain in 1805, when he proposed to transport an army of one hundred and fifty thousand men in four thousand vessels from Boulogne to the English coast. As a military operation, there is, of course, no comparison to be made, because the Army of the Potomac had at Fortress Monroe an assured base in advance. It is simply as a material enterprise that there is a similarity. These notes are given in the collection of Memoirs dictated to Montholon and Gourgaud (Historical Miscellanies, vol. ii., pp. 373, et seq.)

bled no fewer than four hundred steamers and sailing-craft, and that upon them had been transported from Alexandria and Washington to Fortress Monroe an army of one hundred and twenty-one thousand five hundred men, fourteen thousand five hundred and ninety-two animals, forty-four batteries, and the wagons and ambulances, ponton-trains, telegraph materials, and enormous equipage required for an army of such magnitude, and that all this was done with the loss of but eight mules and nine barges (the cargoes of which were saved), an intelligent verdict must certainly second the assertion of the Assistant Secretary of War, Mr. Tucker, whose administrative talent, in concert with General McClellan, directed this vast undertaking, that "for economy and celerity of movement, this expedition is without a parallel on record." A European critic calls it "the stride of a giant”— and it well deserves that blazon.

The van of the grand army was led by Hamilton's-afterwards Kearney's-division of the Third Corps (Heintzelman's), which embarked for Fortress Monroe on the 17th of March. It was followed by Porter's division on the 22d, and the other divisions took their departure as rapidly as transports could be supplied. General McClellan reached Fortress Monroe on the 2d of April, and by that time there had arrived five divisions of infantry, three regiments of cavalry, the artillery division, and artillery reserve—making in all fifty-eight thousand men and one hundred guns. This force was at once put in motion in the direction of Yorktown, in front of which the remainder of the army joined as it arrived.

The region known as "the Peninsula," on which the army thus found itself planted, is an isthmus formed by the York and the James rivers, which rising in the heart of Virginia, and running in a southeasterly direction, empty into Chesapeake Bay. It is from seven to fifteen miles wide and fifty miles long. The country is low and flat, in some places marshy, and generally wooded. The York River is formed by the confluence of the Mattapony and Pamunkey, which

unite at West Point. Richmond, the objective of the operations of the Army of the Potomac, is on the left bank of the James, at the head of navigation, and by land is distant seventy-five miles from Fortress Monroe.

From Fortress Monroe the advance was made in two columns-General Keyes with the Fourth Corps (divisions of Couch and Smith) formed the left; and General Heintzelman with the Third Corps (divisions of Fitz-John Porter and Hamilton, with Averill's cavalry) and Sedgwick's division of the Second Corps, the right. At the very outset the roads were found nearly impracticable, the season being unusually wet. No resistance of moment was met on the march; but on the afternoon of the 5th of April the advance of each

column was brought to a halt-the right in front of Yorktown and the left by the enemy's works at Lee's Mill. These obstructions formed part of the general defensive line of