against the inferior force of Confederates at Manassas. Instead of obeying, McClellan remonstrated, and proposed to take his army to Richmond by the circuitous route of Fortress Monroe and the Peninsula, between the York and James rivers, instead of attempting, with his large and well-equipped army, to press the Confederates back to their Capital. The President strongly urged the trial of the direct movement, as less expensive in time and money, and less perilous to the army; but McClellan so steadily resisted this plan, that the patient Lincoln consented to submit the matter to a council of officers. They decided in favor of McClellan's plan by a vote of eight to four. The President acquiesced, but with many misgivings, which the result justified. The General-in-Chief had declared that he intended to wait for the forces in the West to gain victories before he should move upon Richmond. Well, the Grand Army of the Potomac had not fairly inaugurated its campaign in the spring of 1862, before the active little army of General Grant, and the forces under Generals Pope, and Buell, and Mitchel, and the gunboats of Foote, had accomplished far more in the West than McClellan ever dreamed of being possible.

Informed that McClellan (who would not trust his commander-inchief with his military secrets) intended to take to the Peninsula nearly the entire Grand Army of the Potomac, the President issued an order on the 8th of March, that no change of base in the operations of that army should be made without leaving a competent force for the protection of the Capital, that not more than fifty thousand troops should be removed toward the Peninsula until the navigation of the Potomac from Washington to the Chesapeake should be freed from the enemy's batteries and other obstructions; that the new movement should begin as early as the 18th of March and that the army and navy should co-operate in an immediate attack upon the Confederate batteries on the Potomac. Meanwhile the Confederates at Manassas had retired, and were falling back toward Richmond, in fear of the execution of the President's order to move upon them on the 22d of February. When McClellan heard of this evacuation he crossed the Potomac and ordered his whole army to advance, not, as he afterward explained, to pursue the alarmed fugitives and to take Richmond, but to give his own army a little active experience "preparatory to the campaign!" After making a grand display of power at abandoned Manassas and a little beyond, the army moved back to Alexandria. This "promenade" (as one of McClellan's aids, a scion of the royal Orleans family of France called it) of the Grand Army of the Potomac disappointed the people and disgusted the President, who, satisfied that McClellan's official burdens were greater than he could profitably bear, kindly relieved him of the chief care of the armies, on the 11th of March, giving him command of the Department of the Potomac.

At the moment when the Confederates evacuated Manassas, a strange naval battle occurred in Hampton Roads. The insurgents had raised the Merrimac, one of the vessels that was sunk in the river at Norfolk, and had converted it into an iron-clad warrior, which they named Virginia, commanded by Captain Buchanan of our navy. On the 8th of March, this vessel attacked and destroyed the wooden sailing frigates Congress and Cumberland, at the mouth of the James River, and it was expected she would annihilate other transports and war vessels in Hampton Roads, the next morning. Anxiously the army and navy officers in that vicinity passed the night of the 8th. There seemed to be no competent human agency near to arrest the impending disaster, when, at a little past midnight, a strange craft entered the Roads, from the sea, unheralded and unknown. It appeared like a floating platform, sharp at both ends, lying almost level with the surface of the water, and having a round tower made of heavy iron. This tower was pierced for two guns. It was twenty feet in diameter, and about ten feet in height above the platform; and it was made to revolve so as to bring its heavy guns within to bear upon an object, independently of the position of the vessel. This strange craft had been constructed at New York, under the direction of the eminent civil engineer and scientist, Captain John Ericsson, and took the name, so appropriate after its first display of power, of Monitor. The little vessel was in command of Lieutenant John L. Worden of

PERIODICALS: A HISTORY OF THE CIVIL WAR: SECTION NINE