240 
THE OPERATIONS IN VIRGINIA. 
colonels and majors, good cavalry, and good gunners, and in these 
particulars, notwithstanding all their lavish supplies of men and money, 
the divisions of McClellan’s army were sadly lacking. Indeed, it was 
not till well on in 1863, that the mounted branch of the Federal service 
could pretend to cope with the horsemen of the South. 
A skirmish at Ball’s Bluff, in which the Northern folk met with a 
rude repulse, in October, broke the monotony of drilling recruits and 
teaching officers their duties. But, in the beginning of the new year, 
the war fever became very strong again in the press and in the War 
Office, now presided over by Mr. Stanton, no friend to McClellan. He 
was urged to advance ; he urged prudence and delay ; he had along 
the Potomac 200,000 men—a vast machine not yet ready to work 
smoothly. Other forces were mobilised and directed through West 
Virginia towards the Valley. At last, in March, an advance was 
made to reconnoitre the Confederate works, and a plan was adopted to 
dislodge them from their position by moving a large portion of the 
army to Urbana as a base, and thence by moving rapidly on West Point at 
the head of the York River, to threaten Johnston’s left flank before 
he could be ready for the movement and to turn the tables by making the 
vicinity of Richmond, and not of Washington, the theatre of operations. 
This was a most judicious plan. An attack on the front of the enemy 
was difficult owing to bad roads, and besides was poor strategy. But 
Johnston had time to evacuate Manassas before it could be executed, 
owing to the delays of either the administration or the commander-in- 
chief. The Confederates retired behind the Rappahannock, with head¬ 
quarters at Gordonsville, and their troops in the Valley also, after some 
skirmishing near Winchester, fell back to Staunton. 
McClellan’s next plan was to go to the York Town Peninsula, land at 
Fortress Monroe, and move up the Peninsula to Richmond. 
Washington had been protected by a cordon of independent forts, 
with a garrison of 20,000 men. Banks was sent with a good column 
into the Valley, and, advancing past Winchester, reached Strasburg, 
which he fortified, and, as we have seen, Fremont was coming with 
some 30,000 men by several passes into the Valley. A fatal mistake 
was made by president Lincoln, after McClellan had embarked his 
troops for the Peninsula ; McDowell’s corps was detained under a 
strange delusion that Washington was in danger. It does not require 
much skill in war to know that the best way to protect Washington was 
to make a movement with overwhelming force on Richmond. 
McDowell, in due time, came down to Fredericksburg, but, after long 
wrangling between McClellan and the political authorities, it was 
finally resolved to keep him between the Rappahannock and the capital, 
and thus the ruin of the army of the Potomac began. 
We now leave, for a while, the other portions of the theatre and 
follow McClellan’s movements in the Peninsula. 
After landing at Fort Monroe, he found that the enemy had 
constructed a series of defences in three lines to impede his progress and 
that he had to drive their able “detaining” chief Magruder across 
obstacles of which the most serious was York Town. However, he 
moved from Fort Monroe to York Town, which was evacuated once 
he was ready to storm it, and thence fighting his way along to 
Williamsburg, and thence to White House, which he reached May 16th, 
having been delayed for six weeks in a march of ninety-six miles by 
the able dispositions of the confederates, who were now under command 
