spared, and filling the empty embrasures with hollow logs painted black, which even at a few yards' distance much resembled thirty-two and sixtyfour pounders. Never were preparations for a retreat so quietly and skil fully made. So perfectly were all things arranged that all stores, baggage, sick, material, and guns were removed far to the rear, before Johnston's own men realized the possibility of a retreat. It was only as the different brigades fell into line, and the main army defiled southward through Fauquier County that the men discovered the movement to be a general and not a partial one.

On the 8th of March, the Government at Washington issued a peremptory order to McClellan to move for the new base of operations he designed on the Chesapeake Bay, and to capture the Confederate batteries on the Potomac. The change in the situation which Johnston's skilful retreat had effected was not known in Washington. On the 9th of March McClellan's army was in motion. All Washington was in expectation; it was known that the second "On-to-Richmond" had commenced, and that the second grand army was about to pass its grand climacteric. At night Fairfax Court-House was reached, and the grand army encamped within a radius of two miles. At a late hour came the wonderful tidings that Manassas and Centreville had been evacuated! There was no enemy there. But there was a great conflagration in full flame, bridges and machine-shops just blown up, and other incendiary fires gleaming in the distance. Nothing was left in the famous Confederate position; it was desolate, though frowning in fortified grandeur. Thus had been accomplished in the face of the enemy the most successful and complete evacuation-the most secure and perfect retreat of which the history of the war furnishes an example. Johnston had safely escaped with his entire right and left wings; he had securely carried off every gun and all his provisions and munitions; and he had blown up or otherwise destroyed every bridge and culvert on turnpike and railroad along his route.*

When Johnston's army had crossed the Rappahannock, it was drawn up in line, and waited a week for the enemy; but McClellan refused the challenge, and moved down the stream near the sea-board. To contract

In Gen. McClellan's official report of this period, he seeks to convey the impression to the reader that he was well aware of Johnston's evacuation, and only marched his troops to Manassas that they might gain "some experience on the march and bivouac preparatory to the campaign, and to get rid of the superfluous baggage and other impediments which accumulate round an army encamped for a long time in one locality." He continues: "A march to Manassas and back could produce no delay in embarking for the Lower Chesapeake, as the transports could not be ready for some time, and it afforded a good intermediate step between the quiet and comparative comfort of the camps round Washington and the rigours of active operations."

If Gen. McClellan had designed to have written something to be laughed at, he could not have better succeeded than in the sentences quoted above.

his left, Johnston fell back across the Rapidan, and increased the strength of the right against all flanking manoeuvres. Large fleets of transports were gathered at the mouth of the Rappahannock, but few knew their object or destination. Johnston however divined it. He promptly took the idea that the Federals, while making a show of force along the Lower Rappahannock, would not attack; their object being to transport their force with great celerity to the Peninsula, thinking to suprise Magruder at Yorktown, and seize Richmond before any troops could be marched to oppose them.

He was right. On March 13, a council of war was assembled at Fairfax Court-House, by McClellan. It agreed on the following resolution: "That the enemy, having retreated from Manassas to Gordonsville, behind the Rappahannock and the Rapidan, it is the opinion of Generals commanding army corps that the operations to be carried on will be best undertaken from Old Point Comfort between the York and James Rivers: provided, 1st, That the enemy's vessel Merrimac can be neutralized; 2d, That the means of transportation sufficient for an immediate transfer of the force to its new base can be ready at Washington and Alexandria to move down the Potomac; and, 3d, That a naval auxiliary force can be had to silence, or aid in silencing, the enemy's batteries on the York River; 4th, That the force to be left to cover Washington shall be such as to give an entire feeling of security for its safety from menace."

While the scene of the most important contest in Virginia was thus being shifted, and Gen. Banks was transferring a heavy force from the Shenandoah Valley to take position at Centreville, in pursuance of McClellan's plan for the protection of Washington, a battle unimportant but bloody took place near Winchester.

BATTLE OF KERNSTOWN.

Gen. Shields had been left at Winchester by Banks with a division and some cavalry, and commanded, as he states in his official report, seven thousand men of all arms. Ascertaining that "Stonewall" Jackson was at New Market, he made a feint, pretended to retreat on the 20th of March, and at night placed his force in a secluded position, two miles from Winchester on the Martinsburg road. This movement, and the masked position of the enemy made an impression upon the inhabitants of Winchester that Shields' army had left, and that nothing remained but a few regiments to garrison the place. On the 22nd Ashby's cavalry drove in the enemy's pickets, and discovered only a brigade. The next day Jackson had moved his line near Kernstown, prepared to give battle and expect

ing to find only a small force of the enemy at the point of attack. He had less than twenty-five hundred men. It will amuse the Southern reader to find it stated in Gen. Shields' official report that Jackson had in the engagement of Kernstown eleven thousand men, and was, therefore, in superiour force.

The engagement between these unequal forces commenced about four o'clock in the evening of the 23d of March, and terminated when night closed upon the scene of conflict. Jackson's left flank, commanded by Gen. Garnett, was finally turned, and forced back upon the centre, but only after a most desperate and bloody encounter. A long stone fence ran across an open field, which the enemy were endeavouring to reach. Federals and Confederates were both in motion for this natural breast-work, when the 24th Virginia, (Irish), ran rapidly forward, arrived at the fence first, and poured a volley into the enemy at ten paces distant. But the overwhelming numbers of the enemy soon swept over the fence, and drove the Confederate left into the woods, taking two guns and a number of prisoners.

During the night Gen. Jackson decided to fall back to Cedar Creek. The enemy pursued as far as Harrisonburg, but with little effect, as Ashby's famous cavalry, the terrour of the Federals, covered the retreat. In his official report Gen. Shields wrote that the retreat "became flight;" but in a private letter to a friend in Washington, he had previously written of the Confederates: "Such were their gallantry, and high state of discipline that at no time during the battle or pursuit did they give way to panic."

The Confederate loss in killed, wounded and prisoners is carefully estimated at 465. Gen. Shields stated his loss as 103 killed, and 441 wounded. It had been a fierce and frightful engagement; for Jackson had lost nearly twenty per cent. of his force in a very few hours of conflict. But the battle was without any general signification. It drew, however, upon Jackson a great deal of censure; "he was," says one of his officers, "cursed by every one;" and it must be confessed, in this instance at least, the great commander had been entrapped by the enemy.

But public attention in Richmond was speedily taken from an affair so small by daily announcements of fleets of transports arriving in Hampton Roads, and the vast extension of the long line of tents at Newport News. McClellan, having the advantage of water-carriage, had rapidly changed his line of operations, and was at the threshold of a new approach to Richmoud, while the great bulk of the Confederate force was still in motion in the neighbourhood of the Rappahannock and the Rapidan.

It was a fearful crisis. The fate of Richmond hung upon the line held across the Peninsula, from Yorktown on the York River to Mulberry Island cn James River, by Gen. Magruder with little more than ten thousand

McClellan had three corps d'armée in the lines before Yorktown, and had in the field a force of nearly 90,000 infantry, 55 batteries of artillery (making a total of 330 field guns), and about 10,000 cavalry, besides a siege train of 103 guns. This estimate of his force did not include the garrison of Fortress Monroe of about 10,000 men, nor Franklin's division which arrived about the end of April. The commander of this force hesitated before a line of eleven thousand men. His hesitation again saved Richmond. He was again deceived as to the strength of the Confederates. With admirable adroitness Gen. Magruder extended his little force over a distance of several miles, placing a regiment in every gap open to observation, to give the appearance of numbers to the enemy. McClellan took to the spade, and commenced the operation of a regular siege against Yorktown. While he was constructing his parallels, Gen. Johnston moved down to reinforce the Confederate lines of the Peninsula, in time to save Magruder's little force from the pressure of enveloping armies.

McClellan had been deceived twice as to the force in his front. He was to be outwitted twice by the strategy of retreat. Gen. Johnston decided neither to stand a siege nor to deliver a battle at Yorktown. The enemy was in largely superiour force, besides his additional strength in gunboats, and the object was to force him to more equal terms. It was readily seen by Johnston that in falling back to defences already prepared nearer Richmond, and investing the line of the Chickahominy, he would obtain the opportunity of concentrating a large force in front of the capital, besides being unexposed to operations in his rear, which threatened him at Yorktown from McDowell's corps at Fredericksburg. It was the just and sagacious view of the situation, and again the great master of Confederate strategy was to teach the enemy a lesson in the art of war.

Johnston had obtained all the delay he desired in keeping the enemy before his lines; and on the 4th day of May, when McClellan had nearly completed all his parallels, secured communications between the different. batteries, and was almost ready to open fire on the town, the news came that the Confederate army had retired.

The whole Federal army was, at once, put in motion to pursue. The Confederate works were left intact, but excepting a few unwieldy columbiads, all ordnance had been carried off. The men made "dummies," and put them in the embrasures, besides stuffing old clothes to represent sentinels. The pursuing army toiled on through rain falling in torrents, over roads deep in mud, the men straggling, falling out and halting without orders, and artillery, cavalry, infantry and baggage intermingled in apparently inextricable confusion. The scene had much more the appearance of the retreat of a defeated army than the advance of a successful

one.

THE BATTLE OF WILLIAMSBURG.

267

BATTLE OF WILLIAMSBURG.

It may be well imagined that McClellan, sorely disappointed, and knowing very well that the people of the North, who were already clamouring for a change of commanders, would not be satisfied with the barren occupation of the deserted works of Yorktown, was anxious to snatch some sort of victory from the rear-guard of the Confederate retreat, which he might magnify in official dispatches and Northern newspapers.

On the morning of the 5th May, Gen. Hooker's division of Heintzelman's corps came up near Williamsburg with the Confederate rear-guard, commanded by Gen. Longstreet. The Federals were in a forest in front of Williamsburg; but as Hooker came into the open ground, he was vigorously attacked, driven back with the loss of five guns, and with difficulty held the belt of wood which sheltered and concealed his men from the Confederate fire. Other forces of the enemy were moved up, until Gen. Longstreet was engaging nine brigades of the Federal army. During the whole of the day, from sunrise to sunset, he held McClellan's army in check, drove the enemy from two redoubts he had occupied, and secured Johnston's retreat so effectually, that the next morning when the rear guard moved off, it did so as undisturbed as if the enemy were a thousand miles distant.

But Gen. Longstreet not only accomplished the important object of securing the retreat. He won a brilliant victory. Gen. McClellan himself confessed a loss of 456 killed, 1,400 wounded, and 372 missing, making a total of 2,228. And Longstreet carried off with him nine pieces of captured artillery. Yet so anxious was McClellan for the colour of victory that he dispatched to Washington news of a success, and represented as the process of " driving rebels to the wall," the leisurely retreat of Johnston to works around Richmond, prepared ten months ago under the prudent and skilful direction of Gen. Robert E. Lee, and already the amplest and strongest at any point in the Confederacy.

The fact was that McClellan's army had received a serious check at Williamsburg, which, if Gen. Longstreet had been able to take advantage of it, might have been converted into a disastrous defeat. McClellan had also planned a flank movement upon Johnston's retreat. This performance, too, proved a miserable failure, although the idea did credit to his genius.

The design was that Franklin should move to West Point, the head of the York River, and disembark a large force there to assail Johnston on the flank. On the 7th of May, Franklin attempted a landing under cover of his gunboats, at Barhamsville near West Point. The attempt was gallantly repulsed by Whiting's division of Texas troops. The fight was