number. Before morning there were nearly 5000 Virginia troops holding

the important post.

While the traitorous Letcher was, as Governor of Virginia, executing these plots, the State was still nominally in the Union. Letcher had not even yet pretended to absolve himself from the oath of allegiance to the Constitution of the United States.

On the 17th of April, a Convention in Virginia, in secret conclave, passed an ordinance of secession. It was, for a time, kept a profound secret from the community, that measures might be adopted for seizing Fortress Monroe, the Gosport Navy Yard at Norfolk, and the arsenal at Harper's Ferry. The Virginia rebels immediately sent a private messenger to the Confederate Government to inform them of their action.

The Norfolk Navy Yard was one of the most extensive and valuable naval depots in the United States. Government property was accumulated there to the amount of many millions of dollars. The spacious yard, threefourths of a mile long, and one quarter of a mile wide, was covered with machine-shops, founderies, storehouses, and dwellings for the officers. There were three large ship-houses and a magnificent dry-dock of granite. In fact it was almost a city in itself of shops and magazines of every kind, and an immense amount of naval and military stores were accumulated there. This all, the land included, was the property of the United States.

But Mr. Floyd, a Virginian, had taken good care that there should be no troops there to defend it; and Mr. Buchanan's Secretary of the Navy had been equally skillful in depriving it of all naval support. There was then floating in the splendid harbor the new steam frigate Merrimac, which had cost $1,200,000; the Pennsylvania, the largest line-of-battle ship in the world; the Germantown, the Dolphin, and many other noble vessels of war, partially dismantled. The whole property of the yard was estimated at over 9,000,000 of dollars. Capt. McCaulay was at that time in command of the yard. The secession feeling, in Norfolk and Portsmouth, was general and bitter. Every effort had been made by the conspirators to inflame the populace. Public meetings were held, in which distinguished speakers urged the claims of what they called Southern Rights, and denounced the General Government. John Letcher, the Governor of Virginia, in his response to the President's appeal for troops, had said, "The militia of Virginia will not be furnished to the powers at Washington, for any such use or purpose as they have in view. You have chosen to inaugurate civil war, and, having done so, we will meet it in a spirit as determined, as the Administration has exhibited towards the South."

On the night of the 16th of April, by order of this Governor Letcher, a large number of boats, laden with stones, were sunk in the channel, so as to render it impossible to tow out these large ships. Immediate arrangements were then made for seizing the yard. Most of the sub-officers in the yard were traitors from the South, and they baffled all the endeavors of the loyal men to do anything for the protection of the property, and for the honor of the flag of the United States.

As this yard was in the heart of one of the most fanatic of the slaveholding States, many of the workmen were easily won over to the side of

rebellion. The military companies of Portsmouth and Norfolk were called out, some batteries were hastily constructed commanding the yard, and on the morning of April 18, the rebel General Taliaferro arrived at Norfolk to take charge of the troops. All things being thus prepared, the rebel naval officers resigned their commissions, and passed over to the service of the Confederates. We doubt whether the history of this world can show, among civilized men, any acts of dishonor, so flagrant. The rebels seemed to have lost all sense of the meaning of the word honor.

It was now manifest that the Yard could not be preserved, and that it must fall into the hands of the rebels, with its immense store of war materials, and its three thousand heavy cannon, unless it could be destroyed. Not a moment was to be lost. At 7 o'clock Saturday night, April 21, the steamship Pawnee cast off from the dock at Fortress Monroe, with six hundred trusty men on board, to aid in the destruction of the yard, and to bring off the loyal men. It was a calm, moonlight night. The steamer passed rapidly up the Elizabeth river, winding its way with some difficulty through the sunken vessels which encumbered the channel. About 9 o'clock it reached Gosport Navy Yard. Their arrival was anticipated, and they were received with enthusiastic cheers. The crews of the Cumberland and the Pennsylvania, several hundred in number, were especially hearty in their acclaim. "They welcomed us," said one, "with a hurricane of heartiness."

The traitors were quite surprised at this sudden appearance of the Pawnee, and all the inhabitants of Norfolk and Portsmouth were speedily aroused; the guilty, trembling with the apprehension that their cities were to be bombarded, and the innocent, apprehensive that the insulted Government was about to punish the traitors for their crimes. For a few hours the Pawnee could overawe all resistance. But in a couple of days, rebellious Virginia could send twenty thousand men, well armed, to consummate her treason. It was therefore necessary to act without an hour's delay. The Pawnee made fast to the dock, immediately landed the troops, and seized all the gates of the yard that no foes could enter. The magnificent Pennsylvania could not be towed out over the obstructions of the channel, but it was thought that the Cumberland, of lighter draft, might be saved.

Everything of value in the Pennsylvania and the other vessels, except the heavy guns, was transferred to the Pawnee, and the Cumberland. Busy hands, nearly two thousand in number, worked with intense activity all night long. Everything which could not be removed, and which might prove valuable to the Rebels, the utmost efforts were made to destroy. Shot and shell, revolvers, carbines, stands of arms, were thrown overboard. It is estimated that there were nearly 3000 heavy guns in the yard, many of them columbiads and splendid Dahlgrens. These could only be spiked. They subsequently manned the innumerable batteries of the Rebels, and opened their thunders upon the Stars and Stripes in the disaster at Manassas. This great reservoir became an inexhaustible source of supply to the rebels, and enabled them to bring into the field, at the commencement of

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the conflict, an armament far superior to any with which the Government could furnish its troops.

The work of destruction and preparations for the great conflagration were prosecuted with unwearied energy, by the light of the moon, until it sank beneath the horizon, about 12 o'clock. The barracks were then set on fire, and the crackling flames, leaping into the sky, illumined the whole scene with almost the glare of day. Four o'clock in the morning came. The combustibles were all arranged, the trains laid, the matches prepared, to set on fire ships, houses, shops-everything that would burn. The Pawnee, taking the Cumberland in tow, and receiving on board the two ships all the men from the yard, excepting a few to fire the trains, left its moorings, ready to depart, and sent up a rocket. The scene which ensued can not be better described than in the language of an eye-witness:

"The rocket sped high in the air, paused a second, and burst in shivers of many colored lights. And as it did so, the well-set trains at the shiphouses, and on the decks of the fated vessels left behind, went off as if lit simultaneously by the rocket. One of the ship-houses contained the old New York, a ship thirty years on the stocks, and yet unfinished. The other was vacant; but both houses and the old New York burned like tinder. The vessels fired were the Pennsylvania, the Merrimac, the Germantown, the Plymouth, the Raritan, the Columbia, the Dolphin. The old Delaware and Columbus, worn-out and dismantled seventy-fours, were scuttled and sunk at the upper docks on Friday.

"I need not try to picture the scene of the grand conflagration that now burst, like the day of judgment, on the startled citizens of Norfolk, Portsmouth, and all the surrounding country. Any one who has seen a ship burn, and knows how, like a fiery serpent, the flame leaps from pitchy deck to smoking shrouds, and writhes to their very top, around the masts that stand like martyrs doomed, can form some idea of the wonderful display that followed. It was not 30 minutes from the time the trains were fired, till the conflagration roared like a hurricane, and the flames from land and water, swayed and met, and mingled together, and darted high, and fell and leaped up again, and by their very motion showed their sympathy with the crackling, crashing roar of destruction beneath.

"But in all this magnificent scene, the old ship Pennsylvania was the centre-piece. She was a very giant in death as she had been in life. She was a sea of flame, and when the iron had entered her soul,' and her bowels were consuming, then did she spout forth, from every porthole of every deck, torrents, and cataracts of fire, that to the mind of Milton would have represented her a frigate of hell, pouring out unremitting broadsides of infernal fire. Several of her guns were left loaded, but not shotted, and as the fire reached them, they sent out on the startled and morning air minute guns of fearful peal, that added greatly to the alarm that the light of the conflagration had spread through the surrounding country. The Pennsylvania burned like a volcano for five hours and a half, before her mainmast fell. I stood watching the proud but perishing old leviathan, as this emblem of her majesty was about to come down. At precisely 9 o'clock, the tall tree that stood in her centre tottered, and fell,

and crushed deep into her burning sides, while a storm of sparks flooded the sky."

The dispatch to the rebels at Richmond announcing the successful sinking of stone vessels in the channel of Elizabeth River says, exultingly "Thus have we secured for Virginia, three of the best ships in the Navy." They were disappointed; the Pennsylvania was utterly destroyed. The Cumberland escaped. The Merrimac burned to the water's edge, and sunk. She was subsequently raised, and, coated with iron armor, plunged into the Cumberland, and sunk her; and then, like Judas, appropriately committed suicide. Notwithstanding the immense destruction of property by the fire, still millions were left to strengthen the arm of the rebels.

CHAPTER IV.

UPRISING OF THE NORTH.

RIOT IN BALTIMORE. THE ANNAPOLIS ROUTE OPENED.-MARCH OF THE SEVENTH, NEW YORK. -ENTHUSIASM OF THE NORTH.-DESIGNS UPON WASHINGTON.-PROF. MITCHELL.-EXTENT OF TREASON. ANECDOTES.-ATTEMPTS TO BURN WASHINGTON.-ENERGY OF GENERAL BUTLER.— NORTHERN TROOPS.-JACOB THOMPSON.-PATRIOTISM OF GENERAL SCOTT.-EFFICIENCY OF THE PRESIDENT.-MORAL POISON.-NOBLE PRINCIPLES OF THE PRESIDENT.

IN immediate response to the appeal of the President, four hundred Pennsylvania volunteers, escorted by three hundred United States troops, were the first who reached Washington. They went from Carlisle Barracks, and arrived in Washington at 10 o'clock in the night of the 18th, and bivouacked in the Capitol. On the same day, the Sixth Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteers left Boston for Washington. They reached Baltimore, forty miles from the Capitol, on the 19th, and there met a regiment from Philadelphia. Both of these bodies of citizen troops had started so suddenly, that they were quite unprepared for hostilities. The Massachusetts troops were partially armed, but the Pennsylvania men had scarcely a musket. They were expecting to be supplied with arms in Washington. The Massachusetts regiment occupied eleven cars, and reached Baltimore, through New York and Philadelphia, without accident. But here, in the first slaveholding city they entered, they found a large crowd assembled, with menacing looks and words, and hostile demonstrations of a very serious character began to be made.

It was necessary to pass directly through the city, a distance of two and a half miles, in the cars, drawn by horses instead of engines, to the Washington station. In this way, nine out of eleven of the cars passed in safety, though insults and curses pursued them all the way, and not a few stones and brickbats were hurled at them. The excitement rapidly increased, and denser multitudes flooded the streets, until there was a mass of ten thousand men, not all indeed sympathizing with the rioters, who surrounded and arrested the progress of the two last cars, which contained but one hundred men, and many of them unarmed.

A hideous scene of uproar and clamor ensued. There was no police power to stay the tumult. Heavy anchors and other obstructions were thrown upon the track, and the rails torn up. A secession flag was waved defiantly, and the most bitter curses of the Union were blended with huzzas for the Confederacy. Thus far the soldiers had remained quietly in the cars, making no reply, by word or look, to their insulting foes.