flanks by marshy ground; and here the Confederates took position to dis pute the enemy's advance. But the marshes were found to be practicable. The Federals advanced with flanking columns debouching to the right and left. Their overwhelming numbers literally crowded upon and crushed our battery of three field-pieces on the left,* while at the same time the enemy passed through the cypress swamp, which Col. Shaw thought impracticable, and turned the right flank. The order was given to spike the guns in the battery, and retreat to the northern end of the island. The Confederates were followed up to the shore, slowly and cautiously, by the enemy. Some effected their escape in boats, which were quickly towed away by a steamer; but the bulk of the command was captured, includ ing two boats conveying the wounded, which were compelled to return by the enemy's fire. The capture of the island was immediately followed by the pursuit of the Confederate gunboats. A squadron, consisting of fourteen gunboats, was detached for that purpose, and, on the 10th of February, found the remaining Confederate vessels drawn up in line in the narrow channel which leads up to Elizabeth City. After a brief and desultory engage ment, the crews of the Confederate gunboats, after setting fire to the ves sels, abandoned them, and fled for the shore. Thus was the disaster of Roanoke Island complete. The Confederates had lost in all the actions but twenty-three killed and fifty-eight wounded. But the disaster in other respects was great. The enemy had taken six forts, forty guns, nearly two thousand prisoners, and upwards of three thousand small arins; secured the water avenue of Roanoke River, navigable for one hundred and twenty miles; got possession of the granary and larder of Norfolk, and threatened the back-door of that city. The disaster of Roanoke Island dates the period when public censure towards the Richmond Government appeared to have first awakened. Heretofore the administration of that Government had gone on almost * In this action was killed Capt. O. Jennings Wise, of the "Richmond Blues," a son of Ge Wise, a young man of brilliant promise, prominently connected with the Richmond press before the war, and known throughout the State for his talents, chivalric bearing, and modesty of behaviour. A correspondent furnishes the following particulars of the death of this brilliant young officer: "About ten o'clock Capt. Wise found his battalion exposed to the galling fire of a regiment; turning to Capt. Coles, he said: 'This fire is very hot; tell Col. Anderson we must fall back or be rein. forced.' Capt. Coles turned to pass the order, and was shot through the heart, dying instantly. Capt. Wise was wounded, first in the arm and next through the lungs, which latter wound brought him to the ground. He was borne to the hospital in charge of Surgeon Coles, and received two additional wounds while being borne from the field. That evening Surgeon Coles put him into a boat to send him to Nag's Head, but the enemy fired upon it, and he was obliged to return. The enemy seemed to regret this, and treated him very kindly, taking him out of the boat on a mattress, and starting back to the hospital. The next day, about eleven o'clock a. M., he calmly and in his perfect senses, without suffering, softly passed away. A Federal officer, standing by him and witnessing his death, said, 'There is a brave man !'" LOSS OF ROANOKE ISLAND. 213 without inquiry, the people presuming on the wisdom of their rulers, and having but little curiosity to penetrate the details of their business, or to violate that singular official reserve which was thrown around the military condition of the Confederacy from the first gun of the war down to the final catastrophe. But such a disaster as that referred to, in which improvidence stared out, and in which an army had been put, as it were, in a mash-trap-in a condition in which it could neither hope for success nor extricate itself from a besetting peril-provoked public inquiry, and demanded an investigation.* A committee was accordingly ordered in the Confederate Congress to report upon the affair of Roanoke Island. It declared that the Secretary of War, Mr. J. P. Benjamin, was responsible for an important defeat of our arms, which might have been safely avoided by him; that he had paid no practical attention to the appeals of Gen. Wise; and that he had, by plain acts of omission, permitted that general and an inconsiderable force to remain to meet at least fifteen thousand men, well armed and equipped. No defence to this charge was ever attempted by Secretary Benjamin or his friends; and the unanimous conclusion of the committee, charging one of President Davis' Cabinet with a matter of the gravest offence known to the laws and the interests of the country, was allowed to remain on the public record without commentary or consequence. The Richmond Enquirer had the following commentary on the Roanoke Island affair. It contains a picture of Confederate improvidence, which was to be repeated at many stages of the war, and to put our scantiness and shiftlessness in frightful contrast with the active zeal and munificent preparations of the enemy: "On the island no preparations whatever had been made. Col. Shaw's regiment, Col. Jordan's, and three companies of Col. Marten's regiment, had been on the island for months. These regiments numbered, all present, one thousand nine hundred and fourteen. Of these, about one thousand seven hundred were soldiers. There were four hundred and fifty absent and sick, leaving one thousand two hundred and fifty for all duty. From these, five batteries had to be manned, leaving, on the morning of the eighth, only eight hundred and three North Carolina infantry reported for duty. These had not been paid, or clothed, or fed, or drilled. The island had no implements for the labour on the works, no teams but two pair of broken-down mules, and no horses for field-artillery. There were but three pieces of field-artillery-one twenty-four pounder, one eighteen pounder, and one brass howitzer-the mules drew the latter, and the men the heavier pieces through the sand. There was only twelve-pounder ammunition for any of the large pieces. The forts, built on the island before Gen. Wise was assigned to the command, were all in the wrong places-at the north end of the island-leaving all the landings on the south end uncovered by a single battery. No breastworks had been made, and there were no tools to make any-the marshes at the south end of the island had no defensive works upon them. But one steam-tug and two barges were provided, and there were no means of retreat either by tugs or ferry. Thus it will be seen there were provided no means of defence, and still less of escape, though timely notice and a providential warning of twenty-five days had been given." CHAPTER XIII. . SIXTY TRUE CAUSES OF THE CONFEDERATE DISASTERS IN THE SECOND YEAR OF THE WAR. THE EXCITEMENT ABOUT IRON VESSELS.--DISCUSSION IN THE NEWSPAPERS.-ADDITION OF IRONCLADS TO THE FEDERAL NAVY.-WHAT M'CLELLAN THOUGHT OF THE VIRGINIA.- CAPTURE OF NEWBERN, &C.—OBJECTS OF BURNSIDE'S EXPEDITION.-BRANCH'S COMMAND AT NEWBERN. THE CONFEDERATE WORKS ON THE NEUSE RIVER. -RETREAT OF BRANCH.--FEDERAL OCCUPATION OF NEWBERN.-CAPTURE OF FORT MACON. THE ENTIRE COAST OF NORTH CAROLINA IN THE POSSESSION OF THE ENEMY.-THE SEA-COAST AN UNIMPORTANT PART OF THE CONFEDERATE DEFENCES, THE series of disasters that befel the Confederates in the early months of 1862, may be distinctly and sufficiently traced to human causes. Instead of being ascribed to the mysterious dispensations of Providence, they are more properly named as the results of human mismanagement. The first important defeat of the Federal arms on the plains of Manassas was the initial point with the North of an enlarged scheme of war, and it was now simply giving proof of its "Anaconda Plan," and realizing the natural result of those immense preparations it had made by sea and land, to confound its adversary. The rebukes which were now being administered to the vaingloriousness of the South were neither few nor light. The Confederates had been worsted in almost every engagement that had occurred since the fall of 1861. There had come disaster after disaster, culminating in the fall of Donelson, the occupation of Nashville, the breaking of our centre, the falling back on all sides, the realization of invasion, the imminence of perils which no one dared to name. No one who lived in Richmond during the war can ever forget these gloomy, miserable days. In the midst of them was to occur the ceremony of the inauguration of the Permanent Government of the Confederate States. It was only a difference of name between two governments, one called Provisional and the other Permanent; for Mr. Davis had been unanimously elected President, and there was no change either of the organic law or of the personnel of the Administration. But the ceremony of the second inauguration of President Davis was one of deep interest to the public; for it was supposed that he might use the occasion to develop a new policy and to reanimate the people. The 22d of February, the day appointed for the inauguration, was memorable for its gloom in Richmond. Rain fell in torrents, and the heavens seemed to be hung with sable. Yet a dense crowd collected, braving the rain-storm in their eager interest to hear the President's speech from the steps of the Capitol. "It was then," said a Richmond paper, "that all eyes were turned to our Chief; that we hung upon his lips, hushing the beating of our heavy hearts that we might catch the word of fire we longed to hear-that syllable of sympathy of which a nation in distress stands so in need. One sentence then of defiance and of cheer-something bold, and warm, and human-had sent a thrill of lightning through the land, and set it ablaze with the fresh and quench less flame of renewed and never-ending fight. That sentence never came The people were left to themselves." The Confederate President offered but little of counsel or encouragement to his distressed countrymen. He declared that the magnified proportions of the war had occasioned serious disasters, and that the effort was impossible to protect the whole of the territory of the Confederate States, sea-board and inland. To the popular complaint of inefficiency in the departments of the Government, he replied that they had done all which human power and foresight enabled them to accomplish. He lifted up, in conclusion, a piteous, beautiful, appropriate prayer for the favour of Divine providence. But it is not to be supposed that the people of the Confederacy, although so little cheered or sustained by their rulers, despaired of the war. There were causes, which were rekindling the fiercest flames of war apart from official inspiration at Richmond. The successes of the enemy had but made him more hateful, and strengthened the South in the determination to have done with him forever. They found new causes of animosity; the war had been brought home to their bosoms; they had obtained practical lessons of the enemy's atrocity and his insolent design; and they came to the aid of their Government with new power and a generosity that was quite willing to forget all its short-comings in the past. One great cause of animated resolution on the part of the Confederate States was the development at Washington of the design upon slavery, now advanced to a point where there could no longer be a doubt of the revengeful and radical nature of the war. The steps by which the Federal Government had reached this point were in a crooked path, and attended by marks of perfidy. It had indeed given to the world on this subject an astounding record of bad faith, calculated to overwhelm the moral sense of the reader as he compares its different parts and approaches its grand conclusion of self-contradiction the most defiant, and deception the most shameless. Never had there been such an emphatic protest of a political design as that given by Mr. Lincoln on taking the reins of government, declaring that there was no possible intention, no imaginable occasion, no actual desire to interfere with the subject of negro slavery in the States. Mr. Seward, who had been constituted Secretary of State, and who had been Mr. Lincoln's mouth-piece in Congress before the inauguration, had de clared there: "Experience in public affairs has confirmed my opinion that domestic slavery existing in any State is wisely left by the Constitution of the United States, exclusively to the care, management, and disposition of that State; and if it were in my power I would not alter the Constitution in that respect." Words could scarcely be more distinct and emphatic; but Mr. Lincoln, in his inauguration address, had seen fit to add to them, |