Orleans, It was also free to the same point from the Recovery of New mouth. A greater naval and military armament than had as yet been equipped, was directed towards New Orleans. It appeared almost impracticable to reach the city; the army, under General Butler, could not march thither without support from the fleet, and the fleet, under Commodore Farragut, found the river strongly defended by two forts, St. Philip and Jackson, with a fleet in the stream, while a chain, supported upon hulks, was stretched from one bank to the other. The chain was broken, but the forts held out unshaken by a bombardment of several days. Farragut ran by them in the night, under a cannonade which hardly any commander before him would have braved, escaped the fire-vessels sent against him, vanquished the confederate fleet, and on the day after moved his squadron abreast of New Orleans, (April 25.) The forts below surrendered, (April 28,) and the city was occupied by the Union army, (May 1.) General Butler remained in New Orleans, while Farragut ascended the Mississippi, taking Baton Rouge and Natchez, and running the Vicksburg batteries to meet the Union fleet above them, then running them again on his return to New Orleans. Fort Pu Roanoke, Batteries being planted on Tybee Island by Caplaski. tain Gillmore, they opened upon Fort Pulaski, and compelled its surrender on the second day, (April 11.) Higher up the coast the forts on Roanoke Island Newbern, fell before an expedition under General Burnside and Fort and Commodore Goldsborough, (February 7, 8.) The confederate fleet in Albemarle Sound was soon mastered, (February 10.) The next month, (March 14,) Newbern was captured, and the next, (April 25,) Fort Macon, so that a great part of the North Carolina coast was recovered. Macon. Merrimac and Monitor. When Norfolk came into the hands of the Virginia secessionists, they found, among other very valuable spoils, the steam frigate Merrimac, sunk by the officers of the navy-yard, but easily raised and converted into an iron-plated ram by her captors. Her appearance in Hampton Roads, where Union ships of war and transports were always lying, had long been feared, when she came, with five smaller vessels in her train, in the afternoon of March 8. At half past three she struck the sloop of war Cumberland, which sank discharging her guns, and carrying down her sick, wounded, and killed. At half past four she compelled the surrender of the frigate Congress, already attacked by her consorts. She then turned against the steam frigate Minnesota, that had run aground, but without immediately attacking this vessel. The Roanoke and St. Lawrence were also grounded. Enough was done for one day, and the Merrimac withdrew towards Norfolk, to return when she pleased, and to do, as it seemed, what she pleased. Hampton Roads lay at her mercy, and beyond, the sea, the Potomac, Washington, Philadelphia, New York or Boston, any harbor, any fleet, any shore upon which she might descend. But one night changed everything by bringing the Monitor to the scene of action. This was a low iron-clad, constructed under John Ericsson's direction in New York, and armed with heavy guns in a movable turret, which had been invented twenty years before by Theodore R. Timby. These are names and facts which deserve to be remembered, for the vessel thus fashioned proved the safety of the Union fleets and the Union shores. Lieutenant Worden commanded, and he laid his tub, as it appeared, full in the path of the huge Merrimac, as she came to complete her work of devastation on the morning of the 9th of March. The action was decisive, and the Monitor drove her antagonist back to Norfolk. On the abandon ment of that place by the confederates, early in May, they blew up the Merrimac. The Monitor foundered at sea in September. Her brave commander, in the action with the Merrimac, received severe injuries, and as he lay helpless in Washington, the president wept over him with pathetic gratitude. Peninsu We have now to follow the Union forces to delar cam- feat, and that where it told the most against them paign. and their cause. The army of the Potomac, under General McClellan, was transported to the peninsula between the York and James Rivers, at the beginning of April. It was occupied a month by the siege of Yorktown, and then led forward in such a way as to expose a part of it to great peril at Williamsburg, (May 5.) Most of its fighting was done between May 27, at Hanover Court House, and July 1, at Malvern Hill; and in the course of these five weeks, it passed from one extreme, where its advance was within four miles of Richmond, to the other, where it fought only to save itself from total destruction before reaching the James River in retreat. Fair Oaks, (May 31, June 1,) Mechanicsville, (June 26,) Gaines' Mill, (June 27,) White Oak Swamp, (June 30,) - these, with others just mentioned, are the names of its battles, all gallantly delivered, and all vainly, so far as related to the purpose of the campaign. Thousands upon thousands of brave men, as brave as any the country had, fell by disease or wounds; and when all was over, Richmond looked safer than Washington. The general threw the blame upon the government for not reënforcing him, and the government blamed the general; the army and the people were divided in opinion. But the campaign had been determined in very much the same manner, though on a much larger scale, as the battle of Bull Run. The confederate general known as Stonewall Jackson entered the Shenandoah Valley, where General Banks was in command, drove him with great loss out of the valley, (May 23-26,) then beat General Fremont at Cross Keys, (June 8,) and General Shields at Port Republic, (June 9,)both of whom had been sent to intercept him, and having thus alarmed Washington and the north, he prevented troops from being forwarded to General McClellan, and brought his force to swell the army defending Richmond, now under the command of General Lee; when Lee, thus strengthened, turned on the Union lines, and forced their withdrawal to the River James. Northern Lee and Jackson proved a more serious combiVirginia. nation than had as yet confronted the Union generals. The forces near Washington and in the Shenandoah Valley, augmented at first by troops from West Virginia and the Carolina coast, and afterwards by the Army of the Potomac from the James River, were organized as the army of Virginia, under General Pope, and directed towards Richmond from the north. It was a brief and pitiful movement, beginning with the defeat of General Banks at Cedar Mountain, (August 9,) and ending with the defeat of General Pope at Bull Run, (August 29,) and Chantilly, (August 31,) from which he sought safety within the fortifications of Washington. Again had Jackson's swift marches on the flank and rear of our army resulted in its overthrow. To match such a general with one like Pope was like matching the Mississippi with a creek. Yet Pope's defeat was not wholly his own work; he suffered from military jealousies among the officers who should have supported him for the sake of the country. Defence The relics of the summer campaigns, and the new of Mary- regiments hurrying to the front, were gathered as land. the army of the Potomac, and intrusted to General McClellan. He was soon on the road in pursuit of Lee, who, flushed with repeated victories, crossed the Potomac, (September 3-6,) and called upon the people of Maryland to throw off their "foreign yoke," by which he meant the government of the United States. Ready as individuals were, the great body of Marylanders had no mind to join the confederates, and the army was disappointed in the accessions and supplies which had been confidently expected. It order to take Harper's Ferry, Lee ran the great risk of dividing his forces; but it was run safely, and Jackson, after taking the Ferry and twelve thousand men garrisoning it, (September 15,) rejoined his commander. McClellan won the battle of South Mountain on the 14th, and might have turned it into a great victory, had he followed it up before Jackson's return. But he did not, and accordingly had to fight both Lee and Jackson at Antietam, on the 17th, where they suffered sufficiently to decide their retreat to Virginia. This, in the circumstances, was equivalent to a Union victory, and the relief to the loyal country was immense, though there was great disappointment because the confederate retreat was not molested. Defence nati. Just before this advance into Maryland, two of Cincin- confederate divisions entered Kentucky. One of them, under General E. K. Smith, defeated a body of Union troops at Richmond, (August 30), and marched towards Cincinnati. General Lewis Wallace took upon himself the almost hopeless defence of the city, and ordered all places of business to be closed, ferry-boats to stop, and citizens to work on intrenchments and enlist in an improvised army. "Any how," he proclaimed, "" it must be done. The willing shall be properly credited; the unwilling promptly visited. The principle adopted is citizens for the labor, soldiers for the battle," (September 1.) Forty thousand came forward, and in three days a line of earthworks ten miles long, armed and manned, on the southern bank of the Ohio, looked so formidable that when the confederates arrived, (September 12,) they made no |