10G APPENDIX. these points had suffered greatly dining the autumn and winter of ls6b 2; that from October to March, he never bird an effective force of more that. 46,Olio men under his orders; that his preparations for an evacuation were b*gnn as early as October, IbGl, and that after that time he lay there simply in observation. It was the opinion of accomplished oilicers of the southern army, that the reduction of Pichmond would never be really attempted excepting by the valley of the Shenandoah, in a campaign intended to cut off the capital and the army from their connections with the west by the James river canal, and the Virginia, and Tennessee railways; or by the James and Fork rivers, in precisely such a movement as that which the Prince de Joinville states that it was the intention of General McClellan to make, had not his plans been disconcerted by the untimely and unnecessary revelation of them to which the Prince so delicately but so distinctly alludes. General D. II. Hill expected the campaign of the Shenandoah, but, it is my impression that the majority of the confederate commanders looked with more anxiety for the final advance of McClellan in the direction which it now appears that it was his intention to follow. The confederate government, however. scarcely anticipated any serious cainpdign from either quarter, and amused with dBams of an early peace through the influence of European intervention and of politico-man- cial causes at the .North, kept Johnston's army in a position of observation on the Potomac, and utterly neglected all adequate preparations against such an expedition as the Prim-e relates Genual McClellan to have been silently preparing during the winter of 1861-2. There can be little doubt that tie completion of the Merrimac in time to close the I ames river against our llee+s, was quite as much a matter of chance as of design ; the Secretary of the confederate navy ha' .ng small faith in the work, and the people at large no
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTM4ODY=