22 THE AUMY OF I HE POTOMAC. Foote's flotilla of iron-clad batteries and steam rams. In those regions the war assumed quite a new character. So long as they were carried on only by water the operations were verv rapid. The enemy could not intercept the mag- niticent navigable highways so favorable to attack which the dreat rivers of the West supplied. By water Columbus »as besieged, whilst by quickly ascending the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers, the communications ot the rebel army assigned to the defence of that important post, were cut. Once isolated from its railroads, that army had to retreat southwards. It thus retired from position to position, as fast as the Northern flotilla descended the river, and as the Northern army seized upon the princip.nl railroad branches. The march of the Fcdertds only slackened when, being able to advance no farther by navigable waters, parallel to the Mississippi, such as the Tennessee, they had to reconstruct, as they went along, the railroads necessary for their supplies, which the enemy had destroyed in falling back. 'Ihe last operation remained—to drive out of Richmond the insurrectionary government. That government, on being concentrated in the hands of H1'- Ravis, took the form of a dictatorship, and thus gave to its seat the inwortanee of a capital. There converge all the great railroad and telegraph lines. Thence, for a year past, have all orders and despatches been dated. To force the Confederate government to abandon that capital would be to inilict upon it an immense check—in the eyes of Europe particularly it would have taken away its prestige. Should this attack have been ventured on as soon as the means supposed to be sudicient were provided, without awaiting the results of the blockade and of the Mississippi campaign t On this question opinions were di?ided. Some ■ aid " yes," arguing tbus : that an insurrection should never be gi en the lime to establish itself; that till Federal army, with its defective organization, would be no better in March
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