2-1 THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC. follow the career of the Army of the Potomac, destined to en gage the great confederate army and to wrest from it, if possible, the pos-ession of the Virginian capital. The winter had passed, for the Northern soldiers, in the work of organization, of drilling, of provisioning; besides, they had constructed around \\ ashington a series of works, of detached forts (to use a well known expressia a) which, armed with powerful artillery, would protect the capital from a sudden assault, even though the Armv of the Potomac might be absent. The construction of these works furnished scope for thought to those who sought to penetrate the projects <i»f the General; but everything had long been so quiet at Washington that it was only casually that the idea of entering on a campaign presented itself. T'hc enemy still occupied, in great force, his positions of Manassas and Centreville, and for six months past nothing but unimportant skirmishes had occurred between the two armies. 'I hings were in this condition when, on the evening of the 9th of March, one of my friends, tapping me on the shoulder, said : " Yon don’t know the news ? The enemy has evacuated Manassas. and the army sets out to-morrow.” Next day, in reality, the whole city of Washington was in commotion. A mass of artillery, of cavalry, of wagons, blocked up the streets, moving towards the bridges of the Potomac. On the sidewalks were seen ollicers bidding tender farewells to -weeping ladies. The civilian ]«-tion of the population looked coldly on this departure. There was not the least trace of enthusiasm among them. Perhaps this was due to the rain, which was tailing in torrents. On the long bridge, in the midst of several batteries that were laboriously defiling across this bridge which is eternally in rains. I met (.eneral Ve( lellan, on horseback, with an anxious air, riding ahme, without aids-de-camp, and escorted only by a few troopers. . Ie who could that day have read the General’s soul would have seen there already something of that
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