31 THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC. from Alexandria or Annapolis, and filled, some with soldiers, some with horses, cannon and munitions of all kinds. Some- i s 1 counted scveiB hundred vessels tit the anchorage; and among them twenty or twenty-live large steam transports waiting for their turn to come up to the quay and land the fifteen or twenty thousand men whom they brought. The reader may judge how fearful would have been the catastrophe had the Merrimac suddenly appeared among this swarm of ships, striking them one after another and sending to the bottom these human hives with all their inmates 1 The federal authorities both naval and military here underwent several days of the keenest anxiety. Every time that a smoke was seen above the trees which concealed the Elizabeth river, men’s hearts beat fast; but the Merrimac never came ; she allowed the landing to take place without opposition. Why did she do this ? She did not come because her position at Norfolk as a constant menace secured without any risk two results of great importance. In the first place she kept paralysed in Ilampton Roads the naval force's assembled to join the land army in the attack upon Yorktown : in the second place, and this was her principal object, she deprived the federal army of all the advantages which the possession of the James would have secured to it in a campaign of which Richmond was the base. Ko doubt, if the Merrimac had gone down to the Roads and destroyed the fleet there assembled, she would have achieved an immense result, bur all the chances would not have been w h her in such an enterprise. In the first place, the Morri mac would have encountered the Monitor. Shi]' to ship sho <lid not fear this enemy: the Monitor’s armament had proved impotent against her armor and would prove so again ; and if h1i<- had not succeeded in sinking the Monitor at the first shock the had taken her measures to secure better luck the next time.
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