36 THE ARMY OE THE POTOMAC. milled to sacrifice their ships and with their ships their own lives to attain it. In a word, the American navy might prevent the Men mac from coming into deep water and interfering with the military operations, of which the York river was the destined theatre. But the Merrimac, on the other hand, stood in the way of similar operations on the James. This was an immense service to be rendered by a single ship! We have seen above how impossible it became to move forward the army of the Potomac directly and by land upon Richmond, when the railway lines, b} which it was to be supplied and its different parts united, were interrupted. Here we sec the direct road to Richmond by water blocked by a vessel, a wreck happily rescued from the destruction of the Norfolk nav ard, fished up half burned from the bottom of a dock, and transformed by hands as intelligent as they were daring, into a formidable warlike machine. Instead of moving up the bank of the James river to Richmond rapidly under the escort and with the support of a powerful flotilla, here was the whole federal army compelled to disembark under great perils at 1 ortress Monroe in order to take the practicable but long and round-about road of the York river. We were to be ' irced into going first to Y’orktown. an obstacle to be removed by arms, and then into ascending the York and the Pamnn- kot to the head waters at White House. From this point where we must leave our gunboats, we were then to follow the line of the York river railway, a road on which there were happily no bridges, and which it was not therefore easy to ent, mt which traverses an unwholesome region, and offers the formidable barrier of the Chickahominy river at a few miles from Richmond. A sure and rapid operation was thus converted into a long and hazardous campaign, simply because we had lost on one point, ami for a short time, the control of the water. Every
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