THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC. 37 body had doubted the efficiency of iron-clads, and nobody had thought much of the llerrimac before we learned what she was. This skepticism was cruelly punished. In the West the armies of the Union were going on from success to success, thanks to the cooperation, energy, and enterprise of the navy, admirably seconded by the geographical formation of the country. Here things were very different. A single success of the confederates by sea, a single blow which they had succeeded in striking by surprise, was destined perhaps to paralyze the whole federal army, to make it lose great geographical advantages equal to those which existed in the West, and to compromise, or at least to postpone the success of its operations; so true is it that experience has not yet taught even the most experienced maritime nations all that is to be gained by the cooperation of a well-organized navy in wars by land 1 III. (forfrtss Conroe to ®Hrtnmsburc[. Whilst we were thus waiting and waiting in vain for the Merrimac, the army was landing at Fortress Monroe, now the scene of a prodigious activity. By the 4th of April, six divi sions, the cavalry, the reserve, and an immense number of wagons had been landed. The General-in-Chief who had arrived the evening before, put them at once in motion. Keyes, with three divisions took the road which leads along the Kinks of the Janies river. McClellan with the rest of the army followed the direct road to Yorktown. We came at once upon the ruins of Hampton, burned down some months before, a la Bostopchin, by the confederate General Magruder. We were informed that he still commanded the garrison of Yorktown and die Peninsula. Magruder, like all the
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