38 THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC. confederate leaders, had belonged to the regular amiy of the inion down to the moment of the insurrection. His former comrades, now at the head of the federal troops, were familiar with his habits and character, and sought to infer from them the course he would pursue. This reciprocal knowledge which the chiefs of the two armies possessed of each other, the result of a career begun in common in early youth at the military school, and pursued either on the battle-field or in the tedious life of frontier garrisons, was certainly a singular trait of this singular war. Some people built up their hopes of a final reconciliation upon these old intimacies, but such hopes were not to be realized. Another not less curious trait of the war,which appeared in the outset of the campaign and was constantly reproduced, was the complete absence of all information in regard to the country and to the position of the enemy, the total ignorance under which we labored in regard to his movements, and the number of his troops. The few inhabitants we met were hostile and dumb; the deserters and negroes generally told us much more than they knew in order to secure a welcome, and as we had no maps and no knowledge of localities, it was impossible to make anything of their stories, and to reconcile their often contradictory statements. We were heH twenty four miles from Yorktown, and we could not learn what works the enemy had thrown up, nor what was his force within them. This was the more amazing that Fortress .Monroe had always been held by a strong gar- ri.'on, which ought to have been able to obtain some information or to make some reconnoissance in this direction. But b\ a strange aberration, this fortress now become the base of operations of the Army of the Potomac, bad been specially sequestered from the command of General McClellan, together with its garr-on, although the General in charge of it-was his inferior in rank. Hence arose military suseeptibilities
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTM4ODY=