THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC. 47 In the night of the 3d and 4th of May, Yorktown and the lines of Warwick river were evacuated. This evacuation must have been commenced several days before, but it had been managed wTith great seeresy and great skill. On the 3d, the fire of the hostile batteries had greatly increased in intensity. The shells from the rifled guns flew in all directions with a length of range which bad not before been suspected. The accuracy of their fire* forced us to abandon all the signal posts we had established in the tops of the tallest trees. The balloon itself, whenever it rose in the air, was saluted with an iron hail of missiles which were, however, perfectly harmless. The object of all this was to mask the retreat, and it was perfectly successful. * Note.—1 am not sure whether I ought to attribute to this accuracy an extraordinary fact which occurred during the siege. Some topographical engineers were busy estimating a relief. They were perceived, and a single shot was fired at them. The shell, fired from an immense distance, burst upon the circumferentor and killed the officer and his assistant. On the 4th, at daybreak, the men in the rifle-pits of the advance saw no signs of the foe before them. A few of them ventured cautiously up to the very lines of the enemy. All was as silent as death. Soon suspicion grew into certainty ; it w-as flashed upon the head-quarters by all the telegraphic lines which connected them with the different corps of the army. The confederates had vanished, and with them all chances of a brilliant victory. The impossibility of any naval cooperation, and the fatal measures by which the Army of the Potomac lost the corps of McDowell, had combined with the firmness of the enemy to prevent us from taking Yorktown by storm. We had next spent a whole month in constructing gigantic works now become useless, and now, after all this, the confederates fell back, satisfied with gaining time to prepare for the defence of Richmond and henceforth relying on the season of heats and sickness for aid against the federal army encamped among the marshes 01
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