61 THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC. We Inui captured prisoners belonging to a corps which had. up to this time, been stationed opposite Burnside in North Carolina; it was, therefore, plain that this corps had joined the army of Johnston. We soon learned the evacuation of Norfolk and the occupation of that city by General Wool. It was evident that Davis could only have made up bis mind to this sacrifice because he wished to draw into Eicbmoud Huger and the 18,(>00 men -who had up to this time held the great arsenal of A irginia. .Finally the confederate leader had ordered a levy en masse of all men able to bear arms. They had been sent into camps of instruction. whence they would be incorporated with the old regiments, the effective force of which would thus be doubled. The result of all this threatened the army of the Potomac in its only superiority, that of numbers. Unhappily, too, while the enemy was concentrating and strengthening liis forces, ours were melting away. We have already seen liow at Alexandria a division was detached and sent to Fremont. Before Yorktown we had lost two other divisions under McDowell. We had since left garrisons in Yorktown, Gloucester and Williamsburg. We had lost men under lire and by disease, as well as by straggling. Nothing came to fill up the gaps. When an American regiment marches to the war it goes as a whole, and leaves behind it no depots of recruits to restore its rank's as they arc ■wasted away. It will be easily seen how much reason we bad to be anxious about this diminution of the army, while we knew that the confederates were steadily swelling their force, and while by plunging more deeply into the heart of the enemy's country we were daily moving further from our own base of operations, and losing at once the moral and material aid of the navy, the cooperation of which had hitherto proved so powerful and so useful. 1 am aware that the evacuation of Norfolk was followed by
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