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Chapter 4:
BURNSIDE's expedition was but an episode quite secondary as compared with the great struggle that was about to take place between the army of the Potomac and that of
Northern Virginia in the early part of April.
This struggle opens the second year of the war, counting from the 14th of April, 1862, the first anniversary of the bombardment of
Fort Sumter.
Before closing the narrative of the first year with this volume, we must show what had been the preparations for this campaign, and go back to the beginning of 1862 to speak of the different events that occurred during this period of comparative rest to both armies, which had such an important bearing on their destinies.
Among these events there is one which it behooves us to mention in this place, as being intimately connected with the history of the army of the Potomac, although, from its peculiar importance, it is proper to separate it in our recital from the simple military incidents that filled up the first months of that year.
It was indeed productive of much more lasting effects, and caused in
Europe as well as in
America a far greater sensation than a bloody battle.
We allude to the naval combat of which the harbor of
Hampton Roads was the theatre on the 8th and 9th of March, 1862, and which marks the greatest and most sudden of all the revolutions that have been effected in the science of maritime warfare.
It is not necessary for us to enumerate all the studies that had been made within the last few years by naval constructors of different nations to protect war-vessels by means of iron armor from the terrible effects of hollow projectiles fired horizontally.
As we have before stated, these studies had not as yet produced, up to 1861, any experiment which could be considered decisive.
