Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. . SIEGE OF YORKTOWN. After the retreat of the Confederates, McClellan’s plans were pushed with more vigor, and by the end of March the mass of the Federal troops had been transferred to Fortress Monroe. As the Federal plans were gradually revealed to the Confederates, dispositions were made to meet them. General Johnston retired first behind the Rapidan, and when, early in April, there was no longer room to doubt the destination of the Federal forces, the mass of his army was ordered to the Peninsula, where General Magruder with 11,000 men 1 was meanwhile delaying, with admirable energy and skill, the advance of McClellan. Magruder, finding that his most advanced line, extending across the Peninsula from the mouth of the Warwick by Young’s Mill to Harwood’s Mill and Ship Point, required more force than he had at command, had selected, as a second position, a line extending from Yorktown by way of the Warwick River to Minor’s farm and thence to Mulberry Island Point. He garrisoned Gloucester Point on the north bank of the York, and thus disputed the passage of that river at its narrowest part. Magruder thus describes his position: 2
Warwick River rises very near York River and about one and a half miles to the right of Yorktown. Yorktown and redoubts Nos. 4 and 5, united by long curtains and flanked by rifle-pits, form the left of the line, until at the commencement of the military road it reaches Warwick River, here a sluggish and boggy stream, twenty or thirty yards wide, and running through a dense wood fringed by swamps. Along this riverare five dams ? one at Wynne’s Mill, one at Lee’s Mill, and three constructed by myself. The effect of these dams is to back up the water along the course of the river, so that for nearly three fourths of its distance its…