oads of Virginia on the twenty-second
of February, in honor of Washington's birthday. A reconnoitering
staff officer reported the roads as being in their proper places;
but he guessed the bottom had fallen out. So McClellan was granted
some delay.

His grand total was now over two hundred thousand men. The Confederate
grand total was estimated at a hundred and fifteen thousand by the
civilian detectives whom the Federal Government employed to serve
in place of an expert intelligence staff. The detective estimate
was sixty-five thousand men out. The real Confederate strength
at this time was only fifty thousand. There was little chance of
getting true estimates in any other way, as the Federal Government
had no adequate cavalry. Most of the few cavalry McClellan commanded
were as yet a mere collection of men and horses, quite unfit for
reconnoitering and testing an enemy's force.

McClellan's own plan, formed on the supposition that the Confederates
held the Bull Run position with at least a hundred thousand men,
involved the transfer of a hundred and fifty thousand Federals by
sea from Washington to Fortress Monroe, on the historic peninsula
between the York and James rivers. Then, using these rivers as
lines of communication, his army would take Richmond in flank.
Lincoln's objection to this plan was based on the very significant
argument that while the Federal army was being transported piecemeal
to Fortress Monroe the Confederates might take Washington by a
sudden dash from their base at Centreville, only thirty miles off.
This was a valid objection; for Washington was not only the Federal
Headquarters but the very emblem of the Union cause--a sort of living
Stars and Stripes--and Washington lost might well be understood to
mean almost the same as if the Ship of State had struck her colors.

On the ninth of March the immediate anxiety about Washington was
relieved. That day came news that the _Monitor_ had checkmated the
_Merrimac_ in Hampton Roads and that "Joe" Johnston had withdrawn
his forces from the Bull Run position and had retired behind the
Rappahannock to Culpeper. On the tenth McClellan began a reconnoitering
pursuit of Johnston from Washington. Having found burnt bridges and
other signs of decisive retirement, he at last persuaded the reluctant
Lincoln to sanction the Peninsula Campaign. On the seventeenth his
army began embarking for Fortress Monroe, ten thousand men at a
time, that being all the tra