ked. Davis
had made all arrangements for the flight of his family. And from
Drewry's Bluff, eight miles south of Richmond, the masts of the
foremost Federal vessels could be seen coming up the James, where,
on the eleventh, the _Merrimac_, having grounded, had been destroyed
by her own commander.

But the General Assembly of Virginia, passionately seconded by
the City Council, petitioned the Government to stand its ground
"till not a stone was left upon another." Every man in Richmond who
could do a hand's turn and who was not already in arms marched out
to complete the defenses of the James at Drewry's Bluff. Senators,
bankers, bondmen and free, merchants, laborers, and ministers of
all religions, dug earthworks, hauled cannon, piled ammunition,
or worked, wet to the waist, at the big boom that was to stop the
ships and hold them under fire. The Government had changed its mind.
Richmond was to be held to the last extremity. And the Southern
women were as willing as the men.

In the midst of all this turmoil Lee calmly reviewed the situation.
He saw that the Federal gunboats coming up the James were acting
alone, as the disconnected vanguard of what should have been a
joint advance, and that no army was yet moving to support them.
He knew McClellan and Banks and read them like a book. He also
knew Jackson, and decided to use him again in the Shenandoah Valley
as a menace to Washington. Writing to him on the sixteenth of May,
the very day McClellan reached White House, only twenty miles from
Richmond, he said: "Whatever movement you make against Banks, do it
speedily, and, if successful, drive him back towards the Potomac,
and create the impression, as far as possible, that you design
threatening that line." Moreover, out of his own scanty forces, he
sent Jackson two excellent brigades. Thus, while the great Federal
civilians who knew nothing practical of war were all agog about
Richmond, a single point at one end of the semicircle, the great
Confederate strategist was forging a thunderbolt to relieve the
pressure on it by striking the Federal center so as to threaten
Washington. The fundamental idea was a Fabian defensive at Richmond,
a vigorous offensive in the Valley, to produce Federal dispersion
between these points and Washington; then rapid concentration against
McClellan on the Chickahominy.

The unsupported Federal gunboats were stopped and turned back at
the boom near Drewry's Bluff. McClellan, bent on bes