Even while the President was completing the drafting and copying of these important orders, events were transpiring which once more put a new face upon the proposed campaign against Richmond.  During the forenoon of the next day, March 9, a despatch was received from Fortress Monroe, reporting the appearance of the rebel ironclad Merrimac, and the havoc she had wrought the previous afternoon—­the Cumberland sunk, the Congress surrendered and burned, the Minnesota aground and about to be attacked.  There was a quick gathering of officials at the Executive Mansion—­Secretaries Stanton, Seward, Welles, Generals McClellan, Meigs, Totten, Commodore Smith, and Captain Dahlgren—­and a scene of excitement ensued, unequaled by any other in the President’s office during the war.  Stanton walked up and down like a caged lion, and eager discussion animated cabinet and military officers.  Two other despatches soon came, one from the captain of a vessel at Baltimore, who had left Fortress Monroe on the evening of the eighth, and a copy of a telegram to the “New York Tribune,” giving more details.

President Lincoln was the coolest man in the whole gathering, carefully analyzing the language of the telegrams, to give their somewhat confused statements intelligible coherence.  Wild suggestions flew from speaker to speaker about possible danger to be apprehended from the new marine terror—­whether she might not be able to go to New York or Philadelphia and levy tribute, to Baltimore or Annapolis to destroy the transports gathered for McClellan’s movement, or even to come up the Potomac and burn Washington; and all sorts of prudential measures and safeguards were proposed.

In the afternoon, however, apprehension was greatly quieted.  That very day a cable was laid across the bay, giving direct telegraphic communication with Fortress Monroe, and Captain Fox, who happened to be on the spot, concisely reported at about 4 P.M. the dramatic sequel—­the timely arrival of the Monitor, the interesting naval battle between the two ironclads, and that at noon the Merrimac had withdrawn from the conflict, and with her three small consorts steamed back into Elizabeth River.

Scarcely had the excitement over the Monitor and Merrimac news begun to subside, when, on the same afternoon, a new surprise burst upon the military authorities in a report that the whole Confederate army had evacuated its stronghold at Manassas and the batteries on the Potomac, and had retired southward to a new line behind the Rappahannock.  General McClellan hastened across the river, and, finding the news to be correct, issued orders during the night for a general movement of the army next morning to the vacated rebel camps.  The march was promptly accomplished, notwithstanding the bad roads, and the troops had the meager satisfaction of hoisting the Union flag over the deserted rebel earthworks.