consternation in every Northern port.  On the very next morning there came into the mouth of the James the rival product of the Northern Navy Department and of the Swedish engineer Ericsson’s invention.  She was compared to a “cheesebox on a raft”; she was named the Monitor, and was the parent of a type of vessel so called which has been heard of much more recently.  The Merrimac and the Monitor forthwith fought a three hours’ duel; then each retired into harbour without fatal damage.  But the Merrimac never came out again; she was destroyed by the Confederates when McClellan had advanced some way up the Peninsula; and it will be unnecessary to speak of the several similar efforts of the South, which nearly but not quite achieved very important successes later.

Before and after his arrival at the Peninsula, McClellan received several mortifications.  Immediately after the humiliation of the enemy’s escape from Manassas, he was without warning relieved of his command as General-in-Chief.  This would in any case have followed naturally upon his expedition away from Washington; it was in public put on that ground alone; and he took it well.  He had been urged to appoint corps commanders, for so large a force as his could not remain organised only in divisions; he preferred to wait till he had made trial of the generals under him; Lincoln would not have this delay, and appointed corps commanders chosen by himself because he believed them to be fighting men.  The manner in which these and some other preparatory steps were taken were, without a doubt, intended to make McClellan feel the whip.  They mark a departure, not quite happy at first, from Lincoln’s formerly too gentle manner.  A worse shock to McClellan followed.  The President had been emphatic in his orders that a sufficient force should be left to make Washington safe, and supposed that he had come to a precise understanding on this point.  He suddenly discovered that McClellan, who had now left for Fort Monroe, had ordered McDowell to follow him with a force so large that it would not leave the required number behind.  Lincoln immediately ordered McDowell and his whole corps to remain, though he subsequently sent a part of it to McClellan.  McClellan’s story later gives reason for thinking that he had intended no deception; but if so, he had expressed himself with unpardonable vagueness, and he had not in fact left Washington secure.  Now and throughout this campaign Lincoln took the line that Washington must be kept safe—­safe in the judgment of all the best military authorities available.