Comte de Paris, History of the Civil War in America. Vol. 1.
Henry Coppee , LL.D., Ed.

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[144] when he saw the Virginians present themselves at the gates of the arsenal with cannon, he believed everything was lost; he promised not to change the position of a single vessel, and on the 20th he ordered every ship to be sunk except the Cumberland. Just as these vessels were slowly sinking into the water, Captain Paulding arrived from Washington with a reinforcement of troops to defend the arsenal, and also to supersede McCauley.

It was too late. Paulding could do nothing more than set fire to the vessels, which the Confederates might otherwise have easily raised again; some were completely consumed, others, like the Merrimac, foundered before they had been destroyed by the fire. There only remained afloat the Cumberland and the Pawnee, which had brought Paulding over; this officer, having no longer the means to maintain himself at Norfolk, did what he could, on the morning of the 21st, to destroy the arsenal buildings, and then retired into the harbor of Hampton Roads. The Confederates found abundant resources in artillery and materiel of every description in Norfolk; the fire was soon extinguished, the docks repaired, and they succeeded in raising the Merrimac, which we shall see at work the following year.

Fort Monroe had just been occupied by a small Federal garrison. Its loss would have been even more disastrous to the Federal cause than that of the Norfolk navy-yard and arsenal, because the Confederates, instead of having to cover Richmond, would have been able to blockade Washington by sea and besiege it by land; this circumstance alone would certainly have prolonged the war far beyond the period to which it extended.

The vast importance of this small fortress, however, could not be appreciated at a time when no one knew where defection would stop. Nearly all the offices in Washington, from that of chiefjustice of the Supreme Court to that of the humblest department clerk, were filled by friends and accomplices of the insurgents. Some quitted their posts, as people abandon a sinking vessel, and threw the whole service into confusion. Others only continued in office to betray the secrets of the government to the enemy. In the army such acts of perfidious treason did not occur, but, as we have stated, defections were also very numerous. Each day increased the number, and there were even some officers who,