Benson J. Lossing, Pictorial Field Book of the Civil War. Volume 1.

[392] thence they went by railway to Carlisle Barracks, their destination, where they arrived at about two o'clock in the afternoon of the 19th. The Government highly commended Lieutenant Jones for his judicious act, and his officers and men for their good conduct; and the commander was immediately promoted to the office of Assistant Quartermaster-General, with the rank of captain.¹

Harper's Ferry instantly became an important post, menacing Washington City. By the 20th of May full eight thousand insurgent troops were there, composed of Virginians, Kentuckians, Alabamians, and South Carolinians. They occupied Maryland Hights and other prominent points near the Ferry, on both sides of the Potomac and Shenandoah Rivers, and threw up fortifications there.

Preparations for seizing the Navy Yard near Norfolk were commenced a little earlier than the march upon Harper's Ferry. So early as the night of the 16th of April (the day before the passage of the Ordinance of Secession in the Virginia Convention), two light-boats of eighty tons each were sunk in the channel of the Elizabeth River, below Norfolk, to prevent the egress of the several ships-of-war lying near the Navy Yard. “Thus,” said a dispatch sent to Richmond by the exultant insurgents, “we have secured three of the best ships of the Navy.” These ships were much coveted prizes. These, with the immense number of cannon and other munitions of war at that post, the Virginia conspirators intended to seize for the use of the “Confederacy.”

The Navy Yard here spoken of was at Gosport, a suburb of Portsmouth, on the side of the Elizabeth River opposite Norfolk. It was a sheltered spot on the margin of a deep and narrow body of tide-water, whose head was at the Great Dismal Swamp of North Carolina. The station was one of the oldest and most extensive of its kind in the United States. The establishment covered an area of three-fourths of a mile in length and one-fourth of a mile in width. The largest vessels of war could float there. Ship-houses, machine-shops, officers' quarters, and an immense, Dry-dock built of granite, with materials for building and fitting out war-vessels, were seen there in the greatest perfection. The quantity of arms and munitions laid up there was enormous. There were at least two thousand pieces of heavy canon fit for service, three hundred of which were new Dahlgren guns. It was estimated that the various property of the yard, of all kinds, was worth between nine and ten millions of dollars. Besides this property on land, several war-vessels were afloat there, among which was the immense three-decker Pennsylvania, of one hundred and twenty guns, which was constructed in 1837, but had never ventured upon a long ocean voyage. The others were the ships-of-the-line Columbus, eighty; Delaware, eighty-four, and New York, eighty-four, on the stocks: the frigates United States, fifty; Columbia, fifty; and Raritan, fifty: the sloops-of-war Plymouth, twenty-two, and Germantown, twenty-two: the brig Dolphin, four; and the steam-frigate Merrimack, afterward made famous by its attack on the National squadron in Hampton Roads and a contest with the Monitor. Of these vessels, one was on the stocks, others were out of order, and only the