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

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[405] was not great, but this partial blockade of the capital was regarded in the North as a new humiliation, and for the first time General McClellan was taken to task. These reproaches were unjust. It was impossible to prevent the Confederates from erecting batteries along a coast eighty kilometres in length, of which they were absolute masters. The war flotilla, stationed on the waters of the Potomac, could act as a police force, intercept all communications between the two banks, protect merchant-vessels against sudden attacks, throw shells into one and another of the enemy's works, but it could not entirely silence batteries the armament of which it was always easy for the Confederates to renew. In order to break up the blockade it would have been necessary to effect the military occupation of the right bank of the Lower Potomac; but such an operation could not be undertaken with an arm of the sea in the rear and the whole of the enemy's army encamped at Manassas in front. To break the blockade of the Potomac, therefore, depended upon the retreat of that army, and could only be an incident in the new campaign which was being prepared.

Everything seemed to indicate to the Federals that the moment for undertaking this campaign had at last arrived. We have stated that by the end of September the Confederates were concentrated around Centreville and Manassas. Their outposts, wherever they had been maintained, appeared ready to fall back, and the lukewarmness they exhibited on the occasion of a trifling engagement at Harper's Ferry encouraged McClellan to draw his lines closer upon his adversaries. A detachment of Geary's brigade, which guarded the Potomac in front of Harper's Ferry, had crossed the river on the 8th of October a little above that village, and taken possession of a few mills from which the enemy had procured considerable supplies. The Confederate general Evans, who was at Leesburg with his brigade, having sent a few troops to worry that detachment, Geary crossed the Potomac and posted himself, with six hundred men and a few pieces of artillery, at Harper's Ferry, to cover the retreat of the soldiers who were carrying back the flour taken from the mill. On the 16th he was preparing to recross the river, when the Confederates attacked him. At a distance of four kilometres from Harper's Ferry his outposts