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remptory military order, dated the 22d of January, requiring him to proceed immediately to Roanoke Island. The defences of the island consisted of seven small gunboats and six land batteries, not casemated, and wholly inefficient. After manning the forts, there were scarcely more than eight hundred effective men. In the sickness of Gen. Wise, who was confined to his bed at Nag's Head, the immediate command devolved upon Col. Shaw, the senior officer present. In the morning of the 7th of February the enemy made an attack, with twenty-two heavy steamers, upon the little Confederate squadron under the command of Commodore Lynch, and upon Fort Bartow, the most southern of the defences on the west side of the island. The action commenced at two miles distance, the Confederate gunboats retiring slowly with the intention of drawing the enemy under the guns of the batteries. Soon the air was filled with heavy reports, and the sea was disturbed in every direction by fragments of shell
Fortunately for the Confederacy the military genius of Gen. Joseph E. Johnston had been called again, although unwillingly, into service by President Davis, who had displaced Bragg from the Army of Tennessee only after he had accomplished a complete sum of disaster, and capped his career of misfortune on Missionary Ridge. On the 27th December, 1863, Gen. Johnston had assumed command of the army at Dalton, Georgia. In January he had fallen back from Dalton, and his advanced posts; on the 7th February he was encamped at Rome, Georgia; but he again advanced to Dalton shortly afterwards, and proposed then an offensive movement against the enemy,whose strength he knew would be greatly increased in the spring, and who, therefore, could be attacked with better advantage before such increase of the disproportion of numbers. Gen. Johnston knew very well that he could not expect reinforcements at pace with the enemy, and was, therefore, wisely determined to make at once a forward movement and