[140] pursuit. Nevertheless, although he is no longer molested, Longstreet cannot make his army undergo long marches. The railroads at his disposal, being in a very bad condition, are scarcely sufficient to convey his supplies, and cannot be made available for the transportation of his infantry, which the arrival of Hill has swelled to six divisions.1 Consequently, he does not reach Richmond until the 10th of May. On the 11th his rear-guard abandons the line of the Blackwater.
The fate of arms had been decided a week since on the borders of the Rappahannock, but the victory had singularly weakened Lee's army. Deprived of Jackson and ten thousand of its bravest soldiers, this army, in order to accomplish the task which had been assigned to it, needed a powerful reinforcement. Longstreet, in joining it with his four divisions, enabled it to undertake the offensive campaign which we shall describe presently.
At the beginning of the siege of Suffolk the Confederates had made a strong demonstration against Williamsburg. In order to prevent a repetition of the same, General Keyes, after having inspected the course of the Mattapony in person, caused a detachment of infantry to be landed at West Point, at the entrance of this water-course into York River. These troops, stationed in a small fort under the protection of the gunboats, were a menace to the Confederates who occupied the peninsula, and they kept the entrance to the river free. At the end of May, Keyes, fearing lest the Southerners might succeed in capturing this garrison, withdrew it; but on the 4th of June he got up a new expedition, in conjunction with the naval forces, in the waters of the Mattapony. Taking advantage of the fact that the evacuation of West Point had lulled the vigilance of the enemy, the Federal gunboats ascended the river as far as twenty miles above its mouth; the troops, landed during the night, proceeded to Aylett's, where they utterly destroyed a large foundry, and, the object of the expedition being accomplished, returned to Yorktown without accident.
The navy, as will be seen, afforded powerful aid to the landtroops scattered along the coast of Virginia and North Carolina.
