On Secret Service (2006)
“Lon said. “Never been anything like it. I told you about it.”Sledge’s lapse was forgivable. There was too much to absorb in the display of martial might encircling them like a great sunlit cyclorama. Below the bluff in the York River, a steam tug towed a Navy coal barge fitted with a flat deck, deckhouses forward and balloon inflation equipment aft. Secured above the deck by mooring lines, one of Lowe’s India silk balloons floated. Fifty feet high, it was handsomely painted with stars and a fie...rce Federal eagle.That was only part of the spectacle of the Army of the Potomac debarking at Fort Monroe, at the tip of the peninsula where the York and James rivers joined. A garrison of ten thousand under elderly General Wool had held the fort since the outbreak of hostilities. Side-wheelers and barges unloaded men, materiel, wagons, ambulances, and artillery, including giant seacoast mortars that were moved inches at a time by teams of a hundred horses. Off the barges onto the piers came huge reels of telegraph wire to link McClellan with his field generals, and his headquarters with Washington.MoreLess
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