Page:Boissonnas, Un Vaincu, English, 1875.djvu/70

 country was the only dream to which he let himself go.

It was known that prodigies of armament had been done in the U. S. A. Navy. It's ships, covered with iron, could bear guns of an enormous caliber, used until now, only in fortifications. The imagination of engineers had taken free rein. They had known how to vary indefinitely the shapes and aptitudes of their ships, among which the famous Monitor, with its mobile tower and its 120, was not the most remarkable.

The problem was, therefore, to bring the coastal defenses at par with what one agrees in calling the progress of our times. General Lee fortified the long coast entrusted to him with the consciousness and the care for details that belonged only to him. It is from the middle of his operations that he wrote, from Savannah, to one of his daughters this letter, so tender:

“Are you really sweet sixteen ? That is charming, and I want to see you more than ever. But when that will be, my darling child, I have no idea. I hope after the war is over we may again all be united, and I may have some pleasant years with my dear children, that they may cheer the remnant of my days… Rob says he is told that you are a young woman. I have grown so old, and become so changed, that you would not know me. But I love you just as much as ever, and you know how great a love that is…,

“This is a serious period, indeed, and the time looks