Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 12.djvu/235

Rh they were estimated at 60,000. This large body of troops came from Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Pennsylvania, except about 20,000, which had been raised in Kentucky. The Confederate forces in the State were computed at about 25,000. In the middle of the winter, January 10, 1862, the Confederate General Marshall was compelled to fall back from the northeast of Kentucky, and subsequently Crittenden and Zollicoffer were forced to retreat across the Cumberland. President Davis wrote of this affair as "the most serious defeat that we had hitherto met. It broke the right of our defensive line and involved the loss of eastern Kentucky."

In Maryland the Federal military forces held the State in a duress from which the only way of escape was across the Potomac into Virginia, through which many gallant young Marylanders entered the Confederate service.

While McClellan was fully occupied in increasing the defenses around Washington and forming the great army which was designed to crush its way through Virginia, the earliest special movements of the season, directed by the war and navy departments, were along the extensive southern coast line. Fortress Monroe was reinforced until it was impregnable. Fort Hatteras, in North Carolina, was taken from the Confederates in August, and Port Royal, in South Carolina, was seized in November. Another of the series of expeditions designed for the conquest of the coast region had for its object the Gulf shore between New Orleans and Mobile, and succeeded in securing a position on Ship island. The general blockade was strengthened by these operations, and although not strictly effective its injurious effects began to be seriously felt throughout the Confederacy.