revolutionized naval warfare by its victory over the Federal wooden battle-ships in 1862.
Finally, six miles from Hampton is Newport News, where the first cotton was planted in America, and where there has suddenly sprung up a rushing, driving city, tremulous with the hopes of the future, and already realizing the dream of its first settlers, who relied on the magnificent opportunities which its situation at the conjunction of the James River with Hampton Roads afforded. The Peninsula has been traversed by British, French, and American armies, and in our own times is memorable as the scene of the tremendous struggle between the opposing armies of the Northern and Southern States, under the lead of McClellan and Johnston—a struggle sustained on both sides with conspicuous bravery and endurance, and culminating in the battles about Richmond in 1862.
Until 1630, the settlements of the English in Virginia were confined to the Accomac Peninsula, on the other side of Chesapeake Bay, and to the valley of the James. In that year the Governor and Council determined to make a settlement in the Indian district of Chiskiack in the neighborhood of Yorktown. Soon
