Norfolk, Virginia has fallen to Union forces in a dramatic military maneuver that sent shockwaves through the Confederacy. On May 10, 1862, Major-General John E. Wool led federal troops into the city after Confederate forces evacuated overnight, leaving behind a spectacular scene of destruction. The rebels torched the Gosport Navy Yard—workshops, storehouses, and buildings consumed in flames—and destroyed their own ironclad steamer Merrimac rather than let it fall into Union hands. The captured city yielded an astonishing haul: roughly 200 cannons (many spiked to render them useless), 39 massive guns from Craney Island, 5,000 pounds of powder, and numerous fortifications across Sewall's Point and other strategic positions. President Lincoln himself visited Fortress Monroe just days before, and reportedly asked Gen. Wool the pointed question: "Why don't you take Norfolk?" Within hours, the capture was accomplished without a single shot fired in the city itself. Mayor W. W. Lamb surrendered peacefully under terms protecting private property and civil rights. Brigadier-General Egbert L. Viele was appointed Military Governor, and the Stars and Stripes flew over Norfolk's Custom House for the first time in months. The mood was tense but orderly—Union sentiments began emerging among the populace, though authorities prohibited liquor sales and posted strict rules against soldier misconduct.

This capture marked a turning point in the Civil War's Eastern Theater. With Norfolk secured, the Union controlled a major Confederate port and eliminated a vital naval base. The destruction of the Merrimac—the rebel ironclad that had terrorized Union wooden warships months earlier—removed a serious threat to federal naval operations on the James River and Chesapeake Bay. The strategic significance extended inland: Gen. McClellan's army was simultaneously advancing up the Peninsula toward Richmond, just twenty miles away by May 12. Many observers believed Richmond would fall without serious resistance and that Virginia might be abandoned entirely by the Confederacy. This convergence of events—combined with Lincoln's personal intervention in planning the operation—suggested the Union's military momentum was finally turning decisively in its favor after a year of frustrating setbacks.

• Lincoln personally scouted landing sites using Secretary Chase's revenue cutter, the Miami, and specifically identified 'Ocean View' as the ideal landing spot—a location 'resembling, in some respects, our Coney Island' where Norfolk residents once drove for afternoon recreation. The President was directly involved in tactical planning, not merely civilian oversight.
• The intelligence that made the entire operation possible came from a captured Confederate tug boat, the John B. White, originally owned by Buffalo parties and seized by the Confederacy. Its captain had been plotting escape and finally succeeded in bringing word that Norfolk was nearly evacuated—a single vessel's defection triggered the entire federal advance.
• The Rebels set fire to Tavner's Creek bridge as Union forces approached, and Gen. Viele's troops briefly encountered Confederate artillery fire at that crossing—yet the Union advance encountered almost no organized resistance afterward, suggesting the Confederate evacuation was chaotic and incomplete.
• Brigadier-General Viele immediately appointed Mr. T. K. Davis as his Military Governor's secretary and established headquarters in the Custom-House, the very building formerly occupied by Confederate General Huger, symbolically reversing the occupation in a single building swap.
• The proclamation issued by Viele explicitly prohibited the sale of liquor and warned that 'no man' could 'serve in its armies' who forgot 'the duties of a citizen'—revealing Union authorities' anxiety about soldier conduct and looting in occupied territory.

• The Merrimac's destruction was so complete that pieces of the wreck were found floating in the harbor days later, yet its officers and crew escaped to Suffolk—they would live to fight another day, and ironclad technology would dominate naval warfare for the next fifty years, reshaping every navy on Earth.
• General John E. Wool, who orchestrated this bloodless capture at age 77, was already a veteran of the War of 1812 and the Mexican-American War—he would serve in the Union Army until 1863 and live to see the war's end, dying in 1869 as one of the last surviving generals from earlier American conflicts.
• President Lincoln's presence at Fortress Monroe and his direct challenge to Gen. Wool ('Why don't you take Norfolk?') exemplified his growing confidence in military strategy—exactly one month later, he would issue the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, fundamentally transforming the war's purpose.
• The 39 large-caliber guns captured at Craney Island's massive battery (which enclosed about fifty acres) represented the kind of heavy coastal artillery that had protected Confederate ports since secession; their capture opened the James River to Union gunboats that would soon probe toward Richmond.
• Secretary of the Treasury Salmon Chase accompanied the advance into Norfolk itself—a civilian cabinet officer under fire (albeit briefly), illustrating how deeply Lincoln involved his entire administration in military operations during this critical phase of the war.