474 Yorktown and Williamsburg [1862 You will do me the justice to remember I always insisted that going down the bay in search of a field, instead of fighting at or near Manassas, was only shifting and not surmounting a difficulty; that we would find the same enemy and the same or equal entrenchments at either place. The country will not fail to note-is noting now that the present hesitation to move upon an entrenched enemy is but the story of Manassas repeated." Beginning his march with 50,000 men on April 4, McClellan found his first obstacle at Yorktown on the York river, which place, with Gloucester Point opposite, the Confederates had strongly fortified. But the Confederate General Magruder had only a garrison of 6000, with 5000 other troops spread along a line thirteen miles in length, to an inlet from the James river. Instead of promptly breaking through this line, which his overwhelming force of four to one would have enabled him to do, McClellan laid regular siege to Yorktown, and spent almost a month in digging trenches and building batteries. At midnight on May 3, when McClellan was ready to open his bombardment with nearly a hundred guns, Johnston, who had superseded Magruder, suddenly evacuated the place, marching away with the 50,000 men he had been able to accumulate. He was well satisfied with the respite which McClellan had allowed Magruder. To use his own language, "It saved Richmond, and gave the Confederate government time to swell that officer's handful to an army." General McClellan learned the evacuation of Yorktown at dawn on May 4; but the news found him so thoroughly surprised and unprepared that noon came before he could organise the pursuit. This gave the enemy ample time to prepare their next point of delay at Williamsburg, where a number of redoubts and entrenchments had previously been got ready. Here on May 5 was fought a battle without plan, without guiding supervision, but not apparently without misunderstandings between the Federal commanders that resulted in ample reinforcements idly awaiting orders, while their comrades were being pressed and driven back by greater numbers. McClellan only arrived on the scene late in the afternoon, having stayed behind at Yorktown in order to send troops up the York river to West Point, which was to be his principal depôt of supplies. On the Unionist side, parts of four divisions were engaged, and on the Confederate side about 10,000 men. Both sides claimed a victory, but the manifest advantage fell to the Confederates, who were able to continue their retrograde movement unmolested, while McClellan remained several days at Williamsburg. The Confederate retreat, however, opened the James river to Unionist gunboats. The enemy abandoned Norfolk, which was occupied on May 10 by an expedition from Fortress Monroe under General Wool; and the Confederate ironclad Merrimac on the Elizabeth river, thus caught between the Federal forces, was on May 11 abandoned by her officers and crew, set on fire, and blown up. 1862] McClellan's demand for reinforcements 475 One of McClellan's besetting weaknesses was to overestimate the enemy's strength. His desire to ensure success and his fear of failure were both so great, that his judgment was continually at fault about difficulties and obstacles. All the previous autumn, while Johnston, with less than 50,000 men, lay at Manassas, watching the Army of the Potomac about Washington, McClellan reported the Confederate strength at triple its real number. After his landing in the peninsula the same nightmare haunted his imagination. On the second day after his arrival before Yorktown and Magruder's line of 11,000 men, he wrote in his despatch to the Secretary of War: "It seems clear that I shall have the whole force of the enemy on my hands-certainly not less than 100,000, and probably more." Five days after the battle of Williamsburg, he wrote in another despatch, "If I am not reinforced it is probable I shall be obliged to fight double my numbers, strongly entrenched." And again on May 14, “I must attack in position, probably entrenched perhaps double my numbers." McClellan's clamour for reinforcements had its effect at Washington; and on May 18 the Secretary of War informed him that the President, while unwilling to uncover the capital entirely, had ordered McDowell to move with between 35,000 and 40,000 men to join him by a land march. "At your earnest call for reinforcements he is sent forward to co-operate in the reduction of Richmond, but charged in attempting this not to uncover the city of Washington; and you will give no order, either before or after your junction, which can put him out of position to cover this city." McDowell's march however was quickly interrupted; McClellan's leisurely campaign had permitted Lee to send a detachment to Stonewall Jackson in the Shenandoah valley, with which that commander made a rapid march northward, fighting and driving before him the scattered Union forces, as far as Harper's Ferry. It was both an audacious and reckless expedition, offering a chance to intercept his retreat and capture his entire command; and to effect this McDowell's course was changed by orders from the President. McDowell executed his new orders with all promptness; but Frémont, who had been ordered to co-operate, was wanting. Stationed in the mountains beyond the valley, he took a route other than that by which he had been directed to proceed, and failed to reach the rendezvous at the appointed time, thus enabling Jackson to escape between his pursuers. Meanwhile the slowly retiring Confederate army went into camp about three miles from Richmond in front of the fortifications erected for that city's defence, while McClellan advanced his forces and placed them in position in a line about thirteen miles in length on the left bank of the Chickahominy. Along this stream, a low swampy creek in dry weather, expanding into a broad belt of half marsh, half river in periods of rain, that rendered it entirely impassable except by bridges, the Union army lay from Bottom Bridge to New Bridge; its route of supplies being from 476 Battles on the Chickahominy [1862 West Point on the York river, by way of White House on the Pamunky river. So far from having to overcome double numbers, as he continually reported, McClellan's next serious fighting occurred when his own army was just twice as strong as that of the Confederates. On May 31 the Unionist forces under his command showed an aggregate of 127,000, while that of the enemy under Johnston's command was about 62,000. It was not the want of troops, but the faulty position in which General McClellan had placed a part of his army, that enabled the enemy suddenly to fall upon it in superior strength. Two of McClellan's army corps, those under Heintzelman and Keyes, forming his left wing, had with much bridge-building and entrenching been pushed across the Chickahominy to the neighbourhood of Seven Pines and Fair Oaks, five miles from the fortifications of Richmond, while the remaining three corps were yet in their old position, thus leaving the army divided by the treacherous stream. McClellan's own report relates part of the result. "During the day and night of the 30th of May a very violent storm occurred. The rain falling in torrents rendered work on the rifle-pits and bridges impracticable, made the roads almost impassable, and threatened the destruction of the bridges over the Chickahominy. The enemy, perceiving the unfavourable position in which we were placed, and the possibility of destroying that part of our army which was apparently cut off from the main body by the rapidly rising stream, threw an overwhelming force upon the position occupied by Casey's division.' This attack, begun by the Confederates on the afternoon of May 31, would probably have been fatal to the isolated Unionist left wing, but for the energy of General Sumner, commanding a Unionist corps nearest the battle-field. When he received orders to cross the Chickahominy to the help of his comrades, one of his two available bridges was already swept away by the flood, and the remaining one nearly submerged; and this became totally useless immediately after his corps had passed over it. But he arrived in time, if not to win a victory, at least to prevent a defeat. When night closed, the combatants bivouacked on the field, and in the desultory fighting of next morning, the Unionist troops regained their lost ground, while the enemy withdrew. A serious battle had been fought, without decisive result, except the loss of 5000 Federals and 6000 Confederates. Late in the evening General Johnston was seriously wounded, and General Lee succeeded him in command of the Confederate army. Competent critics have written that that was the opportune moment, when the Unionist army, with its great superiority of numbers, with the inspiration of success, with two-thirds of the Confederate army crippled, disheartened, and retreating, could under a capable commander have immediately advanced and taken Richmond. McClellan in his report 1862] McClellan's delays 477 elaborately argues the impossibility of his doing so, since his army was divided, the bridges destroyed, the roads impassable. He states that it would have required a march of twenty-three miles, occupying two entire days, to unite his right wing with his left; but he remains innocently unconscious of the light thus reflected on his own strategy, by his having placed his army in such a situation, astride of so serious an obstacle. The escape of Jackson from the well-planned junction of the Unionist detachments in the Shenandoah valley, and the repulse of the Confederate attack at Seven Pines and Fair Oaks on the Chickahominy, occurred simultaneously about June 1, 1862. After that came two weeks of extremely bad weather, during which General McClellan reported his time to be fully occupied in repairing bridges and restoring the roads carried away and damaged by the floods, and in preparation to unite his separated army on the Richmond side of the Chickahominy. He telegraphed on June 10, "I shall attack as soon as the weather and ground permit, but there will be a delay, the extent of which no one can foresee, for the season is altogether abnormal." In response to his continual call for reinforcements, the President ordered about 20,000 well-organised troops to his aid, half of them from McDowell's corps - to go by water; and so rearranged the commands in the Shenandoah valley that McDowell with the remainder of his corps should join him by a land march. McClellan's report, written more than a year after the event, states that he intended to attack about June 26; but there are indications in his despatches to show that he was already vaguely meditating a change of base to the James river. The exact position of Jackson's force was not known for some time owing to the confusing rumours he set afloat, but towards the end of June it became evident that he was returning to Richmond, which, with other indications, implied that Lee either intended or expected a serious collision near that city. It is quite clear that President Lincoln had become convinced, from the tenor of General McClellan's correspondence during his whole peninsular campaign, that that general's expedition against Richmond would ultimately be more likely to fail than succeed, though he continued to send him every encouragement. It must have been some such feeling which prompted the President to visit General Scott for advice on June 24, for on his return to Washington he called General Pope from the west, and on June 26 gave him the command of the forces under Frémont, Banks, and McDowell, to be called the Army of Virginia, assigning to it the duty of guarding Washington and the Shenandoah valley, and also of co-operating in the campaign against Richmond. The precaution was taken not a day too soon. On the afternoon of June 25 McClellan sent three telegrams to announce that he had that morning begun a general forward movement, against which the 478 The Seven Days' Battles [1862 enemy was making a desperate resistance. His second telegram, sent at three o'clock, said it was not a battle; his third, sent at five, that he had fully gained his point with but little loss. But at a quarter past six he sent a fourth and, this time, a lengthy despatch, in which President Lincoln, familiar with the general's quick changes of mood, at once read the presage of defeat. It announced that Beauregard had arrived in Richmond with strong reinforcements; that Jackson would attack his rear; that the total rebel force was reported at 200,000. "I will do all that a general can do," continued he, "with the splendid army I have the honour to command, and, if it is destroyed by overwhelming numbers, can at least die with it and share its fate. But if the result of the action, which will probably occur to-morrow or within a short time, is a disaster, the responsibility cannot be thrown on my shoulders; it must rest where it belongs." The distorted rumours that threw McClellan into this gloomy state of mind had for their basis only the fact that General Lee, taking advantage of McClellan's inaction during nearly the whole of June, gathered an army of 80,762 well-trained and well-appointed Confederate soldiers and carefully prepared to attack and, as he confidently hoped, destroy the Union army. To carry out this plan he recalled Jackson from the Shenandoah valley, and so early as June 13 sent General Stuart, with 1200 Confederate cavalry and a few guns, on a raid entirely around McClellan's army, which that enterprising leader successfully accomplished, burning two schooners laden with forage and fourteen government waggons, besides doing other miscellaneous damage on the way. So confident of success was Lee that he took the risk of dividing his force, sending two-thirds of it north of the Chickahominy to drive McClellan's right wing down the peninsula. It was the movement. thus begun on June 26 which inaugurated the series of conflicts known as the Seven Days' Battles. Strong as he had managed to make the Confederate army, its mere numbers did not yet render it capable of performing the extraordinary task he set it. McClellan's effective force for the coming encounters has been carefully estimated to have been 92,500 — while his own official report, five days earlier, reckoned it at 105,445. It was that general's chronic habit of overestimating the enemy that prompted his fear of being overwhelmed by 200,000, as expressed in his despatch to the President of June 25. Doubtless Mr Lincoln congratulated himself on having organised a new army under Pope, which, in case of the defeat which McClellan's despatch foreshadowed, he could interpose between Lee and Washington; for the postscript of his reply to McClellan says significantly, "General Pope thinks, if you fall back, it would be much better toward York river than toward the James." McClellan's despatch at noon of June 26 was more hopeful, for he promised to do his best "to out-manoeuvre, outwit, and out-fight the |