Col. William Kreutzer, of the Ninety-eighth New York Regiment, which went into that battle with three hundred and eighty-five men, and lost eighty-five, gives some interesting particulars of the action:

"The whole of Company A went to work on the road near the Grapevine bridge. Details were made for men to make abatis and work on the breastworks. Company A left its rifles in camp, and lost them. When it rejoined the regiment, on the 1st of June, it appeared like a company of pioneers, or sappers and miners, carrying axes, shovels, and picks.... Soon after one o'clock our pickets begin to come in sight, retiring through the woods and slashing before the enemy. The skirmish line of the enemy pursued them. We could see both parties jumping over the logs and making their way through the brush and bushes, and hear at intervals the sharp report of their rifles. A little later a dense mass of men, about two rods wide, headed by half a dozen horsemen, is seen marching toward us on the Williamsburg road. They move in quick time, carry their arms on their shoulders, have flags and banners, and drummers to beat the step. Our three batteries open simultaneously with all their power. Our regiment pours its volleys into the slashing and into the column as fast as it can load and fire. The One Hundred and Fourth Pennsylvania volunteers aims at the column and at the skirmishers approaching its right front and flank. Unlike us, that regiment has no slashing in its front. The cleared field allowed the enemy to concentrate his fire upon it; too near the approaching column of attack, it interfered with the range and efficiency of our batteries behind. Its position was unfortunate. As the light troops pressed upon it, Colonel Davis ordered it to charge them at the double-quick. The regiment rushed forward with spirit, jumped over a rail fence in its front, with a shout and yell; but it was met so resolutely and with such a galling fire by the foe, that it fell back in disorder, and did not appear on the field as an organization again during the day. Colonel Davis was wounded, and his 'Ringgold Regiment' fought its first battle as we have seen.

"The One Hundred and Fourth falling back, cleared the field opposite the advancing column, and gave the Ninety-eighth better opportunity to fire upon it as it moved deliberately on. The charging mass staggers, stops, resumes its march again, breaks in two, fills up its gaps; but sure and steady, with its flags and banners, it moves like the tramp of fate. Thinned, scattered, broken, it passes our right, and presses for the batteries. As it advances and passes, we pour our volleys into it with no uncertain aim, no random fire. The gaps we make, the swaths we mow, can be seen in the column, for we are only ten or fifteen rods away. The men behind press on those before. The head finally reaches the redoubt. One of the mounted leaders ascends the parapet and is shot with a pistol by an artillery officer. The whole column, from the fort back, severed, broken, staggers, sinks into the earth. The rifle-pits, breast-works, and the Ninety-eighth have cleared the road.

"To this time the Ninety-eighth has not lost a man by the enemy; but our batteries behind have killed and wounded of it half a score. There is a lull in the battle; the coast looks clear; the foe may not appear again. We look at the main road—it is one gray swath of men. Down along the railroad by Fair Oaks station, we hear but a few reports. Smith has had farther to march along the Nine-mile road, and has not struck our right flank yet; on our left, Palmer has not been attacked; Huger is not on time. Casey's division has driven back those of Longstreet and Hill.... Our batteries open. High over our heads, around us, beside us, the lead is whistling, and the iron is whizzing, hissing, whirling. Every moment has a new terror, every instant a new horror. Our men are falling fast. We leave the dead and the dying, and send the wounded to the rear. Palmer's regiments have all fallen back; the enemy is on our left and rear. Colonel Durkee tries to move the regiment by the left flank back to the rifle-pits; a part only receive the order. The enemy is getting so near, our experience in battle is so limited, our drill is so imperfect, that many of us will not, cannot, stand upon the order of our going. Durkee passes the rifle-pits with what follows him, and goes to our old camp. The writer rallies a part of the regiment around the flag at the half-deserted intrenchments. There we use, officers and men, the sharp-shooter's practice against the enemy. We can mark the effect of our fire; no rifle was discharged in vain. Many of the men could pick a squirrel from the tallest trees of Wayne and Franklin, and they load and fire with infinite merriment and good-nature."

For some time after the battle of Fair Oaks, heavy rains made any movement almost impossible for either of the armies that confronted each other near Richmond. Gen. Alexander S. Webb says: "The ground, which consisted of alternate layers of reddish clay and quicksand, had turned into a vast swamp, and the guns in battery sank into the earth by their own weight." McClellan kept his men at work, intrenching and strengthening his position, while he himself seems to have been constantly occupied in writing despatches to the President and the Secretary of War, alternately promising an almost immediate advance on Richmond, and calling for reinforcements. He wanted McDowell's corps of forty thousand men, and the authorities wanted to give it to him if it could be sent by way of Fredericksburg, and united with his right wing in such a way as not to uncover Washington. But in one despatch he declared he would rather not have it at all unless it could be placed absolutely under his command. In several respects his position was very bad. The Chickahominy was bordered by great swamps, whose malarial influences robbed him of almost as many men as fell by the bullets of the enemy. His base was at White House, on the Pamunkey; and the line thence over which his supplies must come, instead of being at right angles with the line of his front and covered by it, was almost a prolongation of it. It was impossible to maintain permanent bridges over the Chickahominy, and a rain of two or three days was liable at any time to swell the stream so as to sweep away every means of crossing. He could threaten Richmond only by placing a heavy force on the right bank of the river; he could render his own communications secure only by keeping a large force on the left bank. When it first occurred to him that his true base was on the James, or how long he contemplated its removal thither, nobody knows; but he received a startling lesson on the 12th of June, which seems to have determined his apparently indeterminate mind.

When Gen. Joseph E. Johnston was wounded at Fair Oaks, the command devolved upon Gen. G. W. Smith; but two days later Gen. Robert E. Lee was given the command of the Confederate forces in Virginia, which he retained continuously till his surrender brought the war to a close. The plan that he had opposed, and caused Mr. Davis to reject, when Johnston was in command—of bringing large bodies of troops from North Carolina, Georgia, and the Shenandoah Valley, to form a massive army and fall upon McClellan—he now adopted and proceeded at once to carry out. Johnston enumerates reinforcements that were given him aggregating fifty-three thousand men, and says he had then the largest Confederate army that ever fought. The total number is given officially at eighty thousand seven hundred and sixty-two. This probably means the number of men actually carrying muskets, and excludes all officers, teamsters, musicians, and mechanics; for the Confederate returns were generally made in that way. McClellan's total effective force, including every man that drew pay the last week in June, was ninety-two thousand five hundred. His constant expectation of reinforcements by way of Fredericksburg was largely, if not wholly, what kept him in his false position, and it is fair to presume that but for this he would have swung across the peninsula to the new base on the James much sooner and under more favorable circumstances.

Wishing to know the extent of McClellan's earthworks on the right wing, Lee, on June 12th, sent a body of twelve hundred cavalry, with two light guns, to reconnoitre. It was commanded by the dashing Gen. J. E. B. Stuart, commonly called "Jeb Stuart," who used to dress in gay costume, with yellow sash and black plume, wore gold spurs, and rode a white horse. He was only ordered to go as far as Hanover Old Church; but at that point he had a fight with a small body of cavalry, and as he supposed dispositions would be made to cut him off, instead of returning he kept on and made the entire circuit of McClellan's army, rebuilding a bridge to cross the lower Chickahominy, and reached Richmond in safety. The actual amount of damage that he had done was small; but the raid alarmed the National commander for the safety of his communications, and was probably what determined him to change his base. In this expedition Stuart lost but one man. In the encounter at Hanover Old Church a charge was led by the Confederate Captain Latane and received by a detachment commanded by Captain Royall. The two captains fought hand to hand, and Latane was shot dead, while Royall received severe sabre wounds.

Stonewall Jackson, if not Lee's ablest lieutenant, was certainly his swiftest, and the one that threw the most uncertainty into the game by his rapid movements and unexpected appearances. At a later stage of the war his erratic strategy, if persisted in, would probably have brought his famous corps of "foot cavalry" (as they were called from their quick marches) to sudden destruction. An opponent like Sheridan, who knew how to be swift, brilliant, and audacious, without transgressing the fundamental rules of warfare, would have been likely to finish him at a blow. But Jackson did not live to meet such an opponent. At this time the bugbears that haunt imaginations not inured to war were still in force, and the massive thimble-rigging by which he was made to appear before Richmond, and presto! sweeping down the Shenandoah Valley, served to paralyze large forces that might have been added to McClellan's army.

The topography of Virginia is favorable to an army menacing Washington, and unfavorable to one menacing Richmond. The fertile valley of the Shenandoah was inviting ground for soldiers. A Confederate force advancing down the valley came at every step nearer to the National capital, while a National force advancing up the valley was carried at every step farther away from the Confederate capital. The Confederates made much of this advantage, and the authorities at Washington were in constant fear of the capture of that city.

Soon after Stuart's raid, Lee began to make his dispositions to attack McClellan and drive him from the peninsula. He wrote to Jackson: "Unless McClellan can be driven out of his intrenchments, he will move by positions, under cover of his heavy guns, within shelling distance of Richmond." To convey the impression that Jackson was to move in force down the valley, Lee drew two brigades from his own army, placed them on the cars in Richmond in plain sight of some prisoners that were about to be exchanged, and sent them off to Jackson. Of course the released prisoners carried home the news. But Jackson returned with these reinforcements and Ewell's division of his corps, joined Lee, and on the 25th of June concerted a plan for immediate attack. Secretary Stanton appears to have been the only one that saw through the game; for he telegraphed to McClellan that while neither Banks nor McDowell nor Frémont could ascertain anything about Jackson's movements, his own belief was that he was going to Richmond. Yet the impression was not strong enough in the mind of the Secretary of War (or else the Secretary could not have his own way) to induce the appropriate counter-move of immediately sending McDowell's whole corps to McClellan. McCall's division of that corps, however, had been forwarded, and on the 18th took a strong position on McClellan's extreme right, near Mechanicsville.

Admiral Phelps, of the navy, then a lieutenant commanding the gunboat Corwin, and serving in the waters about the peninsula, writes: "About ten o'clock one evening my emissary notified me that a certain man, who had caused much trouble, would leave Centreville about midnight, in a buggy, with letters for 'Queen Caroline' and Richmond, in violation of orders. Soon after daylight the following morning both man and mail were in my possession. Only one letter in the package was of any value (the others were sent to their destination), and that one—written by an adjutant-general in the Confederate army, informing his father that, 'on a certain night,' mentioning the date, 'one hundred thousand men from Beauregard's army at Shiloh would be in Richmond, after detaching thirty thousand to reinforce Stonewall Jackson, who was doing for the enemy in the mountains'—was placed in General McClellan's hands about five P.M. the following day by one of his aids, to whose care I had intrusted it."

On the 25th McClellan had pushed back the Confederates on his left, taken a new position there, and advanced his outposts to a point only four miles from Richmond. But he began his movements too late, for the Confederates were already in motion. Leaving about thirty thousand men in the immediate defences of Richmond, Lee crossed the Chickahominy with about thirty-five thousand under Generals A. P. Hill, D. H. Hill, and Longstreet, intending to join Jackson's twenty-five thousand, and with this enormous force make a sudden attack on the twenty thousand National troops that were on the north side of the river, commanded by Gen. Fitz-John Porter, destroy them before help could reach them, and seize McClellan's communications with his base. Jackson, who was to have appeared on the field at sunrise of the 26th, was for once behind time. The other Confederate commanders became nervous and impatient; for if the movement were known to McClellan, he could, with a little boldness and some fighting, have captured Richmond that day. Indeed, the inhabitants of the city expected nothing else, and it is said that the archives of the Confederate Government were all packed and ready for instant removal. At midday Gen. A. P. Hill's corps drove the small National force out of Mechanicsville, and advanced to McCall's strong position on Beaver Dam Creek. This they dared not attack in front; but they made desperate attempts on both flanks, and the result was an afternoon of fruitless fighting, in which they were literally mown down by the well-served artillery, and lost upward of three thousand men, while McCall maintained his position at every point and lost fewer than three hundred.

That night, in pursuance of the plan for a change of base, the heavy guns that had thwarted Lee in his first attack were carried across the Chickahominy, together with a large part of the baggage train. On the morning of the 27th Porter fell back somewhat to a position on a range of low hills, where he could keep the enemy in check till the stores were removed to the other side of the river, which was now his only object. McClellan sent him five thousand more men in the course of the day, being afraid to send any greater number, because he believed that the bulk of the Confederate army was in the defences on his left, and a show of activity there still further deceived them.

On the morning of the 27th Porter had eighteen thousand infantry, two thousand five hundred artillerymen, and a small force of cavalry, with which to meet the attack of at least fifty-five thousand. Longstreet and the Hills had followed the retreat closely, but, warned by the experience of the day before, were not willing to attack until Jackson should join them. The fighting began about two o'clock in the afternoon, when A. P. Hill assaulted the centre of Porter's position, and in a two hours' struggle was driven back with heavy loss. Two attacks on the right met with no better success. The effect on the new troops that had been hurried up from the coast was complete demoralization. The Confederate General Whiting says in his report: "Men were leaving the field in every direction, and in great disorder. Two regiments, one from South Carolina and one from Louisiana, were actually marching back from the fire. Men were skulking from the front in a shameful manner."

But at length Jackson's men arrived, and a determined effort was made on all parts of the line at once. Even then it seemed for a time as if victory might rest with the little army on the hills; and in all probability it would, if they had had such intrenchments as the men afterward learned how to construct very quickly; but their breastworks were only such as could be made from hastily felled trees, a few rails, and heaps of knap-sacks. The Confederates had the advantage of thick woods in which to form and advance. As they emerged and came on in heavy masses, with the Confederate yell, they were answered by the Union cheer. Volley responded to volley, guns were taken and re-taken, and cannoneers that remained after the infantry supports retired were shot down; but it was not till sunset that the National line was fairly disrupted, at the left centre, when the whole gave way and slowly retired. Two regiments were captured, and twenty-two guns fell into the hands of the enemy. In the night Porter crossed the river with his remaining force, and destroyed the bridges. This was called by the Confederates the battle of the Chickahominy; but it takes its better known name from two mills (Gaines's) near the scene of action. The total National loss was six thousand men. The Confederate loss was never properly ascertained, which renders it probable that it was much larger. Some of the wounded lay on the field four days uncared for. This action is sometimes called the first battle of Cold Harbor. The armies under Grant and Lee fought on the same ground two years later.

Lee and Jackson believed that they had been fighting the whole of McClellan's forces, and another mistake that they made secured the safety of that army. They took it for granted that the National commander, driven from his base at White House, would retreat down the peninsula, taking the same route by which he had come. Consequently they remained with their large force on the left bank of the Chickahominy, and even advanced some distance down the stream, which gave McClellan twenty-four hours of precious time to get through the swamp roads with his immense trains. He had five thousand loaded wagons, and two thousand five hundred head of cattle. Gen. Silas Casey's division, in charge of the stores at White House, loaded all they could upon transports, and destroyed the remainder. Trains of cars filled with supplies were put under full speed and run off the tracks into the river. Hundreds of tons of ammunition, and millions of rations, were burned or otherwise destroyed.

Rear Admiral Thomas S. Phelps, United States Navy, gives a vivid description of the scene when the transports and other vessels fled down the river in panic: "Harassing the enemy and protecting the worthy fully occupied my time until the afternoon of June 27, 1862, when Quartermaster-General Ingalls came down the river on a boat provided especially for his use, and after directing an assistant to abandon the Point, immediately continued on his way to Yorktown. Soon afterward the Pamunkey, as far as the eye could reach, appeared crowded with a confused mass of side-wheel boats, propellers, brigs, and schooners, and as they dashed past my vessel there appeared to be as complete a stampede as it has ever been my misfortune to witness. In answer to the hail, 'What is the trouble?' I was greeted with, 'The rebels are coming! The whole country is full of them; go to the mast-head and you will see thousands of them!' Eliciting nothing further of a satisfactory nature, and seeing nothing but empty fields, I directed a count to be made of the fleeing vessels, and by evening's dusk six hundred and eighty were reported as having passed, not counting several schooners left behind, which on touching the bottom had been abandoned, their crews escaping to more fortunate companions." On the following day the gunboats returned to West Point, towing the derelict schooners which they had floated, and also the half of a regiment which in the hurry of the previous day had been forgotten and left behind. At the last moment Casey embarked his men, and with what he had been able to save steamed down the Pamunkey and York Rivers, and up the James to the new base. At the close of a long despatch to the Secretary of War, on the 28th, General McClellan said: "If I save this army now, I tell you plainly that I owe no thanks to you or to any other persons in Washington. You have done your best to sacrifice this army."

When Gen. John B. Magruder, who had been left in the defences of Richmond, found that the National army was retreating to the James, he moved out to attack it, and struck the rear guard at Allen's farm. His men made three assaults, and were three times repelled. Magruder complained that he lost a victory here because Lee had left him but thirteen thousand men.

The National troops fell back to Savage's Station, where later in the day Magruder attacked them again. He had a rifled cannon mounted on a platform car, with which he expected to do great execution. But there was an ample force to oppose him, and it stood unmoved by his successive charges. About sunset he advanced his whole line with a desperate rush in the face of a continuous fire of cannon and musketry, but it was of no avail, and half an hour later his own line was broken by a counter charge that closed the battle. He admitted a loss of four thousand men. Sumner and Franklin, at a cost of three thousand, had thus maintained the approach to the single road through White Oak Swamp, by which they were to follow the body of the army that had already passed. But it was found necessary to burn another immense quantity of food and clothing that could not be removed, and to leave behind two thousand five hundred sick and wounded men.

Jackson, after spending a day in building bridges, crossed the Chickahominy and attempted to follow McClellan's rear guard through White Oak Swamp; but when he got to the other side he found a necessary bridge destroyed and National batteries commanding its site, so that it was impossible for his forces to emerge from the swamp. But meanwhile Hill and Longstreet had crossed the river farther up stream, marched around the swamp, and struck the retreating army near Charles City Cross-Roads, on the 30th. There was terrific fighting all the afternoon. There were brave charges and bloody repulses, masses of men moving up steadily in the face of batteries that tore great gaps through them at every discharge, crossed bayonets, and clubbed muskets. Only on that part of the line held by McCall did the Confederates, with all their daring, succeed in breaking through. McCall, in his report, describes the successful charge: "A most determined charge was made on Randol's battery by a full brigade, advancing in wedge shape, without order, but in perfect recklessness. Somewhat similar charges had been previously made on Cooper's and Kern's batteries by single regiments, without success, they having recoiled before the storm of canister hurled against them. A like result was anticipated by Randol's battery, and the Fourth Regiment was requested not to fire until the battery had done with them. Its gallant commander did not doubt his ability to repel the attack, and his guns did indeed mow down the advancing host; but still the gaps were closed, and the enemy came in upon a run to the very muzzles of his guns. It was a perfect torrent of men, and they were in his battery before the guns could be removed." General McCall himself, endeavoring to rally his men at this point, was captured and carried off to Richmond. In Kearney's front a similar charge was made three times; but every time a steady musketry fire drove back the enemy that had closed up its gaps made by the artillery. Darkness put an end to the fighting, and that night McClellan's army continued its retreat to Malvern Hill, where his advance guard had taken up the strongest position he had yet occupied. The battle just described has several names—Glendale, Frazier's Farm, Charles City Cross-Roads, Newmarket, Nelson's Farm. McClellan here lost ten guns. The losses in men cannot be known exactly, as the reports group the losses of several days together. Longstreet and the two Hills reported a loss of twelve thousand four hundred and fifty-eight in the fighting from the 27th to the 30th.

The last stand made by McClellan for delivering battle was at Malvern Hill. This is a plateau near Turkey Bend of James River, having an elevation of sixty feet, and an extent of about a mile and a half in one direction and a mile in the other. It is so bordered by streams and swamps as to leave no practicable approach except by the narrow northwest face. Here McClellan had his entire army in position when his pursuers came up. It was disposed in the form of a semicircle, with the right wing "refused" (swung back) and prolonged to Haxall's Landing, on the James. His position was peculiarly favorable for the use of artillery, and his whole front bristled with it. There were no intrenchments to speak of, but the natural inequalities of the ground afforded considerable shelter for the men and guns. It was as complete a trap as could be set for an army, and Lee walked straight into it. Under ordinary circumstances, both commander and men would properly hesitate to attack an enemy so posted. But to the confidence with which the Southerners began the war was now added the peculiar elation produced by a week's pursuit of a retreating army; and apparently it did not occur to them that they were all mortal.

In the first contact seven thousand Confederates, with six guns, struck the left of the position. They boldly advanced their artillery to within eight hundred yards of the cliff; but before they could get at work, a fire of twenty or thirty guns was concentrated upon their battery, which knocked it to pieces in a few minutes; and at the same time some huge shells from a gunboat fell among a small detachment of cavalry, threw it into confusion, and turned it back upon the infantry, breaking up the whole attack.

Lee was not ready to assault with his whole army till the afternoon of July 1st. An artillery duel was kept up during the forenoon, but the Confederate commander did not succeed in destroying the National batteries, as he hoped to: on the contrary, he saw his own disabled, one after another. The signal for the infantry attack was to be the usual yell, raised by Armistead's division on the right and taken up by the successive divisions along the line. But the Confederate line was separated by thick woods; there was long waiting for the signal; some of the generals thought they heard it, and some advanced without hearing it. The consequence was a series of separate attacks, some of them repeated three or four times, and every time a concentrated fire on the attacking column and a bloody repulse. The men themselves began to see the hopelessness of it, while their officers were still urging them to renewed efforts. "Come on, come on, my men," said one Confederate colonel, with the grim humor of a soldier; "do you want to live forever?" There were some brief counter-charges, in one of which the colors were taken from a North Carolina regiment; but in general the National troops only maintained their ground, and though fighting was kept up till nine o'clock in the evening, the line—as General Webb, then assistant chief of artillery, tells us—was never for one instant broken or the guns in danger. This battle cost Lee five thousand men, and at its close he gave up the pursuit. The National loss was less than one-third as great. That night McClellan withdrew his army to Harrison's Landing, on the James, where he had fixed his base of supplies and where the gunboats could protect his position. This retreat is known as the Seven Days, and the losses are figured up at fifteen thousand two hundred and forty-nine on the National side, and somewhat over nineteen thousand on the Confederate.

From that time there was an angry controversy as to the military abilities of General McClellan and the responsibility for the failure of the campaign, and partisanship was never more violent than over this question. The General had won the highest personal regard of his soldiers, and they were mostly unwilling or unable to look at the matter in the cold light of the criticism that simply asks, What was required? and What was accomplished? The truth appears to be, that General McClellan, like most men, possessed some virtues and lacked others. He organized a great army, and to the end of its days it felt the benefit of the discipline with which he endowed it. But with that army in hand he did not secure the purpose of its creation. He was an accomplished engineer, and a gigantic adjutant, but hardly the general to be sent against an army that could move and a commander that could think. There can be no doubt that the Administration was over-anxious about the movements in the Shenandoah, and should have sent McDowell's corps to McClellan at once; but neither can there be much doubt that if Little Mac, the Young Napoleon, as he was fondly called, had been a general of the highest order, he would have destroyed Lee's army and captured the Confederate capital with the ample forces that he had. It was not General McClellan alone that was in a false position when his army was astride the Chickahominy, but the Administration and the people of the loyal States as well. Their grand strategy was radically vicious, for they stood astride of the great central question of the war itself.

To a student of the art of war, this disastrous campaign and the many criticisms that it evoked are exceedingly interesting. Nearly every military problem was in some way presented in it. Two or three quotations from the best sources will indicate its importance and the complicated questions that it involved. General McClellan himself says in his report: "It may be asked why, after the concentration of our forces on the right bank of the Chickahominy, with a large part of the enemy drawn away from Richmond, upon the opposite side, I did not, instead of striking for James River fifteen miles below that place, at once march directly on Richmond. It will be remembered that at this juncture the enemy was on our rear, and there was every reason to believe that he would sever our communications with our supply depot at the White House. We had on hand but a limited amount of rations, and if we had advanced directly on Richmond it would have required considerable time to carry the strong works around that place, during which our men would have been destitute of food; and even if Richmond had fallen before our arms, the enemy could still have occupied our supply communications between that place and the gunboats, and turned their disaster into victory. If, on the other hand, the enemy had concentrated all his forces at Richmond during the progress of our attack, and we had been defeated, we must in all probability have lost our trains before reaching the flotilla. The battles which continued day after day in the progress of our flank movement to the James, with the exception of the one at Gaines's Mill, were successes to our arms, and the closing engagement at Malvern Hill was the most decisive of all."

One of General McClellan's severest critics, Gen. John G. Barnard, in an elaborate review of the campaign, wrote: "It was a blunder unparalleled to expose Porter's corps to fight a battle by itself on the 27th against overwhelming forces of the enemy. With perfect ease that corps might have been brought over on the night of the 26th, and, if nothing more brilliant could have been thought of, the movement to the James might have been in full tide of execution on the 27th. A more propitious moment could not have been chosen, for, besides Jackson's own forces, A. P. Hill's and Longstreet's corps were on the left bank of the Chickahominy on the night of the 26th. Such a movement need not have been discovered to the enemy till far enough advanced to insure success. At any rate, he could have done no better in preventing it than he actually did afterward.... He has spent weeks in building bridges which establish a close connection between the wings of his army, and then fights a great battle with a smaller fraction of his army than when he had a single available bridge, and that remote. He, with great labor, constructs 'defensive works' in order that he 'may bring the greatest possible numbers into action,' and again exhibits his ability to utilize his means by keeping sixty-five thousand men idle behind them, while thirty-five thousand, unaided by 'defensive works' of any kind, fight the bulk of his adversary's forces, and are, of course, overwhelmed by 'superior numbers.' We believe there were few commanding officers of the Army of the Potomac who did not expect to be led offensively against the enemy on the 26th or 27th. Had such a movement been made, it is not improbable that, if energetically led, we should have gone into Richmond. Jackson and A. P. Hill could not have got back in time to succor Magruder's command, if measures of most obvious propriety had been taken to prevent them. We might have beaten or driven Magruder's twenty-five thousand men and entered Richmond, and then, reinforced by the great moral acquisition of strength this success would have given, have fought Lee and reëstablished our communications. At any rate, something of this kind was worth trying.... Our army is now concentrated on the James; but we have another day's fighting before us, and this day we may expect the concentrated attack of Lee's whole army. We know not at what hour it will come—possibly late, for it requires time to find out our new position and to bring together the attacking columns—yet we know not when it will come. Where, this day, is the commanding general? Off, with Captain Rodgers, to select 'the final positions of the army and its depots.' He does not tell us that it was on a gunboat, and that this day not even 'signals' would keep him in communication with his army, for his journey was ten or fifteen miles down the river; and he was thus absent till late in the afternoon. This is the first time we ever had reason to believe that the highest and first duty of a general, on the day of battle, was separating himself from his army to reconnoitre a place of retreat!... If the enemy had two hundred thousand men, it was to be seriously apprehended that, leaving fifty thousand behind the 'strong works' of Richmond, he would march at once with one hundred and fifty thousand men on Washington. Why should he not? General McClellan and his eulogists have held up as highly meritorious strategy the leaving of Washington defended by less than fifty thousand men, with the enemy in its front estimated to be one hundred and twenty thousand to one hundred and fifty thousand strong, and moving off to take an eccentric line of operations against Richmond; and now the reverse case is presented, but with an important difference. The enemy at Manassas, on learning General McClellan's movement, could either fly to the defence of Richmond or attack Washington. General McClellan says that this latter course was not to be feared. McClellan on the James, on learning that Lee with one hundred and fifty thousand men is marching on Washington, can only attack Richmond; by no possibility can he fly to the defence of Washington. Besides, he is inferior in numbers (according to his own estimate) even to Lee's marching army. Here, in a nutshell, is the demonstration of the folly of the grand strategic movement on Richmond, as given by its own projector."

An English military critic thus analyzes the great campaign: "As regards the value of the plan, in a merely military point of view, three faults may be enumerated: It was too rash; it violated the principles of war; its application was too timid. (1) An army of one hundred and thirty thousand volunteers should not be moved about as if it were a single division. (2) The choice of Fort Monroe as a secondary basis involved the necessity of leaving Washington, or the fixed basis, to be threatened, morally at least, by the enemy. The communications also between these two places were open to an attack from the Merrimac, an iron-plated ship, which lay at Norfolk, on the south side of Hampton Roads. The first movement to Fort Monroe was the stride of a giant. The second, in the direction of Richmond, was that of a dwarf. When the army arrived in front of the lines at Yorktown, it numbered, probably, one hundred thousand men, and here there was no timid President to interfere with the command; nevertheless, McClellan suffered himself to be stopped in the middle of an offensive campaign by Magruder and twelve thousand men.... The hour of his arrival in front of the lines should have been the hour of his attack upon them. Two overwhelming masses, to which life and energy had been communicated, should have been hurled on separate points. Magruder not only defeated but destroyed! The morale of the Federal army raised! The result of the campaign, although it might not have been decisive, would have been more honorable."

On the Confederate side the criticism was almost as severe, because, while claiming the result of the six days as a Confederate success, it was also claimed that the campaign should have resulted in the complete destruction of McClellan's army.

The use of balloons for reconnoitring the enemy's position formed a picturesque feature of this campaign. T. S. C. Lowe, J. H. Stiner, and other aëronauts were at the National headquarters with their balloons, and several officers of high rank accompanied them in numerous ascents. But it seems to have been demonstrated that the balloon was of little practical value.