embarkation of Franklin's division on transports which were to go up the York River. Hooker with his division overtook the enemy and began the battle of Williamsburg, which was fought without a plan, under confused orders and defective disposition of forces, and, though somewhat relieved by a brilliant exploit of Hancock, then commander of a brigade, resulted in a Union defeat and considerable loss. McClellan arrived on the field at about five o'clock in the afternoon, receiving, as he always did, loud and enthusiastic cheers from his men; but the battle of Williamsburg was over. He made a disposition of forces for the conflict which he expected would be renewed on the morrow; but that night the Confederates marched away from Williamsburg on their retreat to Richmond. McClellan followed with almost incredible slowness. The march from Williamsburg to the place where his army went into camp on the Chickahominy, a distance of forty to fifty miles, consumed a fortnight. The roads of course were bad, and Virginia mud is a factor to be taken into account in the consideration of many campaigns; but the young general exaggerated these obstacles and the inclemency of the weather, even as he overestimated the force of the enemy. Lincoln, who was undoubtedly weary of this constant grumbling, and observed that the Confederates marched in spite of bad roads and made attacks in spite of rough weather, once said: "McClellan seemed to think, in defiance of Scripture, that Heaven sent its rain only on the just and not on the unjust." 4

1 "Curiously enough, there was almost always something for McClellan to do more important than to fight his own battles."- Palfrey, Papers of the Military Historical Society of Mass., vol. i. p. 156.

2 Committee on Conduct of the War, part i. p. 20; Webb's Peninsula, p. 83. 3 In a somewhat merry mood McClellan enlivens his book with an anecdote of which he more than once thought during this campaign and from which he might have drawn an apposite lesson. McClellan asked an old general of Cossacks who had served in all the Russian campaigns against Napoleon how the roads were in those days. "My son," he replied, “the roads are always bad in war." -Own Story, p. 275.

4 Nicolay and Hay, vol. v. p. 414.

On the morning of May 11 McClellan, who had then covered nineteen miles beyond Williamsburg, learned that the Confederates had evacuated Norfolk and destroyed the ironclad Merrimac, thereby leaving open to the Federal fleet the James River, which offered to the Union general a line of advance on Richmond more advantageous in every important military consideration. It made available to him the cooperation of the navy; it saved him the risk of braving the fever-breath of the Chickahominy swamps; it would have enabled him to threaten the most important communication of the Confederate capital with the States farther South.

McClellan is wise after the event, and in his report of August 4, 1863, and in his book acknowledges that the approach to Richmond by the James was a safer and surer route than the one adopted; 2 but, unable to admit that he ever made a mistake, he ascribes his evident failure in strategy to the administration at Washington. Having asked repeatedly for reinforcements, he finally sent to the President on May 14 a respectful and reasonable despatch, the gist of which was: "I ask for every man that the War Department can send me by water." Four days later the Secretary of War replied that while the President did not deem it wise to uncover the capital entirely by sending the available forces by the waterroute, he had, however, ordered McDowell with his 40,000 men to march from Fredericksburg overland and join the Army of the Potomac either north or south of the Pamunkey River. He then directed McClellan to extend his right wing north of Richmond in order to establish this communication as soon as possible. This command, declares McClellan, "is the reason for my not operating on the line of the James." His excuse is not borne out by his own private correspondence of the time, which contains not even the vaguest

1 O. R., vol. xi. part iii. p. 164.

2 Ibid., part i. p. 28; McClellan's Own Story, p. 346; see, also, McClellan's article, The Century Company's War Book, vol. ii. p. 173.

3 The Pamunkey was the south branch of the York River. 4 O. R., vol. xi. part i. pp. 26, 27.

allusion to a desire for such a movement; in fact, the tenor of all his despatches and letters is that he expected to fight Johnston's army between the Chickahominy River and Richmond.1 Moreover, he knew on the 11th of May of the destruction of the Merrimac, and did not receive notice of the promised reinforcement by McDowell until the 18th. The full week intervening was his for considering and adopting the plan of moving on Richmond by the line of the James River. This he had unhampered power to do, and this is exactly what he ought to have done.

As soon as the destruction of the Merrimac was known, the Monitor and a number of gunboats started up the James. Their approach caused more of a panic in Richmond than did any direct menace of McClellan's army of 100,000 during the whole of the Peninsular Campaign. There were, indeed, anxious hearts in the capital city when the Union troops first appeared before Yorktown; but when McClellan, instead of attacking the Confederates, went on with his scientific siege operations, anxiety gave way to wonder and to contempt for his generalship. The fall of New Orleans was a blow, and the destruction a fortnight later of the Merrimac — “that great gift of God and of Virginia to the South "2-seemed disaster crowding upon disaster. Although McClellan's military ability was despised, the march of his well-trained and well-equipped army towards the capital of the Confederacy could not be looked on without apprehension. While there was a quiet confidence in Johnston, strictures on Jefferson Davis were not uncommon. Of him who was now acting as military adviser to the President and became later the greatest Southern commander, the Richmond Examiner, standing for a widely held opinion, said: "Evacuating Lee, who has never yet risked a single battle with the invader, is com

1 See despatches in O. R., and letters to his wife in Own Story; testimony before Com. on Conduct of the War; also Webb's Peninsula, p. 87; Nicolay and Hay, vol. v. p. 384; Swinton's pamphlet, McClellan's Military Career Reviewed and Exposed, p. 22.

2 Richmond Examiner, May 13.

manding-general;" and after Yorktown had been given up, sneered at "the bloodless and masterly strategy of Lee." 1 We must bear all these circumstances in mind to understand the fear with which the people heard that the Monitor and the Federal gunboats were at City Point, within thirty-two miles of Richmond, then within twelve miles, then within eight. Davis had himself baptized at home and the rite of confirmation administered to him in the Episcopal Church of St. Paul's. He had appointed by public proclamation a day for solemn prayer.2 A prey to anxiety, he insisted that his wife and family should go to Raleigh. The families of the Cabinet secretaries fled to their homes. These facts and the adjournment of the Confederate Congress the previous month seemed to lend confirmation to a report now gaining ground that Richmond would be abandoned. The packing of trunks was the work of every household; refugees crowded the railroad trains; people fled in panic from the city with nothing but the clothes they had on. Nor was it baseless fear that made them flee.3 New Orleans, they thought, had been ignobly surrendered; what should save Richmond? Davis's letters to his wife breathe discouragement. I have told the people, he wrote, "that the enemy might be beaten before Richmond on either flank, and we would try to do it, but that I could not allow the army to be penned up in a city."4

1 Richmond Examiner, April 21, May 6. General Lee's campaign in western Virginia the previous autumn had been considered a failure (see vol. iii. of this work, p. 489). "The press and the public were clamorous against him." - Long's Life of Lee, p. 130.

2 John M. Daniel, in an editorial in the Richmond Examiner of May 19, wrote: "In truth, these devotional proclamations of Mr. Davis have lost all good effect from their repetition, are regarded by the people as either cant or evidences of mental weakness. . . . When we find the President standing in a corner telling his beads and relying on a miracle to save the country instead of mounting his horse and putting forth every power of the Government to defeat the enemy, the effect is depressing in the extreme."

3 I have made up this description from the files of the Richmond Dispatch, Examiner, and Whig; A Rebel War Clerk's Diary, Jones, vol. i.; Mrs. Davis's Memoir, vol. ii.; Pollard's Second Year of the War.

4 Mrs. Davis's Memoir, vol. ii. p. 273; see, also, p. 271.

Alexander H. Stephens, a close observer of events in his Georgia home, said to a confidential friend: President Davis "acts as if he had not any confidence in the attainment of independence. I suspect he intends to imitate the career of Sydney Johnston. That is the way I read some of his conduct." 1 The evidence seems good that the government archives had been sent to Lynchburg and to Columbia.2

May 15 the Monitor and the Federal gunboats reached Drewry's Bluff, eight miles below Richmond on the James River. There they encountered a heavy battery and two separate barriers formed of piles, steamboats, and sail vessels, and found the banks of the river lined with sharpshooters. As the boats advanced, the Confederates opened fire; this was soon returned and the battle was on. Richmond heard the sound of the guns and was not terrified, for the panic-stricken had left the city and the resolute citizens had stemmed the current of alarm. On the previous day the General Assembly of the Commonwealth had resolved that the capital should be defended to the last extremity, and appointed a committee to assure President Davis that all loss of property involved in this resolution would be cheerfully submitted to by the State and by the citizens. Davis said to the committee: It will be the effort of my life to defend the soil of Virginia and to cover her capital. I have never entertained the thought of withdrawing the army from Virginia and abandoning the State. If the capital should fall, the necessity of which I do not see or anticipate, the war could still be successfully maintained on Virginia soil for twenty years. To the sound of the enemy's guns Governor Letcher affixed his hand and seal to a call for a meeting at the City Hall for the purpose of pro

1 Life of Stephens, Johnston & Browne, p. 415.

2 A Rebel War Clerk's Diary, Jones, vol. i. p. 126; Pollard's Second Year of the War, p. 32. The Confederate Secretary of War gave, May 10, the order to have a large part of the records and papers of his department packed in boxes for removal.-O. R., vol. xi. part iii. p. 504.

3 See the different reports of this battle in Moore's Rebellion Record, vol. v., Docs. p. 132 et seq.; O. R., vol. xi. part iii. p. 178.