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party at work there had their tents pitched in the grove about Willis's Church (delineated on page 429).

We passed down the Quaker road through an almost level country, broken by ravines and water-courses for a mile cr two, in the track of the fugitive Army of the Potomac, and at about one o'clock reached the beautiful open fields of Malvern Hills, where we had a pleasant reception at the old mansion-the head-quarters of McClellan (see picture on page 429)-by the family of Mr. Wyatt, the occupant. In a deep shaded ravine, on the southeastern slope of the hill, where a copious stream of pure spring water flows out of a bank composed of a mass of perfect sea-shells and coral,'

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beneath the roots of huge trees, we lunched; and at the small house, not far off, where Major Myer had his signal-station during the battle, we were furnished with rich buttermilk by a fat old colored woman, who said she was "skeered a' most to death" by the roar of the storm of battle. After sketching the charming view southward from the grove in front of the mansion, we proceeded to explore the battle-ground on which the hottest of the fight occurred. The theater of that conflict was on the farms of Cornelius

1 There were immense escalop and ordinary sized oyster-shells closely imbedded, with small ammonites and clam shells. The coral was white, and in perfect preservation. This layer of marine shells and the spring are more than a hundred feet above the James River. Such layers occur throughout the region between Richmond and the sea, sometimes near the surface, and often many feet below it. On the battle-ground of the Seven Pines we saw many pieces of coral that had lain so near the surface that the plow had turned them up.

This is one of the most extensive and charming views in all that region. The sketch comprehends the scenery around Turkey Bend, on the James River, looking southward from Malvern Hills mansion. From that position City Point (its place denoted by the three birds on the left) was visible, and the country up the Appomattox toward Petersburg. The two birds on the right denote the position of the gun-boats in the James that took part in the battle.

FAIR OAKS AND SAVAGE'S STATION.

439 Crew, Dr. Turner, John W. West, E. H. Poindexter, James W. Binford, and L. H. Kemp. Crew's, near which the artillery of Porter and Couch was planted, had been a fine mansion, with pleasant grounds around it; but both mansion and grounds told the sad story of the desolation which had been brought to all that region by the scourge of war. Only two very aged women inhabited the shattered building, the garden was a waste, the shadetrees had disappeared, and only a single field was in preparation for culture. Late in the afternoon we left Malvern Hills, and returned to Richmond by the New Market or River road.

On the morning of the first of June, we rode out to the battle-grounds of the Seven Pines and Fair Oaks, and of Savage's Station. Our journey was on the Williamsburg road, as far as its junction with the Nine Mile road, when we followed the latter to Fair Oaks Station, seven miles from Richmond. There were no buildings visible there. We rode on to the site of the Seven Pines Tavern, where a burial party were filling a National cemetery with the remains of the Union dead; and crossing open fields beyond, we reached Savage's Station, about four miles from Fair Oaks, at noon. It was a warm, sunny day, and the shade of the grove there (see picture on page 426) was very grateful. There we lunched, and had a brief interview with Mr. Savage, who was living in a small house a few yards from the site of his mansion, which was destroyed by accident after the battle there. He was courteous, but, outspoken concerning his hostility to his Government and his contempt for the Yankees, preferring to live in poverty in the midst of his eight hundred desolated acres, to allowing one of the despised Northerners" to become his neighbor by a sale of a rood of his surplus land to him. We admired his pluck and pitied his folly. He was a fair example of that social dead-weight of pride and stupidity that denies activity and prosperity to Virginia.

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We returned to Richmond before sunset, and early the following morning went down the river by steamer to visit Williamsburg and Yorktown. The weather was de

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lightful, and the banks

of the James were clad in richest verdure, hiding in a degree the deserted fortifications that line them all the way from Richmond to City Point. Water was flowing gently through the Dutch Gap Canal; and City Point, where a year before a hundred vessels might be

BATTERY AND CHURCH-TOWER ON JAMESTOWN ISLAND.

seen at one time, now presented but a solitary schooner at its desolated wharf. At about noon we passed James Island, with its interesting tower of the ancient church in which the first settlers in Virginia worshiped, and near which we saw the battery erected and armed in the interest of the conspirators, at the expense of a wealthy planter named Allen,

440

WILLIAMSBURG AND YORKTOWN.

whose vast domain was in that vicinity. Soon afterward we debarked at Grover's Landing, eight miles from Williamsburg, rode to that ancient capital of Virginia in an old ambulance, and during the afternoon visited Fort Magruder and its dependencies, and other localities connected with the battle there. We spent the evening pleasantly and profitably with the eminent Professor B. S. Ewell (brother of General R. S. Ewell), the President of William and Mary College, who was the Adjutant-General of Joseph E. Johnston until he was superseded in command by Hood, at Atlanta.

On the following morning we rode to Yorktown, twelve miles down the Peninsula, and spent the remainder of the day in visiting objects of interest in the vicinity. The old British line of circumvallation had been covered by the modern works; and the famous cave in the river-bank in which Cornwallis had his head-quarters, after he was driven out of the Nelson House, had been enlarged and converted into a magazine. The town appeared desolate indeed, the only house in it that seems not to have felt the ravages of war being that of Mrs. Anderson, of Williamsburg, in which McClellan and all of the Union commanders at Yorktown had their quarters. It was still used for the same purpose, there being a small military force there. We observed that the names of the few streets in Yorktown had been changed, and bore those of "McClellan," "Keyes," "Ellsworth," and others. The old "Swan Tavern," at which the writer was lodged in 1848, and the adjoining buildings, had been blown into fragments by the explosion of gunpowder during the war.

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MCCLELLAN'S HEAD-QUARTERS IN YORKTOWN.

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Landing, passing on the way the house of Mr. Eagle, a mile from the town, where General Johnston had his quarters and telegraph station just before the evacuation. We were again on the bosom of the James in a steamer at nine o'clock, and arrived at Richmond toward evening. Remaining there one day, we departed for the North, to visit the fields of strife between the South Anna and the Rappahannock.

CONDITION OF MOCLELLAN'S ARMY.

441

CHAPTER XVII.

POPE'S CAMPAIGN IN VIRGINIA.

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ERY grievous was the disappointment of the loyal people when they knew that the Grand Army of the Potomac had been driven from the front of Richmond, had abandoned the siege, and had intrenched itself in a defensive position in the malarious region of the James River, beneath the scorching sun of midsummer, where home-sickness and camp-sickness in every form were fearfully wasting it. They were perplexed by enigmas which they could not solve, and the addresses of General McClellan and of the Chief Conspirator at Richmond made these enigmas more profound; each claiming to have achieved victory, and promising abundant success to his followers.' And most astounding to the Government was the assurance of the commander of that army on the third day after the battle of Malvern Hills, when the shattered but victorious host was lying between Berkeley and Westover, that he had not over 50,000 men left with their colors !" What has become of the remainder of the one hundred and sixty thousand men who within a hundred days have gone to the Peninsula? was a problem very important for the Government to have solved, and the President went down to the head

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1 On the 4th of July, General McClellan said, in a congratulatory address to his troops :-"SOLDIERS OF THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC-Your achievements of the last ten days have illustrated the valor and endurance of the American soldier. Attacked by superior forces, and without hope of re-enforcements, you have succeeded in changing your base of operations by a flank movement, always regarded as the most hazardous of military expedients. You have saved all your material, all your trains, and all your guns except a few lost in battle, taking in return guns and colors from the enemy. Upon your march you have been assailed day after day with desperate fury, by men of the same race and nation, skillfully massed and led. Under every disadvantage of number, and necessarily of position also, you have in every conflict beaten back your foes with enormous slaughter. Your conduct ranks you among the celebrated armies of history. No one will now question that each of you may always with pride say, 'I belonged to the Army of the Potomac.' * * On this our Nation's birth-day, we declare to our foes, who are rebels against the best interests of mankind, that this army shall enter the capital of the so-called Confederacy; that our National Constitution shall prevail, and that the Union, which can alone insure internal peace and external security to each State, must and shall be preserved,' cost what it may in time, treasure, and blood."

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On the following day (July 5), Jefferson Davis issued an address to his soldiers, in which, after speaking of the "series of brilliant victories" they had won, he said: "Ten days ago an invading army, vastly superior to you in numbers and materials of war, closely beleaguered your capital, and vauntingly proclaimed its speedy conquest. With well-directed movements and death-daring valor you charged upon him from field to field, over a distance of more than thirty-five miles, and, spite of his re-enforcements, compelled him to seek shelter under cover of his gun-boats, where he now lies cowering before the army he so lately derided and threatened with entire subjugation. Well may it be said of you, that you have done enough for glory; but duty to a suffering country and to the cause of constitutional liberty claims for you yet further efforts. Let it be your pride to relax in nothing which can promote your own future efficiency, your own great object being to drive the invaders from your soil, carrying your standard beyond the outer boundaries of the Confederacy, to wring from an unscrupulous foe the recognition which is the birthright of every independent community."

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2 Dispatch by telegraph to the Secretary of War, July 3, 1862.

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• July 8

1862.

THE PRESIDENT VISITS THE ARMY.

quarters at Harrison's Landing in search of that solution. There he found the remains of that splendid army greatly disheartened. Sadly and wearily it had waded through the mud and been pelted by a pitiless storm while marching from the field of its victory on Malvern Hills to its present humiliating position, during the night succeeding the contest. It had been covered from an attack on its march by a rear-guard of all arms under Colonel Averill, and menaced continually by Stuart and his cavalry, and columns of infantry pushed forward by Lee. These found the National army too strongly posted to make a repetition of the blunder before Malvern Hills a safe experiment, and on the 8th Lee ceased pursuit and withdrew his army to Richmond, having lost, as nearly as now can be. ascertained, since he took the command less than forty days before, about nineteen thousand men.

The President found the Army of the Potomac "present and fit for duty" nearly forty thousand souls stronger than its commander had reported on the 3d, and his hopes were revived to the point of belief that it might speedily march against Richmond. But he was unable then to get a reply to his question, Where are the seventy-five thousand men yet missing?1 While he was there, the future movements of the Army of the Potomac was the subject of serious deliberation. It was known that the Confederates, aware of the weakness of the force left in defense of Washington, were gathering heavily in that direction; and the withdrawal of Lee's army to Richmond, on the day of the President's arrival at McClellan's head-quarters, indicated an abandonment of the pursuit, and a probable heavy movement northward. In view of the possible danger to the capital, and the fact that McClellan did not consider his army strong enough by 66 one hundred thousand men more, rather than less," to take Richmond, it was thought advisable by the President, and by several of the corps commanders of the Army of the Potomac, whose sad experience before the Confederate capital had shaken their confidence in their leader, to withdraw the army from the Peninsula and concentrate it in front of Washington. To this project McClellan was opposed, and at once took measures to defeat it.

Here we will leave the army on the Peninsula for a little while, and observe events nearer the National capital, with which its movements were intimately connected. To give more efficiency to the troops covering Washington, they were formed into an organization called the Army of Virginia, and placed under the command of Major-General John Pope, who was called from the West for the purpose. The new army was arranged in three corps, to be commanded respectively by

⚫ June 26.

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1 The President found about 86,000 men with McClellan, leaving 75,000 unaccounted for. This information perplexed him very much, and on the 13th, after his return to Washington, he wrote to the Chief of the Army of the Potomac, asking for an account of the missing numbers. The General replied on the 15th, in which he reported 88,665 “present and fit for duty;" absent by authority, 84,472; absent without authority, 8,778; sick, 16,619; making a total of 143,580. A week later the Adjutant-general's office reported the total @ July 20. of the Army of the Potomac, exclusive of General Wool's command, and a force under Burnside that had been ordered from North Carolina, 158,314, of whom 101,631 were present and fit for duty. The Government was much disturbed by one fact in General McClellan's report of his numbers, namely, that over 34.000 men, or more than three-fifths of the entire number of the army which he had reported on the 3d, were absent on furloughs, granted by permission of the commanding General, when he was continually calling for re-enforcements, and holding the Government responsible for the weakness of his army. The President said, in reference to this extraordinary fact: "If you had these men with you, you could go into Richmond in the next three days."

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