William Swinton, Campaigns of the Army of the Potomac

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‘ [172] enemy wants you to do,’ this notable coincidence should raise grave suspicions touching the wisdom of a measure in which the opposing chiefs were in such entire harmony.

To dislodge the army from its threatening position on the James, Lee determined to menace its communications; and with this view he moved a force to the south bank of the James, seized a position immediately opposite Harrison's Landing, placed forty-three guns in position, and on the 31st of July opened fire on the shipping.¹ This did little damage, however, and on the following morning General McClellan threw a force across the river, seized the position—Coggin's Point—fortified it, and was never troubled more. But little did the Confederate commander dream, when he was thus laboring to cause McClellan to withdraw, that the generalin-chief of the United States army was co-operating to the same end. Moreover, it happened that, while General Halleck was willing to remove the army from the Peninsula before Lee made any effort with the same view, a certain measure taken by the Confederate commander with an entirely different aim, greatly expedited the withdrawal. For the just appreciation of this it will be necessary to glance a moment at General Pope's contemporaneous operations in Northern Virginia.

Upon assuming command of the Army of Virginia, General Pope, whose military conduct was considerably sounder than his military principles, had concentrated his scattered commands into one body in front of Washington, and thrown it forward along the line of the Orange and Alexandria Railroad, in the direction of Gordonsville and Charlottesville. His force numbered near fifty thousand men. As the seizure of the points named would tap the Confederate communications