General Joseph E. Johnston, Narrative of Military Operations During the Civil War

[144] that they remained Sunday under the protection of these intrenchments while Hill was gathering the arms scattered in woods and thickets, more than two miles in extent.

The proofs against these claims are, that General McClellan, who had been advancing, although cautiously, up to the time of this battle, made no step forward after it, but employed his troops industriously in intrenching themselves, and that both of his subordinates — the commanders at Fair Oaks and on the Williamsburg road-stood on the defensive the day after the battle, while the Confederate right covered all the ground on which it fought the day before, and had leisure and confidence enough to devote much of the day to gathering the valuable military property, including arms, won the day before; and Smith's division, prolonging the line beyond the railroad and Fair Oaks, was confronting Sumner's corps.

General Sumner's extravagant statement, that six of his regiments charged and put to flight Smith's whole division, needs no comment. His estimate of his force on Saturday is not more accurate. According to it, there were in Sedgwick's division, which constituted half of his corps, less than five thousand men; consequently, his corps must have had in it less than ten thousand; and McClellan's army, of which that corps was a fifth, less than fifty thousand. As that army numbered a hundred and fifteen thousand men a month before, its number could not have been less than one hundred thousand, nor that of Sumner's corps less than twenty thousand; nor his force on Saturday, at Fair Oaks, less than thirteen or fourteen thousand.