Comte de Paris, History of the Civil War in America. Vol. 2.
Henry Coppee , LL.D., Ed.

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[144] have all had the same issue. More than once the Federal lines have seemed on the point of being charged and broken, so great is the impetuosity of the assailants; but at the last moment the latter are always checked and compelled to redescend those fatal slopes, already covered with the dead bodies of their comrades. The last rays of the setting sun, gilding the tree-tops and the smoky heights of Malvern, light up this bloody scene. In the centre D. H. Hill has given up the contest, but Magruder, 10th to resign himself to this cruel reverse, persists in continuing the fight. It is only toward nine o'clock that the booming of cannon gradually dies away along the entire line, and the silence of the night succeeds at last, unbroken, to the noise of battle.

This time the Confederates had experienced a defeat unmitigated by any compensation. The great effort they had made to repair the errors committed on the preceding days had signally failed. Their divisions, exhausted and diminished by six days marching and fighting, had been led to the assault of formidable positions without order or unity of action, and had paid dearly for the confidence of their generals — a confidence which, since the victory of Gaines' Mill, had become positive presumption. Their losses were enormous and out of all proportion to those they had inflicted upon their adversaries.-So useless a sacrifice of life troubled and discouraged them. Magruder's corps was partially destroyed; those of D. H. Hill and Huger had suffered cruelly; those of Longstreet and A. P. Hill had not yet recovered from the effects of the battle of Glendale. The troops of Whiting, Ewell and Jackson would no doubt have been in a condition to renew the contest on the following day, but the struggle was virtually at an end. It was one of those facts which impress themselves upon the strongest minds. Up to this time the Confederate army had labored under the conviction that the capitulation of McClellan and all his troops would be the inevitable result of the campaign. The soldier, unable to judge of the combined movements of the Federals, had seen nothing but success in all his encounters with them, and believed that as great advantages had been obtained at Frazier's Farm and Glendale as at Gaines' Mill; consequently, when on the evening of the 1st of July he found himself repulsed at all points by those very men whom he