Fitzhugh Lee, General Lee

This plan, if it had been adopted before the Confederate attack, might have forced the Southern commander to attack his united army on the right bank. He decided to receive the attack in the position then occupied by Porter, and only withdrew him to the Richmond side of the Chickahominy after he had been badly hammered and had lost some six thousand men.

Perhaps if McClellan had known that he was fighting eighty-one thousand men, and not two hundred thousand, he might have acted with more confidence. Mr. Lincoln telegraphed June 26th that his suggestion of, the probability of his being overwhelmed by two hundred thousand men, and talking about where the responsibility would belong, pained him very much. On June 27th McClellan began to realize that he was going to have some very serious work, and begged the Secretary that he would put some one general in command of the Shenandoah Valley and of all troops in front of Washington for the sake of the country. On the same day he complimented Porter for his fine efforts at Gaines Mill, says he looks upon the day as decisive of the war, and tells him to “try and drive the rascals, and take some prisoners and guns.” This was an hour or two before Porter's defeat. General Hooker did not seem to be so confident, for about the same time he reported that he had just returned from the front, where “we have nothing but a stampede, owing to the behavior of the troops occupying the picket line. The first shot from a rebel was sufficient to start regiments.” Later that day Admiral Goldsborough, the flag officer of the Federal squadron on the James, was notified by Mc-Clellan that he had met with a severe repulse, and asked him to send gunboats up the James River to cover the left flank of his army.

The Washington War Secretary was confident of Federal success as late as the evening of June 29th, for he telegraphed Hon. William H. Seward, at New York, that his inference is, from what has taken place around