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[442] at Harrison's Landing
July 8 1862.
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 Headquarters, 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 “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

June 26.
for the purpose. The new army was arranged in three corps, to be commanded respectively by

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, 34,472; absent without authority, 3,778; sick, 16,619; making a total of 143,580. A week later

July 20.
the Adjutant-general's office reported the total 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 101,691 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 8d, 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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