Robert Stiles, Four years under Marse Robert

[92] an irrepressible lifelong yearning for the army. My recollection is that this feeling crops out more or less in Kingsley; I am sure it runs like a refrain through Frederick William Robertson's life and letters and appears perhaps in his sermons. Years ago, when he who is now Rev. Dr. Rainsford, of St. George's, New York, was a glorious youth, he conducted a most successful mission in St. Paul's Church, Richmond, Va., and drew some of us very close to him. Toward the close of his work he asked Col. Archer Anderson and myself to walk with him over the field of the Seven Days battles, or as much of it as we could “do” on foot in a day. We started early one crisp February morning, the Colonel and I full of interest, but fearful that we could not keep up with the giant stride of our comrade, who was a trained athlete and one of the most heroic looking specimens of young manhood I ever beheld. We could not help thinking what a soldier he would have made. He was not then a Reverend Doctor and will, I am sure, pardon me for speaking of him on this occasion as “Rainsford.”

We explained to him the positions of the two armies just before the opening of the battle; that Lee's was on this, the Richmond side of the Chickahominy, which was generally impassable, except where the various roads, running out of Richmond like the spokes of a wheel, crossed it; that Mc-Clellan's army was on both sides of the stream or swamp, the bulk of it perhaps at this time on the Richmond side, but he had established and fortified free communication between his two wings; also that Jackson had been secretly drawn down from the Valley, and was now hovering, hawk fashion, somewhere over beyond and back of McClellan's right flank.

We next showed him the disparity in numbers, McClellan, by his own report, dated June 20, 1862, six days before the fighting began, having “Present for duty one hundred and five thousand eight hundred and twenty-five (105,825) men ;” and as he was anticipating battle and calling lustily for reinforcements, his force was probably substantially increased during these six days; while Lee, as demonstrated by Col. Walter H. Taylor, adjutant-general of his army, and Gen. Jubal A. Early, both better informed on the subject