Such was the admirable condition of the large force under command of General McClellan.  It would be difficult to imagine an army better prepared for active operations; and the position which it held had been well selected.  The left of the army was protected by the wellnigh impassable morass of the White-oak Swamp, and all the approaches from the direction of Richmond were obstructed by the natural difficulties of the ground, which had been rendered still more forbidding by an abattis of felled trees and earthworks of the best description.  Unless the right of McClellan, on the northern bank of the Chickahominy, were turned by the Confederates, his communications with his base at the White House and the safety of his army were assured.  And even the apparently improbable contingency of such an assault on his right had been provided for.  Other bodies of Federal troops had advanced into Virginia to cooeperate with the main force on the Peninsula.  General McDowell, the able soldier who had nearly defeated the Confederates at Manassas, was at Fredericksburg with a force of about forty thousand men, which were to advance southward without loss of time and unite with General McClellan’s right.  This would completely insure the communications of his army from interruption; and it was no doubt expected that Generals Fremont and Banks would cooeperate in the movement also.  Fremont was to advance from Northwestern Virginia, driving before him the small Confederate force, under Jackson, in the Valley; and General Banks, then at Winchester, was to cross the Blue Ridge Mountains, and, posting his forces along the Manassas Railroad, guard the approaches to Washington when McDowell advanced from Fredericksburg to the aid of General McClellan.  Thus Richmond would be half encircled by Federal armies.  General McClellan, if permitted by the Confederates to carry out his plan of operations, would soon be in command of about two hundred thousand men, and with this force it was anticipated he would certainly be able to capture Richmond.

Such was the Federal programme of the war in Virginia.  It promised great results, and ought, it would seem, to have succeeded.  The Confederate forces in Virginia did not number in all one hundred thousand men; and it is now apparent that, without the able strategy of Johnston, Lee, and Jackson, General McClellan would have been in possession of Richmond before the summer.

Prompt action was thus necessary on the part of the sagacious soldier commanding the army at Richmond, and directing operations throughout the theatre of action in Virginia.  The officer in question was General Joseph E. Johnston, a Virginian by birth, who had first held General Patterson in check in the Shenandoah Valley, and then hastened to the assistance of General Beauregard at Manassas, where, in right of his superior rank, he took command.  Before the enemy’s design to advance up the Peninsula had been developed, Johnston had made a masterly retreat