forage was to be drawn from the country, and the difficulties of supply and shelter were not the worst obstacles to military operations.  At this season of the year the climate and the soil were persistent foes.  The roads were mere tracks, channels which served as drains for the interminable forest.  The deep meadows, fresh and green to the eye, were damp and unwholesome camping-grounds.  Turgid streams, like the Chickahominy and its affluents, winding sluggishly through rank jungles, spread in swamp and morass across the valleys, and the languid atmosphere, surcharged with vapour, was redolent of decay.

June.

Through this malarious region the Federal army had been pushing its slow way forward for more than six weeks, and 105,000 men, accompanied by a large siege train, lay intrenched within sight of the spires of Richmond. 30,000 were north of the Chickahominy, covering the York River Railway and waiting the coming of McDowell.  The remainder, from Woodbury’s Bridge to the Charles City road, occupied the line of breastworks which stood directly east of the beleaguered city.  So nearly was the prize within their grasp that the church bells, and even the clocks striking the hour, were heard in the camps; and at Mechanicsville Bridge, watched by a picket, stood a sign-post which bore the legend:  “To Richmond, 41/2 miles.”  The sentries who paced that beat were fortunate.  For the next two years they could boast that no Federal soldier, except as a prisoner, had stood so close as they had to the rebel stronghold.  But during these weeks in June not a single soul in McClellan’s army, and few in the Confederacy, suspected that the flood of invasion had reached high-water mark.  Richmond, gazing night after night at the red glow which throbbed on the eastern vault, the reflection of countless camp-fires, and, listening with strained ears to the far-off call of hostile bugles, seemed in perilous case.  No formidable position protected the approaches.  Earthworks, indeed, were in process of construction; but, although the left flank at New Bridge was covered by the Chickahominy, the right was protected by no natural obstacle, as had been the case at Yorktown; and the lines occupied no commanding site.  Nor had the Government been able to assemble an army of a strength sufficient to man the whole front.  Lee, until Jackson joined him, commanded no more than 72,500 men.  Of these a large portion were new troops, and their numbers had been reduced by the 7000 dispatched under Whiting to the Valley.

June 11.

But if the Federal army was far superior in numbers, it was not animated by an energy in proportion to its strength.  The march from the White House was more sluggish than the current of the Chickahominy.  From May 17 to June 26 the Army of the Valley had covered four hundred miles.  Within the same period the Army of the Potomac had covered twenty.  It is true that the circumstances were widely different.