THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC. y/ 95 consequently only one flank to protect, which was easily done with abattis and field works. On the evening of the 30th all the divisions of the army were united in this strong position, and here the whole train including the siege guns was sheltered. The army was in communication with its transports and supplies. The grand and daring movement by which it had escaped a serious danger and changed an untenable base of operations for one more safe and sure, had been accomplished ; but after so prolonged an effort the troops were worn out; for five days they had been incessantly marching and fighting. The heat had added to their excessive fatigue; many men had been sun struck; others quitted the ranks and fell into the lamentable procession of sick and wounded which followed the army as well as it could, and as fast as it could. Doubtless during this difficult retreat, there had been moments of confusion and disorder, but of what army in like circumstances would not this have been true? This one fact remained unassailable ; that attacked in the midst of a difficult and hostile country by twice its own force, the Army of the Potomac had succeeded in gaining a position in which it was out of danger, and from which, had it been properly reinforced, had the concentration of the enemy’s forces been met by a like concentration, it might have rapidly resumed the offensive. As we have said, each of its necessarily scattered sections had for five days been called upon to resist the most furious assaults and had done so with vigor. Now that it was assembled as a whole upon Malvern Hill the confederate army also reunited might possibly make a last effort against it. So in the night of the 30th of June and 1st of July McClellan prepared himself for this eventuality. He put his whole artillery, at least three hundred guns, into battery along the heights arranging them in such wise that their fire should not interfere with the defence by the infantry of the sort of glacis up
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