APPENDIX. 117 mond. It was evident now that a general action was either immiicnt or actually in progress. The stories from the battle field of Gaines’s Mill came in, announcing a great victory, and anxiety gradually turned into exultation, which grew as the prisoners began to arrive in small squads, and the people became convinced that the army of McClellan was actually retreating. For the next day or two, this mood was in the ascendant, and nothing was talked of but the capture or annihilation of the whole “ invading horde.” Much was made of the two captured Generals Reynolds and McCall, who naturally grew into four, five or six, according to the strength of the speaker’s patriotism, and of his imagination. General McClellan was killed three or four times, and General Sumner was certainly wounded and a prisoner at Savage’s station. Jackson’s corps, which had not been engaged as the Prince seems to suppose on the 26th with McCall, the fight of that day being maintained on the confederate side by the troops of A. P. Hill and Longstreet in the advance, had come into action upon the federal retreat on the 28tb, and this intelligence of itself would have sufficed to convince the most skeptical that the doom of the Yankees was sealed, and that the tobacco warehouses of Richmond would be too small to contain the prisoners that were about to arrive. By the 30th, however, it began to be whispered that all was not going satisfactorily. It was then known to a few that McClellan had not been cut to pieces in detail; that on the contrary, he had succeeded in effecting the concentration of his whole army, and was moving on a line of retreat which, as it was not thoroughly understood, might perhaps, prove to be a new line of advance. The fearful tidings of the repulse and slaughter at Malvern Hill at last forced its way through the popular hope and passion, and the news that the gunboats in the river ha 1 joined their fire with that of the artillery of
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