66 THE ARMY OP THE I’OTOMAC. have been Jotter than the dismal position in which the armv really found itself for a month in the marshes of the Chicka- hominy lint who conld at that time have foreseen, that at the decisive moment of the campaign, inundations unexampled at that scmson of the year would thwart the efforts and paralyze the movements of the Potomac army, as they did on the day of the battle of Pair Oaks ? Or who, again, could foresee that the So,000 men. assembled before Washington, would do nothing, and less than nothing, to aid the army in overcoming the concentration of forces it was called upon to encounter? We continued, then, our forward movement, and notwithstanding the almost constant rains, we were not long reaching the banks of the Chickahominy, at a place called Bottom Bridge, ten miles fiom Richmond, where the York liver railroad, which we had been following from White House, crosses the river on a bridge temporarily destroyed by the enemy. Here we were fairly at the gates of Richmond. Down to this time the campaign, if it had not been brilliant, had at least been fertile in results. Yorktown, one of the most important military positions of the enemy, had fallen. Norfolk, the magnilieent arsenal from which the South drew the greater part of its military stores had been abandoned, and the necessity of abandoning it had brought on the destruction of the formidable Merrimac. Finally, General McClellan bad succeeded in pitching his camp without accident in front of the capital of tlie Seceded States, and of their main army. 1 he confederates could fall back no further, without losing all their prestige in the eyes of their partisans, and of the whole world. They were Ilins driven to accept a decisive battle upon this poin . In our actual circumstances, it was no slight merit to have forced an adversary back upon such a necessity. I know that a battle ought to have been won at this point, and that it wa not won. But the -whole responsibility of this matter by no means rests upon the General or upon his army.
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