ye THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC. 79 In point of fact, both sides had failed for want of organization, for want of hierarchy, for the want of the bond which hierarchy creates between the sonl of the General and the great body called an army, that powerful bond which suffers a Commander to demand and to obtain from the blind confidence of his troops, those extraordinary efforts by which battles are won. Nevertheless, although the losses of the enemy were the larger, the check which the federals had received was especially disastrous to them. They had missed an unique opportunity of striking a decisive blow. These opportunities never returned; and moreover, in the then circumstances of the federals, time was working against them. V. Che Scbcn Chuis’ Untiles. The day after this battle, McClellan recovered, without a blow, the stations of Fair Oaks and Seven Pines, so that the armies were once more in the same positions as before. For nearly a month they looked each other in the face, in a state of inaction which yet was not repose. On the contrary, this month, with its overwhelming alternations of heat and rain, with the immense labors imposed upon the soldiers, with its never-ending alarms and partial combats, was a dreary and a trying season. The federal army neither wished to offer, nor to invite another such battle as that of Fair Oaks till its bridges should be built, and its two wings put into communication with each other. Diluvian rains were in the way of the result. Moreover, we had profited by past experience, and we wished to give these bridges, together with a monumental solidity, an extent of space which should traverse not only the river, but the whole valley. If we did this, we should have nothing
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