ion, and its consequent failure to cooperate
with his own forces. But the fact is patent that the campaign was lost
by his sitting down in front of Yorktown, and wasting a whole month in
a series of approaches whose scientific propriety would have delighted
Uncle Toby, to reduce a garrison of eight thousand men. Without that
delay, which gave the Rebels time to send Jackson into the Shenandoah
valley, General McDowell's army would have been enabled to come to his
assistance. General McClellan, it is true, complains that it was not
sent round by water, as he wished; but even if it had been, it could
only have been an addition of helplessness to an army already too
unwieldy for its commander; for he really made the Rebel force double
his own (as he always fancied it) by never bringing more than a quarter
of his army into action at once. Yet during the whole campaign he was
calling for more men, and getting them, till his force reached the
highest limit he himself had ever set. When every available man, and
more, had been sent him, he writes from Harrison's Bar to Mr. Stanton,
"To accomplish the great task of capturing Richmond and putting an end
to this rebellion, reinforcements should be sent to me _rather much
over than less than one hundred thousand men_." This letter General
McClellan has not seen fit to include in his Report. Was the government
to be blamed for pouring no more water into a sieve like this?

It certainly was a great mistake on Mr. Lincoln's part to order General
McDowell off on a wild-goose chase after Jackson. The cooperation of
this force might have enabled General McClellan even then to retrieve
his campaign, and we do not in the least blame him for feeling bitterly
the disappointment of wanting it. But it seems to us that it was mainly
his own fault that there was anything to retrieve, and the true
occasion to recover his lost ground was offered him after his bloody
repulse of the enemy at Malvern Hill, though he did not turn it to
account. For his retreat we think he would deserve all credit, had he
not been under the necessity of making it. It was conducted with great
judgment and ability, and we do not love that partisan narrowness of
mind that would grudge him the praise so fairly earned. But at the same
time it is not ungenerous to say that the obstinate valor shown by his
army under all the depression of a backward movement, while it proves
how much General McClellan had done to make it an ef