the Northern army
and started in Washington a wave of bitter criticism against McClellan.
No word of reply reached the world from the little Napoleon. He was busy
digging trenches, felling trees and pushing his big guns steadily
forward and always behind impregnable works. He was a born engineer and
his soul was set on training his great siege guns on the Confederate
Capital.

On the 25th of June his advance guard had pressed within five miles of
the apparently doomed city. His breastworks bristled from every point of
advantage. His army was still divided by the Chickahominy River, but he
had so thoroughly bridged its treacherous waters he apparently had no
fear of coming results.

On June the 27th Stonewall Jackson had slipped from the Shenandoah
Valley, baffling two armies converging on him from different directions,
and with a single tiger leap had landed his indomitable little army by
Lee's side.

Anticipating his arrival, the Confederate general had hurled Hill's
corps against the Union right wing under Porter. Throughout the day of
the 26th and until nine o'clock at night the battle raged with unabated
fury. The losses on both sides were frightful and neither had gained a
victory. But at nine o'clock the Federal Commander ordered his right
wing to retreat five miles to Gaines Mill and cover his withdrawal of
heavy guns and supplies. They were ordered at all hazards to hold
Jackson's fresh troops at bay until this undertaking was well under way.
It was a job that called for all his skill in case of defeat. It
involved the retreat of an army of one hundred thousand men with their
artillery and enormous trains of supplies across the mud-scarred marshy
Peninsula. Five thousand wagons loaded to their utmost capacity, their
wheels sinking in the springy earth, had to be guarded and transported.
His siege guns, so heavy it was impossible to hitch enough horses to
move them over roads in which they sank to the hubs, had to be saved.
Three thousand cattle were there, to be guarded and driven, and it was
more than seventeen miles to the shelter of his gunboats on the James.

During the night his wagon trains and heavy guns were moved across the
Chickahominy toward his new base on the James.

The morning of the 27th dawned cool and serene. Under the cover of the
night the silent grey army had followed the retiring one in blue. The
Southerners lay in the dense wood above Gaines Mill dozing and waiting
orders.

A ball