om the attitude
of his enemy what the odds are, he is unfitted for supreme command.

Before Yorktown McClellan's five army corps had been held in check,
first by 15,000 men, then by 58,000, protected by earthworks of
feeble profile.* (* "No one but McClellan would have hesitated to
attack." Johnston to Lee, April 22, 1862. O.R. volume 11 part 3 page
456.) The fort at Gloucester Point was the key of the Confederate
lines.* (* Narrative of Military Operations, General J.B. Johnston
pages 112 and 113.) McClellan, however, although a division was
actually under orders to move against it, appears to have been
unwilling to risk a failure.* (* The garrison consisted only of a few
companies of heavy artillery, and the principal work was still
unfinished when Yorktown fell. Reports of Dr. Comstock, and Colonel
Cabell, C.S.A. O.R. volume 11 part 1.) The channel of the York was
thus closed both to his transports and the gunboats, and he did
nothing whatever to interfere with Johnston's long line of
communications, which passed at several points within easy reach of
the river bank. Nor had he been more active since he had reached West
Point. Except for a single expedition, which had dispersed a
Confederate division near Hanover Court House, north of the
Chickahominy, he had made no aggressive movement. He had never
attempted to test the strength of the fortifications of Richmond, to
hinder their construction, or to discover their weak points. His
urgent demands for reinforcements had appeared in the Northern
newspapers, and those newspapers had found their way to Richmond.
From the same source the Confederates were made aware that he
believed himself confronted by an army far larger than his own; and
when, on the departure of Whiting's division for the Valley, he
refused to take advantage of the opportunity to attack Lee's
diminished force, it became abundantly clear, if further proof were
wanting, that much might be ventured against so timid a commander.

From his knowledge of his adversary's character, and still more from
his attitude, Lee had little difficulty in discovering his
intentions. McClellan, on the other hand, failed to draw a single
correct inference. And yet the information at his disposal was
sufficient to enable him to form a fair estimate of how things stood
in the Confederate camp. He had been attacked at Seven Pines, but not
by superior numbers; and it was hardly likely that the enemy had not
employed their w