Page:Cambridge Modern History Volume 7.djvu/507

 1862] McClellaris demand for reinforcements. 475 One of McClellan's besetting weaknesses was to overestimate the enemy's strength. His desire to ensure success and his fear of failure were both so great, that his judgment was continually at fault about difficulties and obstacles. All the previous autumn, while Johnston, with less than 50,000 men, lay at Manassas, watching the Army of the Potomac about Washington, McClellan reported the Confederate strength at triple its real number. After his landing in the peninsula the same nightmare haunted his imagination. On the second day after his arrival before Yorktown and Magruder's line of 11,000 men, he wrote in his dispatch to the Secretary of War: "It seems clear that I shall have the whole force of the enemy on my hands certainly not less than 100,000, and probably more." Five days after the battle of Williams- burg, he wrote in another dispatch, "If I am not reinforced it is probable I shall be obliged to fight double my numbers, strongly entrenched." And again on May 14, "I must attack in position, probably entrenched perhaps double my numbers." McClellan's clamour for reinforcements had its effect at Washington ; and on May 18 the Secretary of War informed him that the President, while unwilling to uncover the capital entirely, had ordered McDowell to move with between 35,000 and 40,000 men to join him by a land march. "At your earnest call for reinforcements he is sent forward to co-operate in the reduction of Richmond, but charged in attempt- ing this not to uncover the city of Washington; and you will give no order, either before or after your junction, which can put him out of position to cover this city." McDowell's march however was quickly interrupted ; McClellan's leisurely campaign had permitted Lee to send a detachment to Stonewall Jackson in the Shenandoah Valley, with which that commander made a rapid march northward, fighting and driving before him the scattered Union forces, as far as Harper's Ferry. It was both an audacious and reckless expedition, offering a chance to intercept his retreat and capture his entire command ; and to effect this McDowell's course was changed by orders from the President. McDowell executed his new orders with all promptness; but Fremont, who had been ordered to co-operate, was wanting. Stationed in the mountains beyond the valley, he took a route other than that by which he had been directed to proceed, and failed to reach the rendezvous at the appointed time, thus enabling Jackson to escape between his pursuers. Meanwhile the slowly retiring Confederate army went into camp about three miles from Richmond in front of the fortifications erected for that city's defence, while McClellan advanced his forces and placed them in position in a line about thirteen miles in length on the left bank of the Chickahominy. Along this stream, a low swampy creek in dry weather, expanding into a broad belt of half marsh, half river in periods of rain, that rendered it entirely impassable except by bridges, the Union army lay from Bottom Bridge to New Bridge ; its route of supplies being from