Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 130.djvu/598

Rh these are attributes of an invading army quite other than that which now stood still before Warwick Creek. Such combinations need more than docility, endurance, and the sense of numbers. For success of this sort there is demanded the steadiness, energy, and dash which only come with experience of war, or with the fullest peace training for that great ordeal, such as Prussia underwent before 1866. So the Federal host first halted, and presently sat down to make what might have been a formal siege attack of the weak line that imposed on them. Reinforcements were of course hurried up to Magruder, whilst MacClellan was preparing heavy batteries to sweep the passages; and though the Federals soon had their one hundred thousand men together, much precious time was lost before all was pronounced ready. On the 16th of April the attack was essayed, and at first with seeming success; for a Vermont regiment, covered by a crushing fire of artillery, got across the creek into the enemy's works. But the officers on the spot were so unskilled as to be paralyzed by their own advantage. None knew that this particular assault was to be turned into a decisive one if it succeeded; and so reserves were held back, and orders waited for, till the opportunity had passed by, the Vermonts being finally driven back with the loss of two hundred of their ranks.

Eleven days had already been lost before an insignificant obstacle, and the Federal soldiers were becoming discouraged at the evident want of enterprise in their commanders. Yet MacClellan was apparently afraid to risk another unsuccessful assault, and determined to attack Yorktown itself, the key of the hostile position, by regular siege works pushed on, the front of its lines covering the ground between Warwick Creek and the York river. And when orders were once given the new undertaking was carried on with a vigor and thoroughness that might have astonished the best engineers of Europe. All the pains before spent in preparing approaches to the passages of the creek were now concentrated on the mile and a half of open ground at its head. Wide buttresses for guns, spacious parallels, strong "corduroy" roads to bear the heaviest cannon, rude quays on which to land the siege trains that MacClellan resolved to use for this purpose, grew like works of magic under thousands of strong hands. The first parallel was traced on April 17th, the day after the repulse, along the edge of what, to the distant spectator, might have seemed a trackless forest, the wood so dense that MacClellan's headquarter camp, though within the range of the enemy's guns, was found quite secure from them. On May 4th, the Confederates, now under Johnstone, discovering that they must be crushed in a few hours by the superior fire about to open, withdrew at nightfall from Yorktown, making good their retreat up the peninsula, but at the cost of sacrificing more than seventy heavy guns, abandoned in their haste. The York River was of course now opened to MacClellan's squadron, as the road to his troops, and both pushed on westward, their long hesitation and apparent imbecility hardly redeemed by the final success of this their first great operation.

We hurry purposely past the affair of Williamsburg which followed, to say a few words of the battle of Fair Oaks, the first great general action of the campaign, fought May 30 and 31. The Confederates here first showed that fierceness in the offensive which became the characteristic of their Virginian army, and crushed, though they did not destroy, as had been hoped at Richmond, the left wing of their enemy, on which the chief assault was directed. But they were sorely discouraged by the loss of their general, who was badly wounded at the very crisis of the day; and his temporary successor was quite unequal to the task of pushing promptly the advantages gained. On the Federal side, as the comte tells us plainly, there was much depression at the feeling that the defensive attitude, in which their general had thought victory certain, as suiting the character of American troops, had hardly saved them from disaster; and they were not aware how the depressing effect of Johnstone's withdrawal on the hitherto high spirits of the Confederates was greatly increased on its being discovered that MacClellan's care and skill had completely united the two wings of his army, now on the opposite banks of the Chickahominy, by careful roadmaking and bridging, so that each could promptly support the other at need. This precaution had been steadily carried out ever since MacClellan had decided to put his right across the stream to its north side, and when it became known to the Confederates, they gave up all hope of ruining the wing they had supposed isolated, and fell back towards Richmond, with but barren claim to victory.

Then came a pause in the campaign which lasted from the 1st to the 20th of 