McClellan kept his men at work, intrenching and strengthening his position, while he himself appears to have been occupied largely in writing despatches to the President and the Secretary of War, alternately promising an almost immediate advance on Richmond and calling for reinforcements. He wanted McDowell's corps of forty thousand men, and the authorities wished to give it to him if it could be sent by way of Fredericksburg and united with his right wing in such a way as not to uncover Washington. But in one despatch he declared he would rather not have it unless it could be placed absolutely under his command.
His position was in several respects very bad. The Chickahominy was bordered by great swamps, whose malarial influences robbed him of almost as many men as fell by the bullets of the enemy. His base was at White House; and the line thence over which his supplies must come, instead of being at right angles with the line of his front and covered by it, was almost a prolongation of it. It was impossible to maintain permanent bridges over the Chickahominy, and a rain of two or three days was liable at any time to swell the stream so as to sweep away every means of crossing. He could threaten Richmond only by placing a heavy force on the right bank of the river; he could render his own communications secure only by keeping a large force on the left bank. When it first occurred to him that his true base was on the James, or how long he contemplated its removal thither, nobody knows; but he received a startling lesson on June 12th, which appears to have determined him.
When General Joseph E. Johnston was wounded at Fair Oaks, the command devolved upon General G. W. Smith; but two days later General Robert E. Lee received the command of the Confederate forces in Virginia, which he retained continuously till his surrender brought the war to a close. The plan that he had opposed, and caused Mr. Davis to reject, when Johnston was in command - of bringing large bodies of troops from North Carolina, Georgia, and Southern Virginia, to form a massive army and fall Upon McClellan - he now adopted and proceeded at once to carry out. Johnston enumerates reinforcements that were given to him aggregating fifty-three thousand men, and says he had then the largest Confederate army that ever fought. The total number is given officially at eighty thousand seven hundred sixty-two. This probably means the number of men actually carrying muskets, and excludes all officers, teamsters, musicians, and mechanics; for the Confederate returns were usually made in that way. McClellan's total effective force, including every man that drew pay the last week in June, was ninety-two thousand five hundred. His constant expectation of reinforcements by way of Fredericksburg was largely, if not wholly, what kept him in his false position, and it is fair to presume that but for this he would have swung across the peninsula to the new base on the James much sooner and under more favorable circumstances.
Wishing to know the extent of McClellan's earthworks on the right wing, Lee, on June 12th, sent a body of twelve hundred cavalry with two light guns, to reconnoitre. This was commanded by the dashing General J. E. B. Stuart, commonly called "Jeb Stuart," who used to dress in gay costume, with yellow sash and black plume, wore gold spurs, and rode a white horse. He was ordered to go only as far as Hanover Old Church; but at that point he had a fight with a small body of cavalry, and as he supposed dispositions would be made to cut him off, instead of returning, he kept on and made the entire circuit of McClellan's army, rebuilding a bridge to cross the lower Chickahominy, and reached Richmond in safety. The actual amount of damage that he had done was small; but the raid alarmed the National commander for the safety of his communications, and was perhaps what determined him to change his base.
Stonewall Jackson, if not Lee's ablest lieutenant, was considered his swiftest, and the one that threw the most uncertainty into the game by his rapid movements and unexpected appearances. At a later stage of the war his erratic strategy, if persisted in, would probably have brought his famous corps of "foot cavalry" (as they were called from their quick marches) to sudden destruction. An opponent like Sheridan, who knew how to be swift, brilliant, and audacious, without transgressing the fundamental rules of warfare, would have been likely to finish him at a blow. But Jackson did not live to meet such an opponent. At this time the bugbears that haunt imaginations not inured to war were still in force, and the massive thimble-rigging by which he was made to appear before Richmond, and presto! sweeping down the Shenandoah Valley, served to paralyze large forces that might have been added to McClellan's army.
“Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted.”
– Isaiah 53:4