" At length, after many details
of losses and disasters, they concurred in declaring that McClellan
would probably take the aggressive in the morning, and that the
Confederate army was in no condition to resist him. Jackson had
listened silently, save when he interposed a few brief questions, to
all their statements; but now he replied: "No; he will clear out in
the morning."

July 2.

The forecast was more than fulfilled. When morning dawned, grey,
damp, and cheerless, and the Confederate sentinels, through the cold
mist which rose from the sodden woods, looked out upon the
battle-field, they saw that Malvern Hill had been abandoned. Only a
few cavalry patrols rode to and fro on the ground which had been held
by the Federal artillery, and on the slopes below, covered with
hundreds of dead and dying men, the surgeons were quietly at work.
During the night the enemy had fallen back to Harrison's Landing, and
justification for Lee's assault at Malvern Hill may be found in the
story of the Federal retreat. The confusion of the night march,
following on a long series of fierce engagements, told with terrible
effect on the moral of the men, and stragglers increased at every
step. "It was like the retreat," said one of McClellan's generals,
"of a whipped army. We retreated like a parcel of sheep, and a few
shots from the rebels would have panic-stricken the whole command."*
(* Report on the Conduct of the War page 580. General Hooker's
evidence.) At length, through blinding rain, the flotilla of gunboats
was discovered, and on the long peninsula between Herring Run and the
James the exhausted army reached a resting-place. But so great was
the disorder, that during the whole of that day nothing was done to
prepare a defensive position; a ridge to the north, which commanded
the whole camp, was unoccupied; and, according to the Committee of
Congress which took evidence on the conduct of the war, "nothing but
a heavy rain, thereby preventing the enemy from bringing up their
artillery, saved the army from destruction."* (* Report on the
Conduct of the War page 27.) McClellan's own testimony is even more
convincing. "The army," he wrote on July 8, the second day after the
battle, "is thoroughly worn out and requires rest and very heavy
reinforcements... I am in hopes that the enemy is as completely worn
out as we are...The roads are now very bad; for these reasons I hope
we shall have enough breathing space to reorganise and res