temporary records,--it is scarcely to be doubted that the battle of
Malvern Hill will be set down as the most terrible conflict ever known
on this continent; the most splendid artillery duel of any country or
any age; a crowning test of indomitable bravery on the part of both
loyalists and rebels; and a brilliant victory for the Union cause, which
saved an army, crowned the reputation of its young General, and averted
a series of evils which could not have failed to culminate in the fall
of Washington and the virtual destruction of the last hope of the
republic.

The events which had immediately preceded Malvern Hill are too fresh in
the minds of the people to need any extended recapitulation. McClellan,
deprived of his last hope for the immediate capture of Richmond, by the
unexpected strength shown by the Confederates in front and the
withdrawal of McDowell under the orders of the government, when within
ten miles of effecting a junction with him;--McClellan, his forces sadly
thinned by the labors and the diseases incident to the long delay amid
the swamps of the Chickahominy; McClellan, driven at last from the
possibility of even holding his position, by the arrival at Richmond of
a large proportion of the rebel army driven from Corinth by Halleck, and
by the movement of Jackson with a body of forty thousand men to take his
right wing in flank;--McClellan had abandoned the White House on the
Pamunkey River, on Sunday the twenty-ninth of June, after the terrific
conflict of the Friday previous, burning the White House itself and
immense quantities of stores and supplies that could not be transported,
and was now falling back on the line of the James River, where he could
meet the protection of the Union gun-boats and safely await the slow
coming of those reinforcements with the aid of which he yet made no
doubt of being able to take the rebel capital.

To McClellan's army this movement, accompanied with so much haste and
such extensive destruction of valuables, necessarily looked more like a
disastrous retreat after defeat than it was in reality; and the
consequence was such a depression of spirits in many of the corps, as
could only have been prevented growing into demoralization by the
confidence that every officer and every soldier yet felt in the young
commander. To the rebels, knowing the country better than the loyal
troops, the movement appeared nearer what it really was, a successful
escape from overwhelming