This Hallowed Ground - Bruce Catton [92]
Then, along toward sunset, there came a lull: hurricane center, with its deceptive peace, one unhealthy patch of clear sky in the murk overhead, the worst of the storm yet to come. Porter began to hope that perhaps the thing was over — and then, from end to end of the line, there was a great new crash of firing, and every man Lee had north of the river came on the run in a final, desperate, all-or-nothing charge. The Union line broke, guns were captured, whole regiments were surrounded and taken, and as darkness came and the triumphant Confederates held the edge of the plateau it was clear that all of the Federals would have to be south of the Chickahominy by morning.
McClellan himself does not seem to have known exactly what was going on this day. His headquarters were south of the river, and he stayed in them, quite as much concerned by the reports he was getting from his commanders there as by the things that were happening to Porter on the north side. For that devotee of amateur theatricals, John B. Magruder, was putting on the best performance of his life today. Hopelessly outnumbered, holding a line that would be pulverized if the Federals ever attacked it, Magruder all day long played the part of a general who was just about to launch a shattering offensive. His skirmish and patrol parties were constantly active, his batteries were forever emitting sudden bursts of fire, he kept bodies of men in movement on open ground in the rear where the Yankees could see them, and with drums and bugles and human voices he caused noises to be made in the woods like the noise of vast assembling armies — and all of it worked.
It worked, partly because Magruder was very good at that sort of thing, and partly because the Federal command was fatally infected by the belief that Lee had overwhelming force at his command. This was the grand delusion that brought other delusions after it, the infection that made victory impossible. And so the Federal generals told McClellan that a powerful Rebel offensive was on (or, if not actually on, due to start at any moment) and they said that while they hoped that they could hold their ground they could not possibly do anything more than that. McClellan notified Washington that evening that he could not yet be sure where the principal Rebel attack was going to be made. He added that he had that day been assaulted “by greatly superior numbers on this side” — by which, of course, he was referring to nothing on earth but Magruder’s shadowboxing.5
There could be just one outcome to this sort of thing, and it was ordered that night at a corps commanders’ conference in army headquarters: retreat to some safe spot down the James River before these overpowering Rebels destroyed the army entirely.
The retreat was very ably handled. Huge quantities of supplies had to be destroyed, of course, a number of field hospitals and their occupants were abandoned outright, and any detachments that strayed away from camp or march were left behind for the Rebels to capture at their leisure, but the army itself, with its artillery and its immense trains, was neatly extricated from the pocket into which Lee had maneuvered it. Indeed, McClellan conducted