cision of detail, that on the evening of Saturday, the 28th of June, we had brought the enemy to bay on the south side of the Chickahominy, and that it only remained to finish him in a single battle. Such, in fact, appeared to have been the situation. then. The next morning, however, it was perceived that our supposed resources of generalship had given us too much confidence; that the enemy had managed to extricate himself from the critical position, and, having massed his forces, had succeeded, under cover of the night, in opening a way to the James river.*

Upon this untoward event, the operations of our army on the Richmond side of the Chickahominy were to follow the fugitive enemy through a country where he had admirable opportunities of concealment, and through the swamps and forests of which he had retreated with the most remarkable judgment, dexterity, and spirit of fortitude.

The glory and fruits of our victory may have been seriously diminished by the grave mishap or fault by which the enemy was permitted to leave his camp on the south side of the Chickahominy, in an open country, and to plunge into the dense. cover of wood and swamp, where the best portion of a whole week was consumed in hunting him, and finding out his new position only in time to attack him under the uncertainty and disadvantage of the darkness of night..

But the successes achieved in the series of engagements

* With reference to McClellan's escape from White Oak Swamp to the river, letters of Yankee officers, published in the Northern journals, stated that when McClellan on Saturday evening sent his scouts down the road to Turkey Island Bridge, he was astonished and delighted to find that our forces had not occupied that road, and immediately started his wagon and artillery trains, which were quietly passing down that road all night to the James river, whilst our forces were quietly sleeping within four miles of the very road they should have occupied, and should have captured every one of the enemy's one thousand wagons and four hundred cannon. It is further stated in these letters, that if we had blocked up that only passage of escape, their entire army must have surrendered or been starved out in twenty-four hours. These are the Yankees' own accounts of how much they were indebted to blunders on our part for the success of McClellan's retreat—a kind of admission not popular with a vain and self-adulatory enemy.

which had already occurred were not to be lightly esteemed, or to be depreciated, because of errours which, if they had not occurred, would have made our victory more glorious and more complete. The siege of Richmond had been raised; ar army of one hundred and fifty thousand men had been pushed from their strongholds and fortifications, and put to fight; we had enjoyed the eclat of an almost daily succession of victories; we had gathered an immense spoil in stores, provisions and artillery; and we had demoralized and dispersed, if we had not succeeded in annihilating, an army which had every resource that could be summoned to its assistance, every possible addition of numbers within the reach of the Yankee government, and every material condition of success to ensure for it the great prize of the capital of the Confederacy, which was now, as far as human judgment could determine, irretrievably lost to them, and secure in the protection of a victorious army.

The Northern papers claimed that the movements of McClellan from the Chickahominy river were purely strategic, and that he had obtained a position, where he would establish a new base of operations against Richmond. Up to the first decisive stage in the series of engagements-Cold Harbourthere were certainly plain strategic designs in his backward -movement. His retirement from Mechanicsville was probably voluntary, and intended to concentrate his troops lower down, where he might fight with the advantages of numbers and his own selection of position. Continuing his retreat, he fixed the decisive field. at Cold Harbour. Again having been pushed from his strongholds north of the Chickahominy, the cuemy made a strong attempt to retrieve his disasters by renewing a concentration of his troops at Frayser's farm.

From the time of these two principal battles, all pretensions of the enemy's retreat to strategy must cease. His retreat was now unmistakeable; it was no longer a falling back to concentrate troops for action; it is, in fact, impossible to disguise that it was the retreat of an enemy, who was discomfited and whipped, although not routed. He had abandoned the

railroads; he had given up the strongholds which he had provided to secure him in case of a check; he had destroyed from eight to ten millions dollars' worth of stores; he had deserted his hospitals, his sick and wounded, and he had left in our hands thousands of prisoners and innumerable stragglers.

Regarding all that had been accomplished in these battles; the displays of the valour and devotion of our troops; the expenditure of blood; and the helpless and fugitive condition to which the enemy had at last been reduced, there was cause for the keenest regrets that an enemy in this condition was permitted to secure his retreat. It is undoubtedly true, that in failing to cut off McClellan's retreat to the river, we failed to accomplish the most important condition for the completion of our victory. But although the result of the conflict had fallen below public expectation, it was sufficiently fortunate to excite popular joy, and grave enough to engage the most serious speculation as to the future.

The mouth of the Yankee Government was shut from any more promises of a speedy termination of the war; the powers of Europe saw that the Southern Confederacy was not yet crushed, or likely to be crushed, by its insolent foe; and the people of the South had again challenged the confidence of the world in the elasticity of their fortunes and the invincible destiny of their independence.

The fortune of events in other parts of the Confederacy,

taking place about the time of the relief of Richmond, or

closely following it, although less striking and dramatic, was

not unpropitious. These events, a rapid survey of which takes us from the seacoast to the Mississippi frontier, added to the exultations which the victories of the Chickahominy had occasioned, and, although qualified by some disasters, enlarged and enlightened the prospects of the future.

A few days before the great battles had been joined around Richmond, a brilliant success over the Yankees had been obtained in an engagement on James Island in the neighborhood of Charleston. The battle of Secessionville, as it was

called, occurred on the 16th of June. About four o'clock in the morning of that day, the enemy, taking advantage of the negligence of our pickets, drove them in, or captured thêm, some eight hundred yards in front of the battery at Secessionville, and, advancing rapidly upon this work in line of battle, arrived within a few hundred yards of it before we could open upon him. The men, however, were at their guns, which were at once well and rapidly served, while the infantry was moved promptly into position under the orders of. Col. J. G. Lamar, the heroic commander of the post. It was not long after getting the infantry into position that the enemy were driven back in confusion. They were soon, however, reinforced, and made another desperate charge, when they were again driven back; a third time they came, but only to meet with the most determined repulse. They then made a flank movement on our right, on the west of Secessionville, where they were gallantly met by the Charleston battalion, which was soon reinforced by the Louisiana battalion. Three times had the heroic band of Confederates repulsed (often at the point of the bayonet) a force thrice their strength, under the fire of three gunboats and four land batteries. About ten o'clock the enemy retreated in great confusion, leaving their dead and wounded on the field, a number lying in our trenches. The loss of the anemy was at least four hundred in killed, wounded and prisoners. Their dead in front of the Secessionville works numbered one hundred and sixty-eight. Our loss was forty killed and about twice that number wounded.

In the situation in. the West some important changes had transpired in the early months of the summer.

The evacuation of Corinth was determined upon by General Beauregard, after having twice offered the enemy battle outside of his entrenched lines, and was accomplished on the 0th of May. The transparent object of the Yankee commander was to cut off our resources by destroying the Mobile and Ohio and Memphis and Charleston Railroads. This was substantially foiled by the evacuation and withdrawal of our forces along

the line of the former road. Remaining in rear of the Tuscumbia and its affluents, some six miles from Corinth, long enough to collect stragglers General Beauregard resumed his march, concentrating his main forces at Baldwin. On the 7th of June he left Baldwin, it offering no advantages of a defensive character, and assem ied the main body of his forces at Tupelo. On the morning of the evacuation of Corinth, our effective force did not exceed forty seven thousand men of all arms; that of the enemy, obtained from the best sources of information, could not have been less than ninety thousand men of all. arms. The story of the evacuation was flourished by the Yankees as a great success on their side, and coupled with an audacious falsehood reported by Gen. Pope to Gen. Halleck, then in command of the enemy's forces in the West, to the effect that he had taken ten thousand prisoners and fifteen thousand stand of arms. The facts are, that the retreat was conducted with great order and precision; and that, despite the boasts of the North to the contrary, we lost no more prisoners than the enemy did himself, and abandoned to him in stores not more' than would amount to one day's expense of our army.

The capture of Memphis was another step towards the realization of the enemy's great object of opening the navigation of the Mississippi,' which was persistently demanded by the Northwestern States as the price of their contributions to the war and their support of the administration at Washington.* This city had been forinally surrendered to the Yankees after

* The Board of Trade; of St. Lous, published a paper on this subject, which assumed the ground that the object of the Confederacy was to hold the ent re and exclusive control of the Mississippi. It went into detail to show how great the loss of the present obstruction of that highway was to the "loyal" Western States. It was the natural outlet to the produce of the Upper Valley. During the year 1860 the shipments from Cairo and points above the Mississippi and its tributaries, by way of the lower Mississippi, amounted to a million tons, of which 400, 0 went from St Louis. It averred that the difference in cost of freight by he river auf the railroad was ten dollars a tou; also, that this, with the return freight, would amount to a total of $15,000, 00 tax on the Western people by raason of the closing of the river.