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1862] McClellaris delays. 477 elaborately argues the impossibility of his doing so, since his army was divided, the bridges destroyed, the roads impassable. He states that it would have required a march of twenty-three miles, occupying two entire days, to unite his right wing with his left ; but he remains innocently unconscious of the light thus reflected on his own strategy, by his having placed his army in such a situation, astride of so serious an obstacle. The escape of Jackson from the well-planned junction of the Unionist detachments in the Shenandoah Valley, and the repulse of the Con- federate attack at Seven Pines and Fair Oaks on the Chickahominy, occurred simultaneously about June 1, 1862. After that came two weeks of extremely bad weather, during which General McClellan reported his time to be fully occupied in repairing bridges and restoring the roads carried away and damaged by the floods, and in preparation to unite his separated army on the Richmond side of the Chickahominy. He telegraphed on June 10, "I shall attack as soon as the weather and ground permit, but there will be a delay, the extent of which no one can foresee, for the season is altogether abnormal." In response to his continual call for reinforcements, the President ordered about 20,000 well-organised troops to his aid, half of them from McDowell's corps to go by water; and so rearranged the com- mands in the Shenandoah Valley that McDowell with the remainder of his corps should join him by a land march. McClellan's report, written more than a year after the event, states that he intended to attack about June 26; but there are indications in his dispatches to show that he was already vaguely meditating a change of base to the James river. The exact position of Jackson's force was not known for some time owing to the confusing rumours he set afloat, but toward the end of June it became evident that he was returning to Richmond, which, with other indications, implied that Lee either intended or expected a serious collision near that city. It is quite clear that President Lincoln had become convinced, from the tenor of General McClellan's correspondence during his whole peninsular campaign, that that general's expedition against Richmond would ultimately be more likely to fail than succeed, though he con- tinued to send him every encouragement. It must have been some such feeling which prompted the President to visit General Scott for advice on June 24, for on his return to Washington he called General Pope from the west, and on June 26 gave him the command of the forces under Fremont, Banks, and McDowell, to be called the Army of Virginia, assigning to it the duty of guarding Washington and the Shenandoah Valley, and also of co-operating in the campaign against Richmond. The precaution was taken not a day too soon. On the afternoon of June 25 McClellan sent three telegrams to announce that he had that morning begun a general forward movement, against which the CH. XV.