The troops were therefore withdrawn to the forest,
and for the next three days, with the exception of those employed in
collecting the arms and stores which the Federals had abandoned, they
remained inactive.
July 8.
On July 8, directing Stuart to watch McClellan, General Lee fell back
to Richmond.
The battles of the Seven Days cost the Confederates 20,000 men. The
Federals, although defeated, lost no more than 16,000, of whom
10,000, nearly half of them wounded, were prisoners. In addition,
however, 52 guns and 35,000 rifles became the prize of the
Southerners; and vast as was the quantity of captured stores, far
greater was the amount destroyed.
But the defeat of McClellan's army is not to be measured by a mere
estimate of the loss in men and in materiel. The discomfited general
sought to cover his failure by a lavish employment of strategic
phrases. The retreat to the James, he declared, had been planned
before the battle of Mechanicsville. He had merely manoeuvred to get
quit of an inconvenient line of supply, and to place his army in a
more favourable position for attacking Richmond. He congratulated his
troops on their success in changing the line of operations, always
regarded as the most hazardous of military expedients.
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