That General Lee took these facts into consideration, as General Magruder intimates, may or may not have been the fact; and the whole discussion may be fairly summed up, perhaps, by saying that success vindicated the course adopted.

"Success, after all, is the test of merit," said the brave Albert Sydney Johnston, and Talleyrand compressed much sound reasoning in the pithy maxim, "Nothing succeeds like success." On the 2d of July the campaign was over, and General McClellan must have felt, in spite of his hopeful general orders to the troops, and dispatches to his Government, that the great struggle for Richmond had virtually ended.

A week before, he had occupied a position within a few miles of the city, with a numerous army in the highest spirits, and of thorough efficiency.

Now, he lay on the banks of James River, thirty miles away from the capital, and his army was worn out by the tremendous ordeal it had passed through, and completely discouraged.
We have not dwelt upon the horrors of the retreat, and the state of the army, which Northern writers painted at the time in the gloomiest colors.

For the moment, it was no longer the splendid war-engine it had been, and was again afterward.