I am powerless to help this.

You will do me the justice to remember that I always insisted that going down the bay in search of a field, instead of fighting at or near Manassas, was only shifting and not surmounting the difficulty; that we would find the same enemy and the same or equal intrenchments at either place.

The country will not fail to note (is now noting) that the present hesitation to move upon the intrenched enemy is but the story of Manassas repeated.

I beg to assure you that I have never written you or spoken to you in greater kindness of feeling than now, nor with a fuller purpose of sustaining you so far as in my most anxious judgment I consistently can." This condition of affairs with the indication of increasing discord between the Commander-in-Chief and General McClellan boded no good to the Union cause, and the entire Peninsular campaign was but a succession of "hopes deferred" that made the heart sick; of disappointment, of great sacrifice of life and treasure, and in the end of positive disaster and humiliating retreat.
As General McClellan neared Richmond and needed re-enforcements for a decisive battle with General Lee's army, the Confederates used the most admirable tactics for the purpose of alarming the authorities at Washington and compelling them to withhold help from the Army of the Potomac.

Stonewall Jackson came thundering down the Shenandoah Valley with a force which the exaggeration of the day placed far beyond his real numbers.