He had been set down to win--to take Richmond: that had formed the great culmination of the programme--the red fire and flourish of trumpets on which the curtain of the rebellion was to go down. If any one had spoken disapprovingly or doubtfully of his long delay in the swamps of the Chickahominy, the reply had been: "Wait patiently! McClellan is slow, but sure. He will take Richmond before he ends the campaign, and that is enough!" Such had been public confidence--the confidence of a public who perhaps did not know the General, but who certainly did not know the government directing and overruling his every action. At last even the time of the great capture had been fixed. Officers leaving on short furlough had been admonished to return quickly, "if they expected to take part in the capture of Richmond." What else could this mean, than confidence on the part of the commanding general, that the approaches to the rebel capital had been made sufficiently close to ensure its capture, and that the prize was at length in his grasp? Then the Fourth of July had been seized upon as the auspicious period, and the whole country had grown ready to celebrate the National Anniversary in the loyal cities, simultaneously with the shouts and bonfires of the Union Army that should then be treading the streets of the conquered capital and opening the prison-doors of the loyal men who had been suffering and starving in the tobacco-warehouses.
Such had been the supposed aspect of affairs in the field, up to the last week of June, and young orators preparing their Fourth of July orations had introduced rounded periods referring to the added glory of the day and the new laurels wreathing the brows of the Union commanders. Those who contemplated speaking on the great day, and had not made any allusion to the fall of Richmond in their prepared orations, had already seen cause to repent the omission. One, who had incautiously mentioned in a city passenger-car that "he hoped Richmond would not be taken until after the Fourth," and who had lacked time to give as a reason that "if it should be taken before, he would be obliged to write his oration all over again"--had been assaulted for the offensive expression, and only escaped after a hard fight, with a black eye and a sense of damaged personal dignity. It had been settled that Richmond was to be in possession of the Union troops on the Fourth--wo to him who doubted it!