July 2, 1862

July 2, 1862:  In Gen.. McClellan’s report to Lincoln on the Seven Days’ Battles, he downplays his losses.  He frankly tells the President that he lost only one wagon, when in fact 500 wagons were captured or destroyed.  In his own defense, McClellan avers, “I have not yielded an inch of ground unnecessarily, but have retired to prevent the superior force of the enemy from cutting me off and to take a different base of operations.”

---On this date, President Lincoln performs these tasks:

            --Signs bills prohibiting polygamy in Utah and the Pacific Railroad Act.

            --Signs into law the Morrill Act, which provides for the funding of land-grant universities and schools

---Surgeon Alfred Castleman, of the Union army, records in his journal about the retreat of the Army of the Potomac from Malvern Hill through torrential rains:

And what was our astonishment, when daylight revealed to us the fact that we were now retracing the very road by which we had been trying to escape. On discovering this the men began to waver in their confidence. But soon we left this road and bore off “down the river,” and of the scene which now followed, neither Hogarth’s pencil nor Hall’s pen could render the faintest idea. The rain was pouring in such torrents as I never saw the clouds give down. The men at every step, sank nearly to their knees in mud. The officers, either sulky or excited, were driving them to a double-quick, which it was impossible for them to maintain for more than a few rods. They began to fall out, and, in half an hour, every field, and all the open country, as far as the eye could reach, presented the appearance of a moving, hurrying mob. I was here strongly reminded of my school boy imaginations of the Gulf Stream. This swaying, surging mass presenting the idea of the ocean lashed into irregular fury by driving storms, whilst a part of General Smith’s division, moving in unbroken column through the mass, could not but recall the picture of that little stream as from the beginning of time it has preserved its quiet course, in despite of all the convulsions and conflicts of the warring elements.

---Lincoln sends a telegram to Gen. McClellan:

When you ask for fifty thousand men to be promptly sent you, you surely labor under some gross mistake of fact. . . . All of Fremont in the valley, all of Banks, all of McDowell, not with you, and all in Washington, taken together do not exceed, if they reach sixty thousand. With Wool and Dix added to those mentioned, I have not, outside of your Army, seventyfive thousand men East of the mountains. Thus, the idea of sending you fifty thousand, or any other considerable force promptly, is simply absurd. If in your frequent mention of responsibility, you have the impression that I blame you for not doing more than you can, please be relieved of such impression. I only beg that in like manner, you will not ask impossibilities of me.”