Will any
other hypothesis intelligibly account for McClellan's dispositions
and orders? The error in the above assumption would be that
McClellan estimated Lee's troops at nearly double their actual
numbers, and that what was taken for proof of Lee's superiority in
force on the field was a series of partial reverses which resulted
directly from the piecemeal and disjointed way in which McClellan's
morning attacks had been made.
The same explanation is the most satisfactory one that I can give
for the inaction of Thursday, the 18th of September. Could McClellan
have known the desperate condition of most of Lee's brigades, he
would also have known that his own were in much better case, badly
as they had suffered. I do not doubt that most of his subordinates
discouraged the resumption of the attack, for the belief in Lee's
great preponderance in numbers had been chronic in the army during
the whole year. That belief was based upon the inconceivably
mistaken reports of the secret-service organization, accepted at
headquarters, given to the War Department at Washington as a reason
for incessant demands of reinforcements, and permeating downward
through the whole organization till the error was accepted as truth
by officers and men, and became a factor in their morale which can
hardly be overestimated.
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