The events which had immediately preceded Malvern Hill are too fresh in the minds of the people to need any extended recapitulation. McClellan, deprived of his last hope for the immediate capture of Richmond, by the unexpected strength shown by the Confederates in front and the withdrawal of McDowell under the orders of the government, when within ten miles of effecting a junction with him;--McClellan, his forces sadly thinned by the labors and the diseases incident to the long delay amid the swamps of the Chickahominy; McClellan, driven at last from the possibility of even holding his position, by the arrival at Richmond of a large proportion of the rebel army driven from Corinth by Halleck, and by the movement of Jackson with a body of forty thousand men to take his right wing in flank;--McClellan had abandoned the White House on the Pamunkey River, on Sunday the twenty-ninth of June, after the terrific conflict of the Friday previous, burning the White House itself and immense quantities of stores and supplies that could not be transported, and was now falling back on the line of the James River, where he could meet the protection of the Union gun-boats and safely await the slow coming of those reinforcements with the aid of which he yet made no doubt of being able to take the rebel capital. To McClellan's army this movement, accompanied with so much haste and such extensive destruction of valuables, necessarily looked more like a disastrous retreat after defeat than it was in reality; and the consequence was such a depression of spirits in many of the corps, as could only have been prevented growing into demoralization by the confidence that every officer and every soldier yet felt in the young commander. To the rebels, knowing the country better than the loyal troops, the movement appeared nearer what it really was, a successful escape from overwhelming difficulties, to a better and more secure position, from which an offensive movement might again be made at an early day, threatening their capital beyond a hope of defence. To them, a prize long watched and supposed to be securely entrapped, was after all escaping to a place of safety; and every Confederate officer and soldier seemed to feel that the Union army must not be allowed to gain the line of the James as an army, if any series of desperate and continued attacks could suffice to destroy it. Never, perhaps, was greater bravery or more indefatigable energy shown in pursuing a beaten but dangerous foe, than was shown on this occasion by Hill, Longstreet and Jackson; and never, certainly, was the doggedly dangerous defence of the tiger slowly retreating to his jungle, more splendidly shown than by McClellan, Hooker, Sumner, Keyes, Heintzelman and the other Union commanders. The conflict of Monday the thirtieth June, at White Oak Swamp, had brought no substantial benefit to the Confederate arms, nor had it in any considerable degree weakened the Union forces; and on the