McClellan's statement of his losses.
McClellan, in the official report which he has just published, puts down his losses in the battles around Richmond, from the 26th June to the first of July inclusive, at 4,582 killed, 7,700 wounded, and 5,958 missing; total, 15,249. When it is recollected that the Confederates actually took, brought away, and confined upon the island, and in other prisons, more than 11,000 men, we may be enable to judge of the claim which this document has to be considered truthful. A lie stuck to, says the proverb, is as good as the truth. To cover one of the most shameful, as well as complete defeats recorded in history, McClellan's vanity prompted him to indulge in a system of deliberate falsehood, which justly brought upon him the derision of the civilized world. But it did him no manner of service. His employers saw through his devices, as his opponents had already done from the beginning. No man — least of all McClellan himself — believes a word of what he writes. He has found his proper level, and all the lying reports which he can manufacture between this and dooms day cannot raise him above it. He came here to take the city of Richmond. He had, first and last — from Fortress Monroe to Mechanicville — as documents furnished to the committee of inquiry by the War Office, substantiated by the Assistant Secretary of War, prove beyond all doubt, 155,000 men. He was beaten in every battle, from Williamsburg to Malvern. Lincoln found him at Westover, or Shirley, with but 80,000 men. What had become of all the rest? Had they sunk into the earth, or melted into the air? They had sunk into the earth, victims to the bayonets and the shots of the Confederate troops, or to the diseases of the climate, aggravated by incessant exposure, and unremitting toil in ditching his way to Richmond. At last, only because it was necessary to withdraw our troops to repel invasion from another quarter, he was permitted to slink away with the miserable remnant of his troops, cowed, broken-spirited, and effectually brought down from lofty tone of braggadocio with which they commended the siege of Richmond. A store entire failure is nowhere recorded, and a more thorough charlatan never lived.
