Hey everyone, thanks for tuning into episode 169 of our Civil War podcast.

I'm Rich. And I'm Tracy. Hello y'all. Welcome to the podcast. As y'all recall, we close a

last show with Henry Halleck's August 3rd telegram to George McClellan, officially informing

Little Mac that he was to withdraw his army from the peninsula. And so the peninsula campaign

and the seven days battles came to an end. From the arrival of the first elements of McClellan's

army at Fort Monroe on March 20th to that army's final evacuation on August 26th, the campaign

lasted 160 days or five months and one week. For Robert E. Lee and the army of Northern Virginia,

it ended with victory and Richmond delivered. For George B. McClellan and the army of the Potomac,

it ended with defeat and humiliating retreat. During the 160 days of the campaign, some 250,000

men participated in it, on land and at sea, more than any other single campaign of the Civil War.

In pitched battles and smaller skirmishes from Yorktown to Malvern Hill, some 25,370

federals and 30,450 Confederates were killed, wounded or missing. Of that total of 55,820 for

the two armies, at least 8,670 died in battle. Perhaps another 5,000 died of disease,

raising the death toll to an estimated 13,670. And even that total is almost certainly too low,

since statistics on disease on the peninsula were incomplete and then many soldiers reported missing

were surely dead. At any rate, when all was said and done, better than 24%, almost 1 and 4,

of the quarter million men who took part in the peninsula campaign were counted wounded or

missing or dead of battle or disease. In his book to the gates of Richmond, Steven Sears writes

that quote, on the peninsula in these months, more even than these men had been lost. General

McClellan's grand campaign had always carried within it the dream of ending the Civil War

while it was still rebellion and before it became a revolution. He envisioned the fighting at

Richmond as his American Waterloo so that afterward the contestants might sit down together at

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