Reinforcements came to him daily and even hourly, until he had nearly 120,000 men and more than a hundred guns with which to assail Magruder's scant 13,000 men and less than thirty guns.
But he did not make the assault. Instead he remained inactive for nearly a month before Yorktown with about nine men under his command to his adversary's one, doing nothing energetic or determined. When at last he advanced upon the works which he might have run over on the day of his arrival before them, he found no force defending them and only "dummy" guns in the shape of painted logs occupying their embrasures. Comic opera itself has few situations more ridiculous than was this of McClellan at the end of his month's "siege" of Yorktown, defended through a large part of the siege by less than one man to his nine, and at the last defended only by "quaker" guns, with no men at all behind them.
Finding that the position against which he had so elaborately provided siege appliances was vacated by his enemy, McClellan advanced to Williamsburg, where he encountered actual resistance on the fourth of May and the days following.
Here was one of those situations, of which the war presented so many, which it is difficult to reconcile with our accepted estimates of the military capacity of the generals on either side.
McClellan was moving up the Peninsula, threatening Richmond with about 120,000 men—official reports say 119,965. He had left 70,000 men at or near Washington to protect the capital, and the authorities there had detained 10,000 or 15,000 more for safety. McDowell, with 40,000 men of this force had been pushed forward to Fredericksburg on the Potomac, with the intent that he should make a junction with McClellan before Richmond, swelling that general's force to about 160,000 men. Jackson having been driven back in the valley of Virginia the danger to Washington seemed for the moment past, and Franklin's division had been sent to strengthen McClellan's main column.
In brief, McClellan had almost exactly 120,000 men immediately with him, while 40,000 more under McDowell were moving unopposed from Fredericksburg to join him and swell his army to about 160,000. As McDowell was presently called back for the defense of Washington, in view of the renewal of "Stonewall" Jackson's threatening operations in the Shenandoah Valley, it is only fair to reckon McClellan's force at the 120,000, which his morning reports showed that he had with him below Richmond. Johnston in command at Richmond had rather less than 50,000 men with which to oppose this force.
Deeply feeling his responsibility and the enormous disadvantage at which he was placed, the Confederate general asked for reinforcements. He proposed that all the troops in the Carolinas, where they were in no wise needed, and all in the valley of Virginia, and all at Norfolk and other points from which they could be spared, should be concentrated under his command in front of Richmond, in order that with an adequate force he might assail McClellan, who was in a vulnerable position, and, overcoming him, turn about and crush McDowell.
A council of war, of which General Robert E. Lee was the dominant member, overruled this apparently wise proposal, for reasons that have never been made clear. Thus Johnston, with 50,000 men, was left to defend Richmond against the double advance of McClellan's 120,000 from the east and McDowell's 40,000 from the north.
To do that successfully he must, of course, fall back to the neighborhood of the city and concentrate his force behind the strongest earthworks he could construct. The aggressive measures which he desired to take were wholly out of the question for the time at least.
Nevertheless Magruder made a stubborn stand at Williamsburg, giving Johnston time to fortify. It was only after two days of very severe fighting, and with a loss of 2,200 men against a Confederate loss of 1,800 that McClellan at last forced the Confederate detachment—for it was only a detachment and not a very strong one at that—to fall back from Williamsburg to the main line of defense and join itself to Johnston's army, of which it was a part.