Ironically, the confederates had built earthworks on positions that had been abandoned eighty years before by General George Washington. Eleven thousand Confederate troops were dug in at Yorktown. They faced a Union army of 121,000 men. The Confederate commander, John Bankhead Magruder, had a real talent for fooling the enemy. He scattered his artillery, ordered the bands to play loud after dark, and had one battalion march in a circle in and out of a clearing until the Union army thought they were facing an enormous foe.
McClellan was fooled. He thought he was facing the entire Confederate army. He telegraphed Washington that he was facing an army of at least 100,000. He called for reinforcements. President Lincoln urged him, pleaded with him to move forward. He called for McClellan to "break the enemy's line . . . it is indispensable to you that you strike a blow . . . I have never written to you in greater kindness of feeling than now, nor with a fuller purpose to sustain you . . . But you must act." McClellan's response was to ignore him. McClellan wrote to his wife: "The President very coolly telegraphed me . . . he thought I had better break the enemy lines at once, I was much tempted to reply that he had better come and do it himself."
Instead of moving forward, McClellan dug in and had his men build earthworks. He sent balloons up to observe Confederate positions. He complained to his wife. He defended himself to his superiors. A rebel soldier wrote: "all talk and not fight, ditching all the time." With McClellan's procrastination, the army of Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston had time to arrive on the Peninsula. When Johnston arrived with his army, he could not believe his eyes as he commented: "No one but McClellan could have hesitated to attack." McClellan had the Union ships in the York River begin a siege of Yorktown which lasted a month. By May 3, he had over one hundred guns in place to begin a bombardment. By the next morning, the Confederate army was gone. McClellan's hesitation, once again, had cost the Union a chance to strike a fatal blow to the Confederacy.
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