The Photographic History of The Civil War: in ten volumes, Thousands of Scenes Photographed 1861-65, with Text by many Special Authorities, Volume 1: The Opening Battles.
Francis Trevelyan Miller, Ed.

The Confederates, although decidedly successful on their right, had been, it is true, rudely checked on their left; but, in the battle considered as a whole, they not only had not been beaten, but they had driven their antagonists from their entrenchments in one part of the field, and they had guns, small arms, and colors to show as the trophies of their victory. The net result of the battle, in spite of the captured trophies, was undoubtedly favorable to the Federal arms. . . . It remained for General McClellan to utilize the forces at his disposal, to lead his large army of brave men, all of whom were devoted to him, to the achievement of the success which it would seem was really at this period of the campaign within his grasp.

John C. Ropes, The story of the Civil War, Part II, The Campaigns of 1862.

With Yorktown and Williamsburg inscribed upon its victorious banners, the Army of the Potomac took up again its toilsome march from Cumberland Landing toward the Confederate capital on the James. Its route lay along the Pamunkey, a sluggish stream, whose junction with the Mattapony forms the York. Not all the troops, however, were at Cumberland Landing and McClellan had first to bring up the remainder of his forces from Yorktown and Williamsburg. Some came by water up the York, some by land. The march was a picturesque one, through a magnificent country arrayed in all the gorgeousness of a Virginia spring, with its meadows of green set between the wooded hills. Dotted here and there could be seen the mansions of planters, with their slave quarters in the rear. The progress was necessarily slow, for the roads were next to impassable and the rains still continued at intervals.

It was the 16th of May, 1862, when the advanced corps reached White House, the ancestral home of the Lees. On