Week after week reports from Richmond were the same. General McClellan, convinced that his army was outnumbered two to one by the Confederacy, sat encamped with his Union soldiers within miles of the southern capital, but to everyone’s disbelief, did not attack the city. He waited. He made his men wait. For weeks they waited for additional troops. To pass the time and most of it in the rain, the army sat around fires swapping stories or rolling tobacco. If dry wood could be found, the fire and its warmth was their only solace from the constant wetness of their clothes and accompanying chill. Few men had the luxury of a change of clothing, wet or dry, and the threat of snake, leech and tick went unabated. Malaria swept through the encampments like an untamed river and day after day the men wondered when they would move on Richmond. It seemed to some that the war would end not by blood, but by water.