After recovering in New York, James Pettit was sent in August to the Fort McHenry Convalescent Hospital. He would remain there for a month until the medical board sent him on to Washington. His letters from Washington reveal him to be a strong supporter of General McClellan. James is highly critical of Lincoln's leadership and believes the President to be the cause of many of the problems befalling both the army and the country. To his brother-in-law Darwin he writes of Lincoln: 

Never did man in high position comprehend its duties and responsibilities more feebly. Stern inquiry will show that most of our calamities throughout this whole war were the direct results of his intermeddling with affairs of which he had neither practiced or theoretical knowledge. In only one thing has he been firm- A nation is divided against itself. 

Pettit believed that history will vindicate McClellan and adds:

I claim for McClellan this-that the plan for the peninsula campaign as he was ordered to execute it was none of his making, that the government acted in bad faith. . . During the whole time of extraordinary labor and disaster he retained the love and confidence of the men who were the immediate sufferers. No General of America ever stood firmer in the confidence and affection if his men than did McClellan during those trials and sufferings. READ LETTER

In September, James also wrote home of the tragic aftermath of the Peninsula Campaign:

As late as Saturday, one week after the battle, over one thousand (1000) of our dead still lay on the field wholly uncared for black and swollen and putrid from exposure and in their midst, mostly in open air occasionally in bough huts or booths were 1500 of our wounded with so scanty attendance that many were obliged to be 24 hours at a time without even water and hundreds had received no surgical attendance whatever.  And in addition, the country for miles was strewn with dead horses with the bodies of our dead so filling the air with an intolerable stench that life itself was a burden. Great numbers of wounded died from absolute starvation. READ LETTER