Seven Days Battles

• 1. Introduction

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  Between the 25th of June and the 1st of July 1862, the Seven Days Battles swept across the countryside near Richmond, Virginia. Seven battles were fought in seven days. When they ended, Confederate General Robert E. Lee had driven the Union Army of the Potomac away from the Confederate capital. Its commander, Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan, now led it in retreat down the Virginia Peninsula. Some writers call the series the Seven Days Campaign, but that label is a mistake. These battles were the culmination of the Peninsula Campaign, not a separate campaign of their own.

  Almost 200,000 men took part, enough to produce the largest battles of the war. They did not. Inexperience and caution among the generals usually kept either side from massing its strength where it mattered, and no battle settled the matter cleanly.

  So why did an army that had reached the outskirts of Richmond give up the fight? How did Lee win a week when his own carefully drawn plans kept falling apart? And what did the winners pay for their victory?

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• 2. Road to Richmond

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  In March 1862, McClellan landed his army at Fort Monroe and aimed it at Richmond. By early April his troops were marching northwest up the Virginia Peninsula, hoping to capture the Confederate capital and end the war. Those hopes ran into a surprise at the Warwick Line, where Confederate Brig. Gen. John B. Magruder had set up a strong defensive position. McClellan gave up on a quick advance and ordered his army to prepare for a siege of Yorktown. Just before the preparations were finished, the Confederates, by then under the direct command of Johnston, began to withdraw toward Richmond.

  The first heavy fighting came at Williamsburg on the 5th of May. Union troops won some tactical successes, but the Confederates kept falling back. Two days later, an amphibious flanking move to Eltham's Landing failed to cut off their retreat. On the 15th of May, at Drewry's Bluff, the United States Navy tried to reach Richmond by way of the James River and was driven back.

  As McClellan neared the city, a minor fight broke out at Hanover Court House on the 27th of May. Then Johnston struck by surprise at Seven Pines, also called Fair Oaks, on the 31st of May and the 1st of June. The battle was inconclusive and costly, yet its effects lasted. Johnston was wounded, and on the 1st of June the more aggressive Robert E. Lee took his place.

  Lee spent almost a month lengthening his defensive lines and organizing his Army of Northern Virginia. McClellan sat passively in front of him, waiting for dry weather and dry roads. Early in the war Lee had earned a reputation for caution, and he knew he had no advantage in numbers. He planned an offensive anyway. It was the first sign of the aggressive streak he would show for the rest of the war.

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• 3. Two Armies

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  McClellan's Army of the Potomac numbered approximately 105,000 men and was organized much as it had been at Seven Pines. Brig. Gen. Edwin V. Sumner led the II Corps and Brig. Gen. Samuel P. Heintzelman the III Corps. Brig. Gen. Erasmus D. Keyes commanded the IV Corps, Brig. Gen. Fitz John Porter the V Corps, and Brig. Gen. William B. Franklin the VI Corps. A division in this army averaged about 9000 men, counting non-combatants. The smallest, under Casey, held around 7000, and the largest, under Morell, held 11,000.

  Lee's Army of Northern Virginia stood at about 92,000 men, the largest Confederate army assembled during the war. Yet it was not a true unified command like the Army of the Potomac. It was a thrown-together collection of every unit that could be gathered to defend Richmond. That weakness hurt coordination during the battles and limited Lee's chance to destroy the Union army.

  Stonewall Jackson arrived fresh from his victories in the Valley campaign, but his men were worn down. His own division, led by Brig. Gen. Charles S. Winder, had fewer than 2000 men, most of them in the Stonewall Brigade. The brigades of Samuel Fulkerson and John R. Jones had shrunk to nearly regimental size and sat in reserve for most of the fighting. Ewell's three brigades totaled just 3000 men. Alexander Lawton's brigade, newly arrived from Georgia, added 3500 and brought Jackson's command to around 8000.

  A.P. Hill's division carried the nickname Light Division because it traveled light and could maneuver and strike quickly. At 12,000 men it was the largest on the Confederate side, while Theophilus Holmes's division, at 5000, was the smallest. D.H. Hill's division had numbered close to 10,000 before Seven Pines and fell to about 7700. Roswell Ripley's North Carolina brigade, with 2300 men, brought it back to 10,000.

  Army ordnance chief Edward P. Alexander counted 9050 men in Longstreet's division on the 25th of June, down from close to 12,000. Huger's division held about 8600, Whiting had around 4000 in two brigades, and Magruder's three divisions totaled about 13,000. One catch affects every Confederate number. Reports listed only combat troops and left out couriers, staff officers, and wagon drivers, so the two sides' figures do not line up neatly.

  The Union also kept a cavalry reserve under Brig. Gen. Philip St. George Cooke. He was the father-in-law of Jeb Stuart, the Confederate cavalry commander.

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• 4. Plans and Oak Grove

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  On the 23rd of June, Lee met with his commanders and worked out an intricate plan of attack. He knew he could not win a battle of attrition or a siege. The Union army straddled the rain-swollen Chickahominy River. Four corps formed a semicircle south of the river, while Porter's V Corps stood north of it near Mechanicsville, in an L-shaped line behind Beaver Dam Creek.

  Lee meant to cross the Chickahominy with most of his army and hit that northern flank. Only the two divisions of Benjamin Huger and Magruder would stay behind to hold the entrenchments. On paper, this put about 65,500 Confederates against 30,000 Federals on the north bank. It also left only 25,000 men to guard Richmond against the other 60,000 Union soldiers.

  The weak point had already been scouted. From the 12th to the 15th of June, Jeb Stuart's cavalry rode all the way around the Union army, a daring but militarily dubious feat. His riders found Porter's right flank vulnerable. Lee wanted Jackson to attack that flank early on the 26th of June. A.P. Hill would then move from Meadow Bridge toward Beaver Dam Creek. Longstreet and D.H. Hill would pass through Mechanicsville and join in, while Huger and Magruder staged diversions to confuse McClellan. Lee hoped Porter would abandon his trenches under pressure, which would spare him a direct frontal assault.

  McClellan was planning an offensive of his own. Intelligence told him Lee was ready to move and that Jackson's arrival from the Shenandoah Valley was close. He even knew Jackson was at Ashland Station, yet he did nothing to reinforce Porter. He wanted to strike first. He hoped to push his siege artillery about a mile and a half closer to Richmond by seizing the high ground on Nine Mile Road around Old Tavern. The first step was an attack at Oak Grove.

  Soon after 8 a.m. on the 25th of June, the brigades of Daniel E. Sickles, Cuvier Grover, and John C. Robinson stepped off through a dense forest 1200 yd wide. Two divisions of the III Corps, under Joseph Hooker and Philip Kearny, made the assault, and Huger's division waited on the other side. Robinson and Grover made good progress. Sickles's New Yorkers, the Excelsior Brigade, struggled through felled-tree obstacles and a creek, and the Union line fell out of alignment.

  Huger seized the moment and counterattacked with the brigade of Ambrose R. Wright. Then the 26th North Carolina, in its first combat, fired a perfectly synchronized volley that broke up Sickles's attack. The 71st New York fled in a panic that Sickles himself called "disgraceful confusion."

  The attack gained only 600 yd and cost over 1,000 casualties on both sides. It was McClellan's only tactical offensive action against Richmond. It was far too weak to disturb Lee's offensive, which was already in motion.

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• 5. Beaver Dam to Gaines's Mill

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  Lee's intricate plan went wrong on the morning of the 26th of June, when Jackson's weary men fell at least four hours behind schedule. By 3 p.m., A.P. Hill lost patience and attacked at Beaver Dam Creek without orders, sending 11,000 men in a frontal assault. Porter had pulled his line back to the creek and Ellerson's Mill. There, 14,000 entrenched soldiers and 32 guns in six batteries beat back attack after attack. Jackson reached the field late in the afternoon and ordered his troops to bivouac for the night while a major battle roared within earshot.

  That night McClellan ordered Porter to fall back after dark behind Boatswain's Swamp, 5 mi to the east. Jackson's closeness to the flank alarmed him. He feared for his supply line, the Richmond and York River Railroad north of the Chickahominy, and decided to shift his base to the James River. He also believed the diversions by Huger and Magruder meant he was badly outnumbered. He told Washington he faced 200,000 Confederates. The real number was 85,000. Without the railroad, he would have to abandon his siege of Richmond.

  A.P. Hill, with Longstreet and D.H. Hill behind him, kept attacking despite Lee's order to hold his ground. He was beaten back with heavy losses. Instead of more than 60,000 men crushing a flank, only five brigades, about 15,000 men, saw action. Confederate losses were 1,484, against 361 for Porter. It was a Union tactical victory, yet McClellan began pulling his army to the southeast and never regained the initiative.

  On the 27th of June, at Gaines's Mill, McClellan ordered Porter to hold at all costs so the army could change its base. By that morning Porter had collapsed his line into an east-west salient north of the river, and the four other corps held their old positions south of it. Several of McClellan's subordinates urged him to attack Magruder's division there. He feared the vast numbers he imagined in front of him and passed up the overwhelming superiority he actually held.

  Lee pressed on with the largest Confederate attack of the war, about 57,000 men in six divisions. A.P. Hill crossed Beaver Dam Creek early and found it lightly defended. By early afternoon he met strong opposition along Boatswain's Creek, where swampy ground made the approach brutal. Longstreet saw the same problem and delayed until Jackson could attack on Hill's left.

  For the second time in the Seven Days, Jackson was late. D.H. Hill attacked the Federal right and was held off by the division of Brig. Gen. George Sykes. Longstreet then launched a diversionary attack, and George E. Pickett's brigade was beaten back with heavy losses. Jackson finally reached D.H. Hill's position at 3 p.m. and began his assault at 4:30 p.m. Henry W. Slocum's division arrived to bolster Porter's defense.

  Shortly after dark the Confederates attacked again, poorly coordinated but this time collapsing the line. John Bell Hood's Texas Brigade opened a gap, and so did Pickett's brigade on its second try. By 4 a.m. on the 28th of June, Porter withdrew across the Chickahominy and burned the bridges behind him. South of the river, Magruder kept fooling McClellan with minor diversionary attacks, which tied down 60,000 Federal troops.

  Gaines's Mill was the only clear-cut Confederate tactical victory of the Peninsula Campaign. Of 34,214 Union troops engaged, 6,837 were lost: 894 killed, 3,107 wounded, and 2,836 captured or missing. Of 57,018 Confederates engaged, 7,993 were lost: 1,483 killed, 6,402 wounded, and 108 missing or captured. Because the assault struck only the V Corps, one fifth of the Union army, the rest of it stayed in relatively good shape.

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• 6. McClellan Retreats

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  On the night of the 27th of June, McClellan ordered his entire army to withdraw to a secure base at Harrison's Landing on the James River. Military historians have puzzled over that order ever since. His army had held firm against strong attacks, and Porter had performed well against heavy odds. McClellan also knew the War Department had created a new Army of Virginia and ordered it to the Peninsula to reinforce him. Even so, Lee had rattled him, and he surrendered the initiative.

  His telegram to the Secretary of War carried a bitter message. He wrote, "If I save this Army now I tell you plainly that I owe no thanks to you or any other persons in Washington." He went on, "You have done your best to sacrifice this Army." The military telegraph department chose to leave that last sentence out of the copy given to the Secretary.

  The orders that followed were thin. McClellan sent Keyes's IV Corps west of Glendale to cover the withdrawal and sent Porter to the high ground at Malvern Hill to build defensive positions. Supply trains were told to move south toward the river. McClellan himself left for Harrison's Landing without specifying routes of withdrawal and without naming a second-in-command. For the rest of the Seven Days he had no direct command of the fighting. Across the lines, the Union retreat over the Chickahominy was a psychological victory for the Confederacy, a signal that Richmond was out of danger.

  Lee had not yet grasped what was happening. Then his cavalry reported that Union troops had abandoned their defense of the railroad and the White House supply depot on the York River. Large dust clouds also rose south of the Chickahominy. Together these convinced him that McClellan was heading for the James. Until then Lee had expected a withdrawal east to protect the York River supply line, and he had positioned his forces to meet it, unable to act decisively while he waited for proof.

  South of the river, a sideshow was already unfolding. While Gaines's Mill raged on the 27th of June, Magruder ordered Brig. Gen. Robert A. Toombs forward to "feel the enemy." Toombs, a Georgia politician with a disdain for professional officers, instead launched a sharp attack at dusk against Baldy Smith's division at the farm of James M. Garnett. Winfield S. Hancock's brigade easily repulsed him.

  On the 28th of June, Toombs was again sent to reconnoiter and again turned it into an attack, this time at the farm of Simon Gouldin, also known as Golding. He took it upon himself to order Col. George T. Anderson to join in. Anderson's 7th and 8th Georgia charged ahead of Toombs's brigade and met a vigorous counterattack from the 49th Pennsylvania and 43rd New York, losing 156 men. These were the only attacks south of the Chickahominy tied to Gaines's Mill. They convinced McClellan that he was under attack from every direction, which deepened his anxiety and his urge to reach the safety of the James.

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• 7. Savage's Station to Glendale

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  On Sunday the 29th of June, the bulk of McClellan's army massed around Savage's Station, a Federal supply depot on the Richmond and York River Railroad. The men were preparing a difficult crossing through and around White Oak Swamp, and no one was directing them. Black smoke filled the air as soldiers burned everything they could not carry. Morale plunged, especially among the wounded, who realized they would not be evacuated with the rest of the army.

  Lee had a new plan to catch his enemy in motion. Longstreet and A.P. Hill would loop back toward Richmond and then southeast to the crossroads at Glendale. Holmes would head farther south, toward Malvern Hill, and Magruder would move due east against the Federal rear guard. Jackson, with three divisions, would rebuild a bridge over the Chickahominy and drive south to Savage's Station, where he would link up with Magruder. The rear guard they faced held five divisions drawn from Sumner's II Corps, Heintzelman's III Corps, and Franklin's VI Corps. McClellan considered Sumner, his senior corps commander, incompetent, so he named no one to lead it.

  First contact came at 9 a.m., a four-regiment fight about 2 mi west of the station that lasted about two hours. Jackson, meanwhile, was not coming. He lost time rebuilding bridges and received a garbled order from Lee's chief of staff that made him think he should stay north of the river and guard the crossings. On the Union side, Heintzelman decided on his own that his corps was not needed, and he marched off without telling his fellow generals.

  Magruder, with 14,000 men, faced Sumner's 26,600. He hesitated until 5 p.m. and then sent forward only two and a half brigades. Sumner was even more cautious, and he picked regiments from several brigades almost at random. Only 10 of the 26 regiments in his corps ever fought. As darkness fell and strong thunderstorms rolled in, the battle became a bloody stalemate.

  The "Land Merrimack," the first armored railroad battery used in combat, shelled the Union front. Some of its shells flew as far back as the field hospital. The last action of the evening came when the Vermont Brigade charged into the woods south of the Williamsburg Road. It met murderous fire and suffered more casualties than any other brigade on the field.

  The fight cost about 1,500 casualties on both sides. In addition, 2,500 previously wounded Union soldiers were left to be captured when their field hospital was evacuated. Jackson did not cross the river until about 2:30 a.m. on the 30th of June, too late to crush anyone. Lee reprimanded Magruder, but the blame belonged equally to poor staff work at Lee's own headquarters and to a less than aggressive Jackson.

  By noon on the 30th of June, most Union troops had crossed White Oak Swamp Creek. About a third of the army had reached the James River, while the rest was still strung out between the swamp and Glendale. After checking the line of march that morning, McClellan rode south and boarded the ironclad USS Galena on the James.

  Lee ordered his army to converge on the bottlenecked Union column. Jackson was to press the rear guard at the White Oak Swamp crossing. The largest part of Lee's army, some 45,000 men, would hit the Federals at Glendale, about 2 mi southwest, and split them in two. Huger would strike first after a three-mile march on the Charles City Road, with Longstreet and A.P. Hill, then about 7 mi to the west, joining a mass attack. Holmes was told to capture Malvern Hill.

  Once again the execution failed. Huger's men spent hours chopping a new road through thick woods around felled trees, and he never tried another route. Fearing a counterattack, he stayed out of the battle. Magruder marched around aimlessly, unsure whether to help Longstreet or Holmes, until Lee sent him toward Malvern Hill at 4 p.m. Jackson spent the whole day north of the creek. He made feeble efforts to cross, tried to rebuild a destroyed bridge although good fords were nearby, and joined a pointless artillery duel. His inaction let Franklin send units to reinforce the Federals at Glendale. Holmes's inexperienced troops made no headway against Porter at Turkey Bridge and were thrown back by artillery and by Federal gunboats on the James.

  At 2 p.m., Lee, Longstreet, and the visiting Confederate President Jefferson Davis were talking on horseback when heavy artillery fire hit them. Two men were wounded and three horses killed. A.P. Hill ordered the president and the generals to the rear. Longstreet tried to silence six batteries of Federal guns and failed. He then ordered Col. Micah Jenkins to charge them, which set off a general fight around 4 p.m.

  Only the divisions of A.P. Hill and Longstreet, under Longstreet's overall command, followed Lee's order to attack the main Union force. Longstreet's 20,000 men hit a disjointed Union line of 40,000 spread in a two-mile arc around the Glendale intersection. Most of the fighting fell on the 6,000 Pennsylvania Reserves of Brig. Gen. George A. McCall, just west of the Nelson Farm. Locals also called the place Frayser's, or Frazier's, Farm.

  Longstreet fed three brigades into the fight piecemeal over several hours. Brig. Gen. James L. Kemper's Virginians, in their first combat, charged through thick woods in a disorderly but enthusiastic assault. They overran five batteries and broke McCall's main line with Jenkins's support. Cadmus M. Wilcox's Alabamians followed a few hours later. Some of the fighting was hand to hand.

  On McCall's flanks, Hooker to the south and Kearny and Slocum to the north held through repeated attacks. John Sedgwick's division filled a gap after a brutal counterattack. Heavy fighting lasted until about 8:30 p.m. Longstreet committed nearly every brigade he had, while the Union side fed units in one at a time to plug holes. Union casualties were 3,797 and Confederate casualties 3,673, with killed and wounded more than 40% higher on the Confederate side. Back at the creek, the clash at White Oak Swamp involved no infantry at all, only an artillery duel with few casualties, though Jackson's wing and Franklin's corps together numbered tens of thousands. Lee had failed to stop the Federal escape, and the Union army was now settling onto Malvern Hill.

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• 8. Malvern Hill and Aftermath

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  The final battle of the Seven Days was the first in which the Union held favorable ground. Malvern Hill offered good views and good places for artillery, and Porter's V Corps had prepared it the day before. McClellan was not there. He had gone ahead to Harrison's Landing, so Porter, the senior corps commander, ran the fight. The slopes had been cleared of timber, giving a long view across open fields. Col. Henry J. Hunt, McClellan's chief of artillery, placed 250 guns to sweep those fields. Beyond them the ground turned swampy and thickly wooded.

  Almost the whole army sat on the hill in a vast semicircle that stretched from Harrison's Landing on the extreme right to Morell's division on the northwestern slopes at the left. Lee chose to attack it head-on, hoping his artillery would clear the way. He would send Jackson, Ewell, D.H. Hill, and Whiting up the Quaker Road from the north. Magruder was to follow Jackson and swing to his right, and Huger would follow too. Longstreet and A.P. Hill, worn from Glendale, stayed in reserve.

  The plan stumbled before the shooting began. Muddy roads and poor maps delayed the Confederates. Jackson reached a swampy creek called Western Run and stopped dead. Magruder's guides sent him down the Long Bridge Road, away from the battlefield. Eventually the line formed, with Huger's division on the right and D.H. Hill's on the left along the Quaker Road, and they waited for their bombardment.

  Hunt got his barrage in first. From 1 p.m. to 2:30 p.m., his gunners, with better equipment and more skill, delivered one of the greatest artillery barrages of the war and disabled most of the Confederate batteries. Lee still sent his infantry forward at 3:30 p.m. Lewis A. Armistead's brigade pushed through a line of sharpshooters, and Magruder joined at 4 p.m. with a piecemeal, disorganized attack. Across the whole front, the Confederates got no closer than 200 yd to the Union center and were thrown back by nightfall. D.H. Hill is quoted as saying, "It wasn't war, it was murder."

  Lee lost 5,355 men to 3,214 for the Union, and he still followed the Federals to Harrison's Landing. At Evelington Heights, on the property of Edmund Ruffin, Confederates had a chance to dominate the Union camps. Jeb Stuart reached the heights and opened fire with a single cannon. The shot warned the Federals, who seized the heights before any Confederate infantry arrived.

  Malvern Hill was no place to stay, so the Army of the Potomac withdrew to Harrison's Landing, protected by gunboats. Nearly 16,000 officers and men had been killed, wounded, or captured from the 25th of June to the 1st of July, most of them in the V Corps. The survivors had gone a week with little food or sleep. Most artillery ammunition was gone, and summer heat was lengthening the sick lists. The equally exhausted Confederates pulled back to the Richmond lines.

  McClellan then wrote a series of letters to the War Department arguing that he faced far more Confederates than Lee could muster and needed major reinforcements. He asked for the commands in Northern Virginia, troops from the Washington garrison, and whatever could be pulled from the West. General-in-Chief Henry Halleck replied that this was impossible. He added that if the Confederates were as strong as McClellan claimed, sending Pope and Burnside to join him would be suicide. Halleck also warned that August and September would bring mosquitoes, and staying on the swampy Peninsula would invite malaria and yellow fever. On the 4th of August, the order came for McClellan to withdraw and return to the Aquia Creek area at once.

  The butcher's bill was heavy on both sides. Lee's army lost about 20,000 men: 3,494 killed, 15,758 wounded, and 952 captured or missing, out of more than 90,000. McClellan reported about 16,000: 1,734 killed, 8,062 wounded, and 6,053 captured or missing, out of 105,445. Many victorious Confederates were stunned by their losses. Together the casualties exceeded all those suffered in the Western Theater up to that point in the year.

  Northern morale, high after the early successes on the Peninsula, was crushed by McClellan's retreat. Confederate morale skyrocketed despite losses the less populated South could ill afford and the clumsy tactical performances of Lee and his generals. Emboldened, Lee carried his aggressive strategy on to the Second Battle of Bull Run and the Maryland Campaign. On the 23rd of July 1862, Maj. Gen. Henry W. Halleck filled the post of general-in-chief of all Union armies, vacant since March, while McClellan kept command of the Army of the Potomac.

  Lee, meanwhile, thoroughly reorganized his army. He removed generals who had performed poorly in the Seven Days, among them Magruder and Huger. He then divided the Army of Northern Virginia into two corps, one under James Longstreet and one under Stonewall Jackson.

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