The Seven Days Battles, 1862: how Lee saved Richmond

In June 1862 a Union army of more than 100,000 men stood within sight of Richmond, a few miles from the Confederate capital. A week later it was falling back to the banks of the James River, and Richmond was safe. The general who had turned it around had been in command for less than a month.²

Background: an army at the gates of Richmond

In the spring of 1862 McClellan landed his Army of the Potomac, more than 100,000 men, at Fort Monroe and fought his way up the peninsula between the York and James Rivers. By mid-May it stood on the outskirts of Richmond. On 31 May the Confederate commander, General Joseph E. Johnston, attacked at Seven Pines and was badly wounded. That night President Jefferson Davis gave his army to Robert E. Lee.³

The Union army was big but awkwardly placed. It lived on supplies brought by sea and carried forward on the Richmond and York River Railroad, some 600 to 700 tons a day by the estimates of the American Battlefield Trust and the Park Service. Heavy rain had turned the roads to mud and swollen the Chickahominy River, which split the army in two: part of it south of the river, facing Richmond, and part north of it, guarding the railroad.⁴

Lee believed Richmond could not withstand a siege, so he chose to attack. Through most of June he had his men dig earthworks around the city, which earned him the mocking nickname "King of Spades," but the digging had a purpose: about 25,000 men could hold the lines while he took the rest of the army north of the Chickahominy to fall on the Union wing there and cut the railroad.⁵ › Robert E. Lee

It was a dangerous gamble. Lee would put about three quarters of his army on the far side of a flooded river from his own capital. Had McClellan guessed the plan and thrown his southern wing at the thin lines in front of Richmond, the city might have fallen while Lee was away fighting for the railroad. William Miller sees in it the first sign of what would become Lee's hallmarks as a commander: opportunism and a willingness to take risks.⁶

Armies and commanders

McClellan's army counted more than 100,000 men by the Park Service's figure and nearly 120,000 by the Trust's. North of the Chickahominy stood the Fifth Corps of Fitz John Porter, and the army's guns would be marshaled by its chief of artillery, Henry Hunt. Brian Burton, writing in Encyclopedia Virginia, observes that McClellan believed himself outnumbered when the opposite was true, if only narrowly.⁷

Lee's own army numbered about 65,000 before reinforcements arrived, according to the Park Service. Stonewall Jackson brought another 18,000 to 20,000 from the Shenandoah Valley, where earlier in June he had defeated the Union forces sent against him. Lee's division commanders included James Longstreet, A. P. Hill and D. H. Hill, who would make the main attacks north of the river, and John B. Magruder and Benjamin Huger, who held the lines in front of Richmond.⁸ › Stonewall Jackson

The battle in phases

Oak Grove and Beaver Dam Creek, 25 and 26 June

McClellan moved first. On 25 June he attacked near Seven Pines, in the action called Oak Grove. His men gained little, and by nightfall the lines were much as they had been. Lee kept to his plan.⁹

The next day Lee's offensive began, and it began badly. Jackson was due to march around the Union right flank, but he was late. In the afternoon A. P. Hill crossed the Chickahominy anyway, cleared the village of Mechanicsville and went for the Union troops dug in behind Beaver Dam Creek, a waist-deep stream in a swampy valley with artillery on the ridge above it. The attacks broke down at the water's edge. The Park Service puts Confederate losses at about 1,400 against 350 Union; the Trust's figures are more than 1,500 against 450.¹⁰

On paper it was a Union victory. Yet Jackson's men had reached the Union flank by evening, and McClellan, alarmed for his railroad, ordered Porter back and decided to shift his whole base to the James River. South of the river, where he outnumbered Lee by more than two to one, he made no move against Richmond.¹¹

Gaines' Mill, 27 June

Before dawn Porter fell back to a plateau above Boatswain's Creek, near Dr. William Gaines' mill, and built breastworks of felled trees, with artillery along the crest. He had about 27,000 men, rising to some 34,000 or 35,000 with reinforcements, against perhaps 57,000 to 60,000 Confederates, by the Trust's and the Park Service's counts. Jackson, once again the key to Lee's plan, took a wrong turn on the way and arrived only late in the afternoon.¹²

Assault after assault failed during the afternoon. Then, shortly before sunset, Lee sent in his whole line together, in what Burton calls an uncoordinated but basically simultaneous attack. The Texas Brigade of John Bell Hood made the first break, and Porter's line gave way in several places at once. Some 15,000 men had fallen, about 9,000 Confederates and 6,000 Union.¹³

Savage's Station, 29 June

That night Porter's survivors crossed to the south bank of the Chickahominy, and McClellan began to march his army south toward the James. On 29 June Magruder caught the Union rear guard of Edwin V. Sumner at Savage's Station, a former supply base on the railroad, but he attacked alone: confused orders kept Jackson north of the river, and the rear guard held and slipped away in the night.¹⁴

Glendale, 30 June

The best chance came on 30 June at Glendale, the crossroads that Southerners called Frayser's Farm, where the roads the Union army needed to reach the James came together. Lee converged on it from several directions. But Jackson made no vigorous attempt to cross White Oak Swamp and settled for an artillery duel, and Union guns stopped Huger on the Charles City Road. Only Longstreet and A. P. Hill attacked. They broke into the Union line, and reinforcements threw them back.¹⁵

The crossroads stayed open, and the Union army passed safely on to Malvern Hill that night. Losses were about even: some 3,500 on each side by the Park Service's estimate, 3,600 Confederate and 2,700 Union by the Trust's.¹⁶

Malvern Hill, 1 July

On 1 July the Union army stood on Malvern Hill, a modest rise near the James whose northern face sloped gently down across open fields. Hunt massed artillery along the crest. Lee and Longstreet hoped converging batteries could silence those guns and open the way for the infantry, but the Union artillery overwhelmed the Confederate guns, and the infantry attacks went in anyway after a series of muddled orders, brigade by brigade.¹⁷

D. H. Hill, one of the division commanders in the attack, later described brigades emerging from the woods into the fire of fifty to a hundred guns, with the heavy guns of the Union gunboats firing from the river beyond. "It was not war," he wrote, "it was murder." Lee lost more than 5,000 men, the Union around 3,000 by the Park Service's and Miller's counts; the Trust's battle summary gives 5,600 and 2,100.¹⁸

Turning point

The decisive moment of the week came at Gaines' Mill. There' Mill Lee lost far more men than Porter, but he took the Richmond and York River Railroad. Without it McClellan had no supply line and could not take another step toward Richmond until he had found a new one on the James. Every battle that followed was fought by a Union army in retreat.¹⁹

Lee could not destroy that army. Encyclopedia Virginia calls Glendale the moment he came closest, and the Park Service counts it among the Confederacy's great lost opportunities. Malvern Hill showed the price of trying again. Yet in Burton's reading it was McClellan who settled the outcome: four times that week his men held the field by day and fell back by night, and by continuing the retreat he ensured a Confederate strategic victory.²⁰

Aftermath

On 2 July the Army of the Potomac marched through driving rain to Harrison's Landing on the James, where navy gunboats could cover it, and the Peninsula Campaign was over. The week had cost more than 34,000 casualties by the American Battlefield Trust's count, about 19,000 Confederate and 15,000 Union. Encyclopedia Virginia's figures come to about 36,500, with 20,614 Confederate and 15,849 Union; Britannica gives about 20,000 and 16,000.²¹

With the capital secure, Lee's army moved north, won at Cedar Mountain and Second Manassas and invaded Maryland. He kept the initiative until 17 September, when McClellan forced him to retreat after Antietam.²²

Legacy and memory

William Miller, writing for the Trust, calls the Seven Days the first great turning point of the war: a Union army that had seemed about to end the conflict was pushed away from Richmond, and the Confederacy gained a commander who would fight on for almost three more years. The Park Service notes that a McClellan victory might have reunited the nation without abolishing slavery; Encyclopedia Virginia adds that after this week the end of the war would likely mean revolutionary change.²³ › The greatest battles of the American Civil War

Visiting the battlefields today

Four of the Seven Days battlefields belong to Richmond National Battlefield Park. At Gaines' Mill the Watt House, which served as Porter's headquarters, still stands among walking trails and signs, though it is not open to the public. At Glendale the park owns only part of the field; much of its heart has been bought and preserved by the American Battlefield Trust.²⁴

Malvern Hill is the best preserved of them all. Its open fields keep much of their wartime look, and several walking trails cross the ground over which the Confederate brigades advanced toward the guns.²⁵