Battle of Seven Pines

Six miles east of Richmond, on the last day of May eighteen sixty-two, two armies tore into each other across swampy ground at a place called Seven Pines, and the collision changed the entire course of the Civil War.

Union general George McClellan had spent the spring inching his Army of the Potomac up the Virginia Peninsula. By late May, his one hundred thousand men were close enough to Richmond that Confederate soldiers could hear church bells in the capital. Confederate general Joseph Johnston could not afford a siege. He decided to strike before McClellan could bring his full strength to bear.

Johnston's attack on May thirty-first was hampered from the start. Orders were late, road columns tangled in the mud, and entire divisions never reached the field. Still, the fighting was ferocious. Union corps commander Erasmus Keyes was caught with his command south of the flooded Chickahominy River, cut off from reinforcements. The Confederates pushed his men back through the pine thickets and across Fair Oaks Station, capturing Union supply wagons and overrunning a field hospital.

Then, as evening fell, an artillery shell exploded near General Johnston and sent two fragments into his chest and shoulder. He was carried from the field, and command passed briefly to Gustavus Smith, and the next day Confederate President Jefferson Davis, who had ridden out to watch the battle, placed Robert E. Lee in command of the Army of Northern Virginia.

The second day of fighting, June first, ended in a stalemate. Union forces reclaimed most of the lost ground. The Union lost roughly five thousand men and the Confederates more than six thousand. On the narrow tactical ledger, Seven Pines was a draw.

But the wound to Johnston proved decisive. Lee took the army and immediately began planning offensive action. Within a month he launched the Seven Days Battles, drove McClellan away from Richmond, and transformed the eastern war from a Union advance to a Confederate counterpunch. Seven Pines, for all its confusion, handed the South the general who would define its cause for the next three years.