Analysis of the Seven Days of Richmond Battle

At the beginning of the last week of June, 1862, the American Civil War briefly appeared as though it might be on the point of ending in a Union victory. The Army of the Potomac, under Gen. George McClellan, stood at some points within about six miles of the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia. Had McClellan and the Union forces been able to make good those six miles, the result would have been catastrophic for the Confederate cause. For a variety of reasons that will be outlined more fully below, Richmond was of immense strategic importance to the south, and its loss might well have brought a swift end to the war.

McClellan failed to sieze the opportunity, however; instead, though faced by inferior numbers, he began a retreat. In the course of that retreat, he was again offered a chance to sieze the initiative and go on the offensive, when Robert E. Lee, then newly appointed to command of the Army of Northern Virginia, launched an over-hasty and disastrous frontal assault against a strong Union position at Malvern Hill. Instead of taking that opportunity, however, McClellan simply proceeded with his retreat. Richmond was saved for the Confederacy. Lee, in spite of his errors, was launched on the career that would make him a legend. McClellan, having lost the confidence of Lincoln if not of his troops, was presently relieved of his command--though his successors' shortcomings, much greater than his, would usher in a period of Union setbacks on this crucial ce

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life than the slavery issue. But in the summer of 1862, the slavery question had not yet been thrust front and center as the immediate driving force of the war. The Emancipation Proclamation was still a year away. It was thus at least possible that, in the face of a military defeat as overwhelming as that which loomed with the prospective loss of Richmond, the Southern states would have abandoned their effort to secede, and accepted re-incorporation into the Union on terms that left the settlement of the slavery question for subsequent political determination. On the other side of the coin, such a settlement might still have been acceptable to the North. President Lincoln had long been associated with abolitionist sentiment, to be sure; that was why the prospect of his victory in the 1860 election drove the South to secession. But his war goals were in mid-1862 still defined purely as preservation of the Union, and it would have been difficult for him not to accept re-admission of the secessionist states even if that meant leaving the slavery question unsettled. In short, in the summer of 1862, it was still possible for the South to be defeated by a knockout blow, rather than worn down by attrition, and it was still poss

Category: History - A