vance fell upon Robert E. Lee. He had come into command of the Army of Northern Virginia only weeks before. At the battle of Seven Pines, on May 31, the previous commander, Joe Johnston, was hit almost simultaneously by a bullet and a shell fragment. Johnston had a record of exceptional bad luck for a general when it came to battle wounds; he had been wounded several times before. He survived the double wound at Seven Pines, but was left incapacitated. Lee, previously military aide to Confederate President Jefferson Davis, was posted to replace him.
Lee was seriously outnumbered and knew it (while McClellan, for reasons to be discussed below, thought that he was outnumbered). With the forces available to him, Lee knew, he could not hope to stop the Union advance by sheer weight alone. He resorted instead to one of those bold decisions that would characterize his subsequent career. He drastically thinned out his forces on the south side of the Chickahominy, leaving only 20,000 men against 70,000. In turn for this grave risk, he was able to concentrate
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