The Confederacy on the Brink: The History and Legacy of the Battles that Saved the Confederate Cause in 1862

As Union commander George McClellan moved the Army of the Potomac up the Peninsula in early 1862, the Union army had a nearly 2-1 advantage in manpower, so Army of Northern Virginia commander Joseph E. Johnston continued to gradually pull his troops back to a line of defense nearer Richmond as McClellan advanced. In conjunction, the Union Navy began moving its operations further up the James River, until it could get within 7 miles of the Confederate capital before being opposed by a Southern fort.



McClellan continued to attempt to turn Johnston's flank, until the two armies were facing each other along the Chickahominy River. At this point, the Union army was close enough to Richmond that they could see the city's church steeples, but they would come no closer. By the end of May, Stonewall Jackson had startlingly defeated three separate Northern armies in the Shenandoah Valley, inducing Lincoln to hold back the I Corps from McClellan. When McClellan was forced to extend his line north to link up with troops that he expected to be sent overland to him, Johnston learned that McClellan was moving along the Chickahominy River. After a quick deluge turned the river into a rushing torrent that would make it impossible or the Union army to link back up or aid each other, Johnston drew up a very complex plan of attack for different wings of his army, and struck at the Army of the Potomac at the Battle of Seven Pines on May 31, 1862. By the time the fighting was finished, nearly 40,000 had been engaged on both sides, and it was the biggest battle in the Eastern theater to date (second only to Shiloh at the time). Although it was inconclusive, McClellan was rattled by the attack,



Having been seriously wounded, Johnston's command was given the following day to military advisor Robert E. Lee. Lee subsequently pushed McClellan's Army of the Potomac away from Richmond and back up the Peninsula through a flurry of battles in late June. In addition to having a direct impact on the rest of the fighting in 1862, the Peninsula Campaign would remain in the minds of Union soldiers and leaders over the next few years.



Even after Lee pushed McClellan's Army of the Potomac away from Richmond and back up the Peninsula in late June, he then had to swing his army north to face a second Union army: John Pope's Army of Virginia. Correctly assuming that he needed to strike out before the Army of the Potomac successfully sailed back to Washington and linked up with Pope's army, Lee daringly split his army to threaten Pope's supply lines, forcing Pope to fall back to Manassas to protect his flank and maintain his lines of communication. At the same time, it left half of Lee's army (under Stonewall Jackson) potentially exposed against the larger Union army until the other wing (under James Longstreet) linked back up. Thus, in late August 1862, the Army of Northern Virginia and the Army of Virginia found themselves fighting over nearly the exact same land the North and South fought over in the First Battle of Bull Run 13 months earlier.



From there, Lee would make one of the most consequential decisions of the war by invading Maryland and taking the fight to a Union state. The Maryland Campaign would culminate with the Battle of Antietam on September 17, which remains the bloodiest day in American history. Though that battle was tactically a draw, it resulted in forcing Lee's army out of Maryland and back into Virginia, making it a strategic victory for the North and an opportune time for President Abraham Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing all slaves in the rebellious states. Antietam is still considered one of the turning points of the Civil War, but in that sense it also serves as a stark reminder of just how far the Army of Northern Virginia had turned the tide in the span of just a few months.