Peninsula campaign

Finally, in March of 1862, McClellan made his move.

Known as the Peninsula Campaign, it started promisingly with some minor victories at Yorktown and Williamsburg, Virginia, in early May.

The first major confrontation occurred at Seven Pines on May 31st.

It ended in a bloody stalemate one day later.

President Lincoln visited the operations personally.

Lowe made reconnaissance ascents over the Peninsula Campaign in 1862, watching Confederate troop movements around Richmond from above while George McClellan sat below trying to make sense of the terrain.

The Confederates understood what they were dealing with.

They tried to shoot the balloons down.

He knew that if given the time and space to recover his strength somewhat, Stonewall Jackson would become the thunderbolt of the Confederacy.

Once McClellan's defeated host had been pushed back to the protection of Union gunboats at Harrison's Landing, Lee decided to suspend the Peninsular Campaign and instead look at another opportunity to victory that could carry the war away from the citadel, Richmond.

In his turn to the north, Jackson's sluggish start was burned away and the great partnership began in earnest.

Lee was the grand architect of what was to come, the master strategist who conceived breathtaking operational gambles that violated every orthodox maxim of the European military textbooks on which they had all been trained at West Point.

The more daring Lee repeatedly hurled his much smaller Army of Northern Virginia at McClellan, and McClellan, always convinced he was facing superior numbers even when the opposite was true, repeatedly withdrew from their field of combat, even when Northern troops got the better of their southern foe.

McClellan's Peninsula Campaign had failed to capture Richmond, and by the summer of 1862 Lincoln was looking for another commander.

In June he appointed John Pope to command the newly created Army of Virginia.

As timid as McClellan was, Pope was reckless.

They lacked training and were deficient in arms.

Others had just returned from the Peninsular Campaign, where Lee's army had driven them from the gates of Richmond in the Seven Days Battle, June 26 to July 2.

Still others were the remnants of the force so decisively beaten at Second Manassas.

In McClellan, the Union army had a commander who was skilled at organization.

They lacked training and were deficient in arms.

Others had just returned from the Peninsular Campaign, where Lee's army had driven them from the gates of Richmond in the Seven Days Battle, June 26 to July 2nd.

Still others were the remnants of the force so decisively beaten at Second Manassas.

In McClellan, the Union Army had a commander who was skilled at organization.