Peninsula campaign
The Peninsula Campaign ( English Peninsula (r) Campaign ) from March to July 1862 was the first large-scale campaign of the northern states on the eastern theater of the American Civil War . His goal was to advance quickly north across the peninsula in southern Virginia , which is surrounded by the James River , York River and Chesapeake Bay, and capture the Confederate capital, Richmond .
To circumvent the Confederate defenses in northern Virginia, the Union Potomac Army under Major General McClellan was relocated by ship to Fort Monroe at the southeastern end of the peninsula. After initial success, a counter-offensive by the Southern Army under General Lee forced the Union troops to withdraw. The failure of the northern states a few miles from Richmond put an end to the notion of a quick victory among politicians and military alike and accelerated the development of the conflict into the "first modern war".
As an indirect consequence, the character and goals of the war also changed. Until the Peninsular Campaign, the restoration of the Union in the form of 1860 was the official war goal. After that, the idea that the goal must be a new union and the abolition of slavery in the southern states increasingly prevailed .
prehistory
After the Union's defeat on July 21, 1861 in the First Battle of Manassas , Major General McClellan took command of the Union's land forces stationed in northern Virginia and around Washington on July 27 . McClellan had achieved the first successes for the Union in the west of Virginia with superior forces and for the first time showed his outstanding organizational talent. In autumn and winter he focused on reorganizing the defeated army , standardizing and modernizing equipment and training soldiers. The general, who tried to minimize his own losses as much as possible, was extremely popular with his soldiers as "Little Mac". As a member of the Democratic Party, however, many politicians in the ruling Republicans suspected him, and as early as the autumn there were increasing voices accusing McClellan of not leading the reorganized army into battle.
Goal of the campaign
President Lincoln's Order Number 1, January 27, 1862, stipulated that Union armies should go on the offensive in all theaters of war on February 22nd . He ordered the Potomac Army to end the Northern Virginia Army threat to the capital , to cut supply lines between Manassas and the Blue Ridge Mountains , forcing them to turn south.
Operation plan
McClellan was concerned about attacking General Johnston's Northern Virginia Army , positioned just 30 km south of Washington along the Bull Run, because he feared it would be superior to his Potomac Army. He had already developed an operation plan in the autumn of the previous year, which was possibly based on his experience as an observer in the Crimean War . This provided for the army from Annapolis in Maryland - the Potomac was blocked by the Confederate - to be transported by sea to Urbana in Virginia. From there, behind the Northern Virginia Army, he planned to take Richmond. Lincoln was reluctant to agree to the plan, as an overland attack would have guaranteed that the entire army would always have stood between the Confederate forces and Washington. Despite his fears of stripping the capital militarily, he finally agreed to what was originally called the Urbana Plan, but ordered an organizational change in the Potomac Army, according to which four of the five newly created corps were occupied by Republican commanding generals . Before the campaign plan could be implemented, however, the threat to the transport ships from the superior Confederate armored ship Virginia had to be eliminated.
Starting position
After the naval battle of Hampton Roads between the armored ships Virginia and USS Monitor , Johnston thwarted McClellan's plan. He gave up the positions at Bull Run on March 7 and evaded with the Northern Virginia Army south over the Rappahannock to the area around Culpeper, Virginia. On March 11, Lincoln relieved McClellan of command of the US Army so that he could concentrate on commanding the Potomac Army. McClellan revised his plan of operations, which now called for the army to land at Fort Monroe, conquer the Virginia Peninsula and occupy Richmond. On March 17th, the first units of a total of 121,500 men embarked.
The remaining units of the Potomac Army and the Confederacy were distributed in the eastern theater as follows:
| place | Unit | Commander | Strength |
|---|---|---|---|
| union | |||
| south of Washington - Rappahannock Defense Area | I. Corps | Major General McDowell | 35,000 |
| Shenandoah Valley - Shenandoah Defense Area | V. Corps | Major General Banks | 25,000 |
| confederacy | |||
| at Culpeper and Fredericksburg | Northern Virginia Army | General Johnston | 49,000 |
| Warwick River between Yorktown and James | Magruder's division | Major General Magruder | 13,000 |
| Shenandoah Valley | Jackson's division | Major General Jackson | 8,000 |
| Norfolk, Virginia | Huger's division | Major General Huger | 9,000 |
On April 4, the Potomac Army, excluding McDowell's I Corps and Banks V Corps, was in the Ft. Monroe gathered. These two corps were detached from the army on the same day, incorporated into the Rappahannock and Shenandoah Defense Areas and placed directly under the War Ministry .
The campaign
The Siege of Yorktown and the Confederate Retreat
On April 5, McClellan began marching on Richmond with the Potomac Army. On the same day he met the first stubborn resistance from the Confederate. Major General Magruder's "Peninsula Army" - a division of 13,000 men - had taken positions between Yorktown and the James along the Warwick River. As with his successful campaign in western Virginia, McClellan overestimated the strength of the Confederate and decided to besiege Yorktown. It took McClellan around four weeks, until the beginning of May, to position siege guns while Johnston and his troops hurried from the north to the south of Virginia and reinforced Magruder. During this time, McClellan made only one serious attempt to break into the Confederate defenses.
After artillery preparation, on the afternoon of April 16, the 3rd Vermont Regiment attacked the dammed Warwick River at dam No. 1 and broke into the front line of the Confederate. Since the regiment received no reinforcements and the ammunition had gotten wet while crossing the river, it had to move back to the eastern bank. A second attack failed.
On April 30, there were 118,242 on the Union side and 55,633 on the Confederate side. By May 3, McClellan had finally completed all preparations for the attack. However, Johnston did not wait for the attack, but, contrary to President Davis' orders, dodged all of his troops to prepared positions near Williamsburg.
The Potomac Army followed suit, bringing up the rear of the Northern Virginia Army at Williamsburg . McClellan almost succeeded in outflanking the Confederate right, who struggled to repel Union attacks. On the night of May 6, the Northern Virginia Army evaded again. McClellan reported a "grandiose victory" to Washington, although the battle had ended at best in a draw. At the same time, he called on the War Department to order McDowell and Banks to advance immediately on Richmond.
McClellan had also launched another amphibious operation. He intended to ship four divisions up the York, unload them at West Point in the rear of the Northern Virginia Army, and cut them off from Richmond. Franklin's division disembarked at Elthams Landing on the evening of May 6, but remained under cover from the gunboat fire near the bank. Johnston had learned of McClellan's intention and had assigned his reserve under Maj. General Smith to secure the march of the main forces there. On May 7th, Confederate forces attacked Franklin's forces and the main forces managed to evade. After this failure, McClellan renounced amphibious operations of this magnitude during the campaign.
Fight on water
On the other side of James, Johnston's retreat made Norfolk, and with it Virginia , the horror of the US Navy, untenable. After Union troops landed east of Norfolk on May 9, Major General Huger's division evacuated the city and the crew of the CSS Virginia destroyed their ship on May 11. On May 7, McClellan had requested that gunboats be sent up the James and so relieve his left flank. Lincoln ordered the operation on condition that it only be carried out if it was promising. CSS Virginia had made this success impossible until it was destroyed. On May 11, a US flotilla, which included the armored ships USS Monitor and USS Galena , set out upstream to attack Richmond by water. The attack was repulsed on May 15 in the First Stand at Drewry's Bluff , with the crew of the CSS Virginia among the Confederate gunners .
Advance on Richmond and Battle of Seven Pines
McClellan used his previously successful approach at Yorktown and Williamsburg to a renewed dispute with the president because of his change in the organizational form of his army. On May 9, he asked the Secretary of War for permission to reorganize the Potomac Army. At least he wanted to be able to remove “incompetent” commanding generals. He also justified this with the fact that only his personal intervention before Williamsburg would have saved the victory. Lincoln replied in a personal letter that he had no connections with the generals in question, just as McClellan did not communicate with them. McClellan's support in the Senate and House of Representatives was declining day by day, but if he felt himself strong enough then he should do everything for the success of the Army.
On May 8, McClellan received news that the forces in front of Franklin's division were between 80,000-120,000 men and were moving to the Chickahominy. Because of this and because the Confederates had destroyed all the bridges across the river, he was reluctant to advance west. On May 17, McDowell received an order to advance south with 35,000-40,000 men, but was not placed under McClellan's command.
General Lee, the military adviser to Confederate President Davis, had already instructed Major General Jackson on May 1 to raise as many Northern State troops as possible and keep them in the Shenandoah Valley. This order led to another quarrel with General Johnston, who felt that he was being left out by this order. Jackson's successful attacks against the Union troops remaining in the Shenandoah Valley led Lincoln to order McDowell on May 24th to stop the advance on Richmond and to remove the danger created by Jackson (see Jackson's Shenandoah campaign of 1862 ). He did not accept protests from McDowell and McClellan.
McClellan had meanwhile decided to take Richmond - as he had before at Yorktown - by using siege guns. On May 18, with the approval of the President, he had formed two new Provisional Corps of what he thought were more capable Commanding Generals in the Potomac Army. Even before McDowell's withdrawal, McClellan had been assigned to support his approach by disrupting the northward Fredericksburg & Richmond railway line. McClellan commissioned the new V Corps under Major General Fitz John Porter. In order to maintain connections within his army, he had to use the Corps of Franklin and Sumner north of the Chickahominy. Only Keyes' and Heintzelmann's corps were on the south bank.
On May 27, there was a battle at Hanover Court House , in which the V Corps succeeded in breaking the railway lines. Then Porter received the order to join the other corps of the army to siege Richmond on the right wing at Chickahominy .
The Chickahominy was actually a rather small river, but heavy rains had made it swell up recently. Johnston, who had gathered around 70,000 men around Richmond, decided to take action against the weaker wing of McClellan's army south of the Chickahominy. On May 30th, the bloody battle of Seven Pines broke out . Johnston's attack suffered from coordination problems and failed. The Potomac Army lost around 5,000 and the Northern Virginia Army around 6,000 soldiers, including Johnston, who was badly wounded. On June 1, 1862, General Robert Edward Lee took his place.
Lee's counterstrike - Seven Days
Lee broke off the battle and evaded his defensive positions around Richmond, which he expanded and fortified in the following weeks. McClellan did not want to attack them, but waited for his heavy siege guns.
On June 11th Lee ordered the commander of his cavalry brigade, Brigadier General J.EB Stuart , to perform a reconnaissance ride in the rear of the enemy, during which Stuart “Ride around McClellan” completely circled the Potomac Army . The military benefit of this operation was little. Stuart found that the Union's right flank, Fitz-John Porter's V Corps, stationed north of Chickahominy, was uncovered and unprotected from a flank attack, and McClellan was once again concerned about the enemy’s strength and seemingly effortless capabilities.
On the same day, Lee decided to move Jackson's victorious troops from the Shenandoah Valley to the Ashland area north of Richmond. In his orders for the June 24 attack, he planned to hold a small portion of the Northern Virginia Army south of the Chickahominy against the bulk of the Potomac Army while the crowd would advance head-on against Porter and Jackson along the Pamunkey in the Should attack flank and back. After Porter's destruction, Lee intended with his troops to cut off McClellan's lines of communication to the east and thereby defeat the Potomac Army for good. The result of this plan was the Seven Day Battle .
The Northern Virginia Army never achieved a decisive victory in any battle; she was clearly defeated in the Battle of Malvern Hill on July 1st. McClellan, meanwhile completely convinced of his inferiority, evaded despite the victory on positions at the James at Harrisons Landing, where he had also moved his supply base in the previous days. From there he could not threaten Richmond again either by land or sea. While Lee's ambitious plan hadn't worked and the Confederate losses were significantly higher than the Union's, he had managed to take the Confederation's greatest threat to date.
The end of the campaign
Remains of the Potomac Army
The Potomac Army buried itself around Harrisons Landing under the protection of the US Navy guns and remained inactive except for a few cavalry raids. The campaign was finally over. Their victory cost the southern states around 30,000 men, the losses in the north were around 24,000 men.
On July 25, the new Commander-in-Chief of the US Army, Major General Henry W. Halleck, met with McClellan in Harrison's Landing and discussed the further deployment of the Potomac Army. For a renewed advance to Richmond, McClellan initially demanded 50,000 well-trained soldiers; Halleck had permission to offer 20,000 men. The next morning, McClellan believed that he could achieve success with the reinforcement offered. Two days later he telegraphed Halleck that he insisted on at least 35,000 men. Because of these unresolvable different demands, Halleck ordered the evacuation of the wounded on July 30th and, meanwhile appointed commander in chief, on August 3rd, that of the Potomac Army to Aquia Landing and Alexandria . McClellan was very reluctant to implement this order. The III. Corps embarked on August 14th and V Corps on August 21st.
Meanwhile, Major General John Pope had begun his advance south and was in the Culpeper, Virginia area on August 9th. It should be reinforced by parts of the Potomac Army. On 21/22 August were the III. and the V Corps in the area south of Washington, which were not available to Pope until August 26 in the area around Warrenton Junction. After the entire army had arrived in the Alexandria area shortly afterwards, McClellan held them back with flimsy justifications and provided only marginal support in the Second Battle of the Bull Run .
Reasons for failure
At the time, the Potomac Army was the largest army ever raised on the American continent. She was excellently trained and equipped. The supply was well organized. The soldiers had great confidence in their leadership. The relationship between the leaders was sometimes tense.
Major General McClellan had embarked on a difficult operation with the plan for the campaign, and during the campaign he had chosen to besiege both Yorktown and Richmond. As a result, the army's action was delayed by a month each time because the heavy siege guns first had to be brought by rail. McClellan had already ordered during the Battle of Williamsburg to take White House on Pamunkey and set up the Potomac Army's supply base there. White House was the terminus of the only railway line, the Richmond & York Railroad, on the peninsula. When during the seven-day battle the danger of outflanking Porter's V Corps arose, he moved the supply base to Harrison's Landing on the James. It was not possible to transport the siege guns to Richmond by land from there.
McClellan's army was slow to advance, making it possible for Joseph E. Johnston to always use his weak powers elsewhere. Because of this and poor education, McClellan was convinced that he was facing a superior Northern Virginia army. When he later learned of the approach of Stonewall Jackson before the Seven-Day Battle, he believed the Northern Virginia Army consisted of at least 200,000 men.
McClellan's relationship with the president also contributed to breaking off the campaign. The military autodidact Lincoln admired the "little Napoleon" and let him get away with bad personal behavior. However, under pressure from senators and congressmen who wanted their own clientele in positions of responsibility in the Potomac Army, and because of the growing criticism of McClellan's hesitant warfare, the president changed the structure of the army against his will and released him from command of the army US Army. This resulted in McClellan's constant calls for reinforcements and legitimate demands for unified leadership, at least for the move towards Richmond. In personal letters, the President tried again and again to appease McClellan and repeatedly approved his plans - even McDowell's corps was briefly subordinated to him again. Public pressure and the threat posed by Jackson in the Shenandoah Valley soon led the president to withdraw his pledges. It was during the Seven Day Battle that McClellan wrote the letter in which he blamed the president for a defeat that he believed was prompt.
Today's historians, like contemporary critics, see the main reason for the Union's failure in the peninsula campaign in McClellan's indecision. After that he missed several chances to beat Lee's troops decisively and thus possibly to end the civil war quickly.
Effects
The political and military consequences of the failure of the northern states in the peninsula campaign were far-reaching: the Confederate victory in the Shenandoah Valley and off Richmond raised the morale of the southern states considerably and produced three of the most important commanders of the Confederation, Lee, Jackson and Stuart. While the Confederation suffered heavy defeats in other theaters of war - most of Tennessee , large parts of the Mississippi Valley and numerous ports were lost in the spring of 1862 - the Northern Virginia Army achieved one of its greatest triumphs.
The price for this was high: the final seven-day battle alone cost both sides around 35,000 dead, wounded, missing and prisoners. It was the battle with the most losses in American history to date and even surpassed the Battle of Shiloh in April 1862. The Union and Confederation had now irrevocably embarked on the path to total war , which would later lead to the costly trench warfare and trench warfare off Petersburg and Atlanta . The notion of a short, largely bloodless war to "put down the rebellion", which prevailed in the north, had finally been destroyed. This became evident when Abraham Lincoln called on July 1, 1862, another 300,000 volunteers, who were called up for nine months in early August.
The restoration of the old union, as it had existed until 1860, i.e. while maintaining slavery, seemed to more and more northern states to be too little gain for the enormous sacrifices in human life, money and material with which they made after the inglorious end of the peninsula campaign had to calculate. Abraham Lincoln, for example, had only been a moderate opponent of slavery until then. Like most Republicans, he did not want to abolish them, but merely prevent them from expanding to other states and territories. But now he came to the conviction that slavery as the ultimate cause of the conflict must be completely abolished and that a majority could now be found among the population of the north. In the summer he made the decision to proclaim the emancipation , which was announced after the Battle of Antietam and which came into force on January 1, 1863. James M. McPherson , one of the leading historians of the Civil War, saw Lee's success during the Peninsular Campaign as an "abysmal irony":
"In defeating McClellan, Lee saw the war last until the destruction of slavery, the old South, and virtually all of the values the Confederation fought for."
The outcome of the peninsula campaign thus indirectly caused the war against secession to become a war for the liberation of the slaves.
literature
- United States. War Dept .: The War of the Rebellion: a Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies . Govt. Print. Off., Washington 1880-1901.
- Robert Underwood Johnson, Clarence Clough Buell: Battles and Leaders of the Civil War . New York 1887.
- John Keegan : The American Civil War , Rowohlt, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-87134-668-2 (Original title: The American Civil War: A military history, translated by Hainer Kober).
- Bernd G. Längin : The American Civil War - A chronicle in pictures day by day . Weltbild Verlag, Augsburg 1998, ISBN 3-86047-900-8 .
- James M. McPherson : Dying for Freedom - The Story of the American Civil War . List, Munich / Leipzig 1988, 1995, ISBN 3-471-78178-1 (orig. New York 1988).
- William C. Davis: The American Civil War - Soldiers, Generals, Battles . Weltbild Verlag, Augsburg 2004, ISBN 3-8289-0384-3 .
- Stephen W. Sears: To the Gates of Richmond: The Peninsula Campaign . New York, NY 1992.
Individual evidence
- ↑ James M. McPherson: Dying for Freedom. The history of the American Civil War . List, Munich / Leipzig 1988, 1995, p. 489
- ↑ James M. McPherson: Dying for Freedom. The history of the American Civil War . List, Munich / Leipzig 1988, 1995, pp. 351–353
- ^ The War of the Rebellion, Series I, Volume V, p. 41: End of Inaction
- ^ The War of the Rebellion, Series I, Volume V, p. 41: Order of the Potomac Army
- ↑ John Keegan: The American Civil War , Rowohlt Berlin 210, p. 173f
- ↑ James M. McPherson: Dying for Freedom. The history of the American Civil War . List, Munich / Leipzig 1988, 1995, p. 414
- ^ The War of the Rebellion, Series I, Volume V, p. 18: Reorganizing the Potomac Army
- ^ The War of the Rebellion, Series I, Volume V, p. 54: McClellan's impeachment
- ^ The War of the Rebellion, Series I, Volume XI, Part I, p. 1: I. and V. Corps removed
- ↑ The War of the Rebellion, Series I, Volume XI, Part III, p. 130: Strength of the Potomac Army
- ^ The War of the Rebellion, Series I, Volume XI, Part III, p. 484: Strength of the Northern Virginia Army
- ^ The War of the Rebellion, Series I, Volume XI, Part III, p. 146 f .: only if successful
- ^ The War of the Rebellion, Series I, Volume XI, Part III, p. 153 f .: Commanding generals incompetent
- ^ The War of the Rebellion, Series I, Volume XI, Part III, pp. 154 f .: Lincoln's answer
- ^ The War of the Rebellion, Series I, Volume XI, Part III, p. 151 f .: Strength of the Confederates
- ^ The War of the Rebellion, Series I, Volume XI, Part I, p. 27: Assignment to McDowell
- ^ The War of the Rebellion, Series I, Volume XII, Part III, p. 878: Assignment to Jackson
- ↑ The War of the Rebellion, Series I, Volume XI, Part III, p. 181: General Order No. 125
- ↑ The War of the Rebellion, Series I, Volume XI, Part III, p. 590: “Ride around McClellan”
- ^ The War of the Rebellion, Series I, Volume XI, Part III, p. 589 f .: End campaign
- ^ The War of the Rebellion, Series I, Volume XI, Part II, p. 498 f .: General Orders No. 75
- ↑ The War of the Rebellion, Series I, Volume XII, Part II, pp. 5 ff .: Major General Halleck's report
- ^ The War of the Rebellion, Series I, Volume XII, Part II, p. 411 Embarkation III. corps
- ^ The War of the Rebellion, Series I, Volume XII, Part II, p. 465: Embarkation of the V. Corps
- ^ The War of the Rebellion, Series I, Volume XI, Part I, pp. 94 ff .: McClellan in Alexandria
- ^ The War of the Rebellion, Series I, Volume XI, Part I, p. 51: McClellan's Foresight
- ^ John Keegan: The American Civil War , Rowohlt Berlin 2010, p. 213
- ↑ Convening July 1, 1862. Cornell University Library, February 23, 2018, accessed November 24, 2018 (English, Official Records, Series 3, Volume 2, pp. 187 f.).
- ↑ Conscription. Cornell University Library, February 23, 2018, accessed November 24, 2018 (English, Official Records, Series 3, Volume 2, pp. 291 f.).
- ↑ James M. McPherson: Dying for Freedom. The history of the American Civil War . List, Munich / Leipzig 1988, 1995, pp. 485-501
- ↑ James M. McPherson: Dying for Freedom. The history of the American Civil War . List, Munich / Leipzig 1988, 1995, p. 481
- ↑ John Keegan: The American Civil War , Rowohlt Berlin 2010, pp. 235–237
Web links
- The War of the Rebellion: a Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies
- Battle & Leaders
- Reports, ORs etc.
- Full Campaign Page
- Animation of the campaign on the American Battlefield Trust website
