Battle Of Seven Pines Essay

‘The Battle of Seven Pines’
May 31- June 1, 1862 - Henrico County, Virginia- While details are still becoming clear about the recent “Battle of Seven Pines,” one thing is for sure. It was fought between the Union ( North) and Confederacy (South). Leading the Confederacy was confederate commander Joseph E. Johnston. The Union was led by General George McLellan.  This battle all began with Joseph E. Johnston’s (pictured above ) plan to defend the capital. This original plan was supposed to take two thirds of the Confederate army to do defending. The other one third of the army would stay back, and hold Union Army bulk North of the river. Though just recently happening, and having no idea or predictions on how the rest of
the war will pay out in the end, it isn’t hard to tell that Joseph E. Johnston’s plan was a bad idea from the start. The factors that made his plan bad, were timing, and the amount of soldiers participating. Not working out how originally planned, due to Johnston’s bad decisions, the battle began five hours later than scheduled. If things had gone as planned, two thirds of the Confederate army would have been participating in this battle. However seeing ast hey did not go as planned, oly a small fraction of the two thirds originally set fought. Though not successfully following through, what was supposed to happen, was Union III and IV Corps were to be destroyed and dissolved by Johnston’s brigades. The IV Corps and Union III were two main operating systems south of the Chickahominy River. All three of the brigades were supposed to battle IV Corps near the Four Oaks Station. As this battle was coming to a halt, the Union commander Johnston, was injured very badly.
Injuries received were a bullet shot straight into his right shoulder, and a hit into his chest by a shrapnel. Due to the severity of his injuries, commander Johnston was able to no longer lead the Confederate army. For only a very short time period, General G.W Smith replaced Johnston while a new leader was found. Soon, Smith was permanently replaced by General Robert E. Lee. The Confederate Army of Northern Virginia was put into General Lee’s hands, right as battle was ending. The next day, Lee was ready to put his soldiers into battle once again, but found that there was no more fighting to occur. Before Robert E. Lee was put in charge, there was a changing point in the Battle of Seven Pines. During the last few moments of this battle, the Confederacy almost defeated the Union. However, lucky for the Union, last minute reinforcements jumped into help save them from what could have been a devastating loss and defeat. As the battle just took place a few days ago, numbers of killed, wounded and missing soldiers cannot be fully accurate. As of now however, the numbers are very close to what they actually are. For the Confederate side of this battle, 40,000 men were engaged at the beginning. Nearly 7,997 of those men were casualties, and 405 of them were captured or wounded. For the Union side, led by McLellan, there were also 40,000 men in the beginning. Out of those,
approximately 5,739 of them ended up being casualties, and 647 of them were either captured or wounded. Predictions are not able to be made now, or any time in the near future about how the rest of the war will end up. However, some say that the Battle of Seven Pines could be just the beginning of what could end up being a large series of battles to come in the war. With almost no victories for the Union side, this was a very important battle for them. More reports will soon come with other battles and information about soldiers. http://militaryhistory.about.com/od/civilwar/p/sevenpines.htm Hickman, Kennedy. “Military History Guide.” May 18. 2011

http://www.civilwar.org/battlefields/seven-pines/maps/sevenpinesmap2.html

http://www.historyanimated.com/Peninsulah.html "To The Gates of Richmond; The Peninsula Campaign", Sears, Stephen W., Houghton Mifflin, 1992, ISBN 0-89919-790-6

http://international.loc.gov/ammem/cwphtml/cwphome.html