Robert E. Lee's first great offensive drove McClellan's massive army away from Richmond's doorstep in seven brutal battles — and announced that a new kind of Confederate general had arrived.
By June 1862, McClellan's Union army was camped within sight of Richmond's church steeples, poised to capture the Confederate capital. Richmond's fall might have ended the war in its second year — but then Robert E. Lee took command and launched an audacious counterattack.
Over seven days from June 25 to July 1, 1862, Lee struck McClellan's flanks again and again in a rolling series of engagements — Oak Grove, Mechanicsville, Gaines's Mill, Savage's Station, Glendale, and finally Malvern Hill — relentlessly pushing the Union army back from Richmond.
Lee's tactics were aggressive to the point of recklessness. Confederate casualties — over 20,000 — actually exceeded Union losses of about 16,000. At Malvern Hill, Lee ordered frontal assaults against well-positioned Union artillery that slaughtered his attacking brigades with devastating efficiency.
Stonewall Jackson, fresh from his brilliant Valley Campaign, was uncharacteristically slow and disorganized throughout the Seven Days — repeatedly failing to arrive at the right place at the right time. Historians still debate whether he was ill, exhausted, or simply operating outside his comfort zone without independent command.
Despite the heavy Confederate losses, the strategic result was decisive: McClellan abandoned his advance on Richmond and retreated to the James River. The general who had seemed on the verge of ending the war instead sat paralyzed at Harrison's Landing, waiting for reinforcements that Lincoln refused to send.
The Seven Days introduced Robert E. Lee as the war's most dangerous commander. He had saved Richmond, seized the initiative, and revealed a willingness to accept enormous casualties to achieve strategic goals — a combination that would drive the Army of the Potomac backward for the next two years.