Peninsula Campaign

Battle context

The Peninsula Campaign was the first large-scale Union offensive in the Eastern Theater of the American Civil War, aimed at capturing the Confederate capital of Richmond via an amphibious turning movement in southeastern Virginia. McClellan's force of over 100,000 men initially made headway against Johnston's cautious defense, but the campaign's outcome shifted decisively when Robert E. Lee replaced Johnston and pressed the Seven Days Battles to a conclusion that forced Union withdrawal. The failure cost the Union its best opportunity to end the war quickly by seizing Richmond in 1862 and marked Lee's emergence as the dominant Confederate commander in the East. With combined casualties exceeding 52,000, the campaign demonstrated the enormous human cost of large-scale operational maneuver and left Union strategy in the Eastern Theater without a clear path forward for the remainder of the year.