Campaign 133: Seven Days Battles

Rating:
Summary: An Excellent Summary
Review: Angus Konstam, a very prolific and efficient Osprey author, follows up his campaign title Fair Oaks 1862 with its sequel, Seven Days Battles 1862. This campaign title is significantly different from the earlier volume in several respects. Konstam's pro-Confederate bias is somewhat less evident than the earlier volume and he lays fair criticism against Confederate mistakes that robbed them of the chance for a decisive victory. Konstam also spends much less time in this volume discussing Union General McClellan's wavering willpower - he assumes from the start that McClellan has lost the will to win and is merely reactive to Confederate General Lee's offensive. Finally, the advent of General Robert E. Lee and the newly christened Army of Northern Virginia puts the spotlight more on Confederate forces than in the previous volume. Konstam's narrative is clean and well supported by maps and data. This is an excellent summarized military history.

The introductory sections are more succinct than usual because Konstam covered much of the same ground in the Fair Oaks volume, and readers who require more background should get both volumes. In the section on opposing plans, Konstam focuses on Lee's risky plan to strip most of the forces defending Richmond in order to achieve mass and crush McClellan's right flank, then to cut the Union lines of communication. According to Konstam, Lee's planning was aided by Union inactivity but undermined by poor Confederate staff work, lack of the corps level of command, inadequate reconnaissance and "Stonewall" Jackson's lethargic execution of orders. While Konstam is probably correct that Lee's plan was "superbly imaginative," he never really discusses what McClellan was planning. What if Lee had not attacked? Given the three weeks of Union inactivity after Fair Oaks, it is not clear that McClellan was really planning to make any further offensive moves. In fact, McClellan's approach to Richmond looks suspiciously like a "demonstration," intended to get the Rebel leaders to the negotiating table, rather than to achieve a military victory.

The maps in this volume are some of the best that I have seen in an Osprey title for a while, and they support the author's narrative. The five 2-D maps are: strategic situation in the eastern theater, June 1862; operational situation in the Virginia peninsula, 25 June 1862; Lee attacks, 26-27 June 1862; retreat to the James, 28-30 June 1862; Battle of Malvern Hill. The three 3-D BEV maps are: the Battle of Mechanicsville; the Battle of Gaine's Mill; the Battle of Frayser's Farm. The three battle scenes are: the attack of Pender's Brigade at Mechanicsville; the charge of the 4th Texas at Gaine's Mill; Union artillery at Malvern Hill. The author also provides a detailed order of battle and bibliography.

Lee's offensive resulted in five corps-size battles fought over a six-day period (the "seven days" was a bit of a misnomer, but it stuck): Mechanicsville, Gaine's Mill, Savage Station, Frayers's Farm, and Malvern Hill. Although Lee achieved his objective of removing the Union threat to the Confederate capital, he failed to destroy the Union Army of the Potomac and Confederate losses were actually heavier. Tactically, the Confederate won only a single engagement, achieved stalemates in two and were thoroughly beaten in two; a 20% success rate is not normally indicative of a successful campaign. Yet Lee's campaign was successful because McClellan decided to begin falling back from Richmond after the first battle - which was a Union victory; Konstam describes the campaign as "less a victory for the genius of Robert E. Lee and rather the result of the Union commander losing his nerve."

Several trends are apparent in this narrative that would have future implications for the Confederacy against other Union commanders. Lee was a bold, aggressive leader but his control over his subordinates was overly loose and he was willing to take risks despite inadequate intelligence about the enemy and terrain. The Confederate army had a difficult time mounting coordinated multi-unit attacks that Konstam blames on the lack of corps staff, but even once they gained corps in 1863, the same problem would appear at Gettysburg. Lee's cavalry commander, "Jeb" Stuart, gained fame by "riding around the Union army" but he actually provided little or no information on the terrain and enemy immediately in front of Lee's army - a problem that would cost the Confederacy dearly in the future. Finally, the Confederate army - for all its prowess - had great difficulty in defeating a prepared Union defense. It is often ignored that the Union army excelled at using terrain and fieldworks to build virtually impenetrable defenses and that artillery was properly used to cover obstacles. The Confederate army may have been better at operational and tactical maneuvering, but the Union army was extremely effective in the defense. Finally, Lee's health was already an issue in his first campaign, and he ceded some authority to Longstreet at Malvern Hill because he wasn't feeling well; the result was a series of stupid, uncoordinated frontal assaults that cost the Confederacy over 5,000 men. It was a preview of Picket's Charge one year later. It is also clear that the Confederacy had no answer to the quantity and quality of the Union artillery.