2012 Best Practices for Government Libraries

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BEST PRACTICES 2012
Park Ranger Speaker Series: The Civil War’s Peninsula Campaign and its
Rebel Counterstroke
Union Major General George B. McClellan had transformed a
Washington, DC army of amateurs into a mighty host and in the
spring of 1862 he desired to hurl it against the political heart of
the Confederacy—the capital at Richmond, VA. To achieve
this, McClellan sought to embark his 100,000-man Army of the
Potomac from Washington and Alexandria wharves and land it
at Fortress Monroe on the peninsula between the York and
James Rivers. President Abraham Lincoln approved his
general’s bold move at a momentous hour already enriched by
recent Federal victories in the West and along the Atlantic
coast. By this point, the North clearly was winning the war and
Lincoln reasoned that McClellan’s Richmond strike just might
conclude the matter that year. Southern morale was low and
independence seemed quite unlikely despite the Confederacy’s
impressive wins near Washington in 1861. President Jefferson
Davis and his military advisor, General Robert E. Lee, quickly
realized the need for bold aggressive action of their own. The
two sides stood poised to deliver the decisive blow. The fighting
that raged that spring on a peninsula outside Richmond and in a
valley outside Washington determined the outcome.
Please join Park Ranger Michael Kelly as he discusses the
Peninsula Campaign and its Rebel Counterstroke. See how this
first large-scale Union offensive in the Civil War’s Eastern
Theater led to the emergence of Robert E. Lee as major player in
the conflict and turned the campaign into a humiliating Union
defeat.