Battle of Malvern Hill

Background

In the spring of 1862 McClellan landed the Army of the Potomac on the Virginia Peninsula and advanced slowly on Richmond, through the siege of Yorktown and the fighting at Williamsburg, until his army stood astride the Chickahominy a few miles from the Confederate capital. At Seven Pines at the end of May the Confederate commander, Joseph E. Johnston, was wounded, and on 1 June Robert E. Lee took command of what he would call the Army of Northern Virginia.

Lee went over to the offensive on 26 June. In the battles known as the Seven Days he struck at Beaver Dam Creek (Mechanicsville), won his only clear victory at Gaines's Mill, and pursued at Savage's Station, White Oak Swamp and Glendale. McClellan, who had decided as early as the night of 26 June to abandon his advance on Richmond, called the retreat to the James River a "change of base". Each Confederate attempt to trap his columns on the march failed, the last at Glendale on 30 June.

The retreat led over Malvern Hill, about two miles north of the James and some 130 feet high. It was no mountain but a gentle slope, cleared farmland whose open fields gave the defenders long fields of fire and the attackers no cover, with the James and the Union Navy at its back. Its strength, the National Park Service notes, lay not in its height but in those fields of fire. On 30 June a Confederate division shelling the hill from the west was quickly driven off by the Union guns. On 1 July Lee brought the rest of his army up to try once more to destroy McClellan before he reached the river.

The armies

For the first time that week all five Union corps (Porter's V, Sumner's II, Heintzelman's III, Keyes's IV and Franklin's VI) were on one field, though elements of three guarded the right flank and never fought. McClellan inspected the lines early and spent much of the day aboard the gunboat Galena; Fitz John Porter of V Corps was in effect the field commander. Morell's division of V Corps and Couch's division of IV Corps held the northern face, with Sykes's regulars on the left; Sumner, Heintzelman and Franklin lay behind Western Run to the east.

The Union artillery was the heart of the position. Colonel Henry Hunt, the chief of artillery, massed guns along the crest facing three ways. Counts vary widely: 171 guns on the hill and 91 in reserve, 37 of them in the forward line, says Wikipedia; Porter eventually committed 107, says Encyclopedia Virginia; only 30 to 40 could be massed in the centre, by the American Battlefield Trust's account. Heavy Parrotts stood in reserve; the gunboats Galena, Jacob Bell and Aroostook could fire from the river.

Lee's army was tired and depleted. Jackson's command (Whiting, Ewell, D. H. Hill and Jackson's own division) came down the Willis Church Road; Magruder and Huger were to come in by the Carter's Mill Road on the right. Longstreet's and A. P. Hill's divisions, cut up at Glendale, waited in reserve. The Confederate artillery was spread among the brigades rather than massed, and Pendleton's reserve artillery never came into action.

The battle

CDB90 records the battle as one engagement, number 187 (MALVERN HILL), from 15:00 to 20:30 on 1 July. Times below are approximate and the sources differ by up to a few hours.

Morning: the approach. A faulty map labelled the Willis Church Road the "Quaker Road", and local guides led Magruder down the wrong road; he lost about three hours and did not reach the field until about 16:00. Lee and Longstreet looked for gun positions. Their plan was for two "grand batteries", one on each flank, to catch the Union line in a crossfire and silence the guns before the infantry went in.

About 13:00–15:00: the bombardment fails. The Union guns opened at about 13:00 (Encyclopedia Virginia has the duel beginning as early as 10:00). Most Confederate batteries never reached the field; those that did came up one or a few at a time, rarely more than six or eight firing together on either flank, and were overwhelmed in turn. D. H. Hill called the performance "most farcical". At about 13:30 Lee's chief of staff, Robert Chilton, sent an order stating that batteries had been placed to rake the enemy line and that Armistead had been told to charge with a yell, and telling the others to "do the same". It carried no time.

15:00–17:30: Armistead and Magruder. At about 15:00 Armistead sent three regiments against Union skirmishers; they went too far and were pinned at the foot of the slope. At about 16:00 Lee, given a false report from Whiting that the Union army was retreating (Whiting had misread Sumner's troops moving and a lull in the firing), sent orders to attack. Magruder, arriving and believing he had been ordered to assault, sent in Wright's and Mahone's brigades with Armistead's at about 17:30, followed by Cobb's and Barksdale's. They crossed open ground under canister and rifle fire, and the gunboats lobbed heavy shells into the Confederate rear, impressive but inaccurate.

About 18:00: D. H. Hill's assault. Hearing the firing on his right and thinking a general advance had begun, D. H. Hill sent his five brigades, about 8,200 men, up the slope in the centre. They went in one after another and were cut down. Porter later wrote that "brigade after brigade rushed at our batteries" and that the guns of Morell and Couch "mowed them down". Jackson sent Lawton's and Winder's brigades and part of Ewell's division to support Hill, but they came up too late to change anything.

Dusk: the last attacks. Further brigades came in, among them Ransom's, Kershaw's and Semmes's, some of whom got within 75 to 100 yards of the guns and fought hand to hand with Sickles's New Yorkers. Porter brought up Griffin's brigade, Couch's division and Meagher's Irish Brigade, which drove back the last assaults. Some twenty Confederate brigades attacked in all, at different times and without co-ordination, and none reached the crest. When Trimble proposed one more charge, Jackson told him not to. The firing died away at dark; Wikipedia has the Union guns falling silent at 20:30, Encyclopedia Virginia not until about 22:00.

Aftermath

Lee lost about 5,400–5,650 men, nearly twice the Union's 2,100–3,200. D. H. Hill believed more than half the Confederate killed and wounded had fallen to artillery, and after the war wrote that the battle "was not war—it was murder". Robert E. L. Krick, a historian at the Richmond National Battlefield Park, argues the picture of a pure artillery triumph needs qualifying: with the Confederate guns so ineffective, many of the Union losses must have come from infantry fighting at close range. He calls the Confederate effort one of the most ill-managed and uncoordinated major assaults of the entire Civil War.

Porter wanted to hold the hill and even resume the offensive, but McClellan ordered the army back to Harrison's Landing, twelve miles down the James; the march began at about 23:00. The Army of the Potomac stayed there until late August, and the Peninsula Campaign was over. Jackson urged pursuit, but Lee and Davis judged it too risky.

Lee, "deeply, bitterly disappointed", wrote in his report that under ordinary circumstances the Federal army should have been destroyed. Magruder and Holmes were sent elsewhere, the army was reorganised in two wings under Jackson and Longstreet, and the artillery was grouped into battalions. McClellan's absence aboard the Galena was used against him in the presidential campaign of 1864. The battlefield is the best preserved in central or southern Virginia, much of it now protected by the National Park Service and the American Battlefield Trust.

Wargaming it

Malvern Hill is a compact, single-afternoon battle, ideal for one table. At brigade level, with turns of 20 to 30 minutes, the whole of the Confederate attack from the Carter's Mill Road to the Willis Church Road fits comfortably; at regimental level the centre around the Crew and West farms, where D. H. Hill and Magruder attacked, makes an intense smaller game.

The terrain is subtle rather than dramatic. The slope is gentle, but 800 yards to nearly a mile of open field must be crossed under fire, and the woods and swales east of the Willis Church Road hide troops from the guns but cut them off from the western wing. Rules need to make massed artillery and canister deadly against formed troops in the open, and to let Confederate batteries arrive late and piecemeal.

The real game is command and control. A referee, delayed or garbled orders, and an Armistead "yell" that may or may not be heard as a signal will reproduce the uncoordinated assaults far better than free deployment. Otherwise the Confederate player will simply mass and wait.

What-ifs: the grand batteries in place and firing together by midday; Magruder on the right road; Holmes and Longstreet committed; a co-ordinated attack by all twenty brigades at once; or McClellan, as Porter wished, holding the hill and counter-attacking on 2 July. Victory conditions should reward the Confederates for reaching the crest at all, and the Union for holding it cheaply.

Maps and pictures