Peninsula Campaign | Wikipedia audio article
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Peninsula Campaign
00:02:03 1 Background
00:02:11 1.1 Military situation
00:06:31 2 Opposing forces
00:06:41 2.1 Union
00:08:06 2.2 Confederate
00:11:00 3 Initial movements
00:11:09 3.1 Movement to the Peninsula and the Siege of Yorktown
00:16:31 4 Battles
00:16:40 4.1 Williamsburg
00:20:39 4.2 Eltham's Landing (or West Point)
00:22:55 4.3 Norfolk and Drewry's Bluff
00:26:28 4.4 Armies converge on Richmond
00:28:57 4.5 Hanover Court House
00:32:36 4.6 Seven Pines (or Fair Oaks)
00:38:08 5 The Seven Days Battles
00:40:04 6 Aftermath
00:40:13 7 See also
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- Socrates
SUMMARY
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The Peninsula Campaign (also known as the Peninsular Campaign) of the American Civil War was a major Union operation launched in southeastern Virginia from March through July 1862, the first large-scale offensive in the Eastern Theater. The operation, commanded by Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan, was an amphibious turning movement against the Confederate States Army in Northern Virginia, intended to capture the Confederate capital of Richmond. McClellan was initially successful against the equally cautious General Joseph E. Johnston, but the emergence of the more aggressive General Robert E. Lee turned the subsequent Seven Days Battles into a humiliating Union defeat.
McClellan landed his army at Fort Monroe and moved northwest, up the Virginia Peninsula. Confederate Brig. Gen. John B. Magruder's defensive position on the Warwick Line caught McClellan by surprise. His hopes for a quick advance foiled, McClellan ordered his army to prepare for a siege of Yorktown. Just before the siege preparations were completed, the Confederates, now under the direct command of Johnston, began a withdrawal toward Richmond. The first heavy fighting of the campaign occurred in the Battle of Williamsburg, in which the Union troops managed some tactical victories, but the Confederates continued their withdrawal. An amphibious flanking movement to Eltham's Landing was ineffective in cutting off the Confederate retreat. In the Battle of Drewry's Bluff, an attempt by the U.S. Navy to reach Richmond by way of the James River was repulsed.
As McClellan's army reached the outskirts of Richmond, a minor battle occurred at Hanover Court House, but it was followed by a surprise attack by Johnston at the Battle of Seven Pines or Fair Oaks. The battle was inconclusive, with heavy casualties, but it had lasting effects on the campaign. Johnston was wounded by a Union artillery shell fragment on May 31 and replaced the next day by the more aggressive Robert E. Lee, who reorganized his army and prepared for offensive action in the final battles of June 25 to July 1, which are popularly known as the Seven Days Battles.
American Revolution Part 4
The American Revolution was a colonial revolt which occurred between 1765 and 1783. The American Patriots in the Thirteen Colonies defeated the British in the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783) with the assistance of France, winning independence from Great Britain and establishing the United States of America.
The American colonials proclaimed no taxation without representation starting with the Stamp Act Congress in 1765. They rejected the authority of the British Parliament to tax them because they had no representatives in that governing body. Protests steadily escalated to the Boston Massacre in 1770 and the burning of the Gaspee in Rhode Island in 1772, followed by the Boston Tea Party in December 1773. The British responded by closing Boston Harbor and enacting a series of punitive laws which effectively rescinded Massachusetts Bay Colony's rights of self-government. The other colonies rallied behind Massachusetts, and a group of American Patriot leaders set up their own government in late 1774 at the Continental Congress to coordinate their resistance of Britain; other colonists retained their allegiance to the Crown and were known as Loyalists or Tories.
Tensions erupted into battle between Patriot militia and British regulars when King George's redcoats attempted to destroy Colonial military supplies at Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775. The conflict then developed into war, during which the Patriots (and later their French allies) fought the British and Loyalists in what became known as the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783). Each of the thirteen colonies formed a Provincial Congress which assumed power from the former colonial governments, suppressed Loyalism, and recruited a Continental Army led by General George Washington. The Continental Congress declared King George a tyrant who trampled the colonists' rights as Englishmen, and they declared the colonies free and independent states on July 2, 1776. The Patriot leadership professed the political philosophies of liberalism and republicanism to reject monarchy and aristocracy, and they proclaimed that all men are created equal.
The Continental Army forced the redcoats out of Boston in March 1776, but that summer the British captured New York City and its strategic harbor, which they held for the duration of the war. The Royal Navy blockaded ports and captured other cities for brief periods, but they failed to destroy Washington's forces. The Patriots attempted to invade Canada during the winter of 1775–76 without success, but they captured a British army at the Battle of Saratoga in October 1777. France entered the war as an ally of the United States with a large army and navy. The war then moved to the Southern states, where Charles Cornwallis captured an army at Charleston, South Carolina in early 1780, but he failed to enlist enough volunteers from Loyalist civilians to take effective control of the territory. Finally, a combined American and French force captured a second British army at Yorktown in the fall of 1781, effectively ending the war. The Treaty of Paris was signed September 3, 1783, formally ending the conflict and confirming the new nation's complete separation from the British Empire. The United States took possession of nearly all the territory east of the Mississippi River and south of the Great Lakes, with the British retaining control of Canada, and Spain taking Florida.
Among the significant results of the revolution was the creation of the United States Constitution, establishing a relatively strong federal national government which included an executive, a national judiciary, and a bicameral Congress representing states in the Senate and the population in the House of Representatives. The Revolution also resulted in the migration of around 60,000 Loyalists to other British territories, especially British North America (Canada).