In May 1862, Union Gen. George B. McClellan led the Army of the Potomac up the Peninsula to the gates of Richmond. Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee assumed command of the Army of Northern Virginia in June and began planning a counterattack. On June 12, Gen. J.E.B. Stuart led 1,200 cavalrymen on a daring 3-day reconnaissance and discovered that the Union right was unsecured. Stuart’s ride around McClellan gave Lee the vital information he needed to launch the offensive known as the Seven Days’ Battles on June 26. In the early evening of June 14, 1862, Stuart and a small escort set out for Richmond from six miles east, halted briefly at Richard S. Rowland’s house for coffee after leaving his exhausted cavalrymen at Buckland under the command of Col. Fitzhugh Lee, and then continued west to report to Robert E. Lee at Dabbs House. Eager to report and to get his story in the newspapers to bolster confidence in the Confederate capital, Stuart and his small party covered the last 30-mile leg before daylight, much of it across ground still behind Union lines. During the ride, Confederates captured 170 Federal prisoners, 200 wagons, and 300 horses and mules, and also burned two Federal warships. The raid showed that the Federal cavalry, which failed to stop it, was unequal at this stage of the war to the organization and training of Confederate cavalry. In little more than two weeks, 100,000 Union soldiers teemed over the ground from here to Harrison’s Landing, and after the Battle of Malvern Hill on July 1 McClellan completed his change of base to the James River and camped here with his army for the next six weeks.

Photo: Bernard Fisher

Hopewell, Virginia · USA