Malvern Cliffs

General John B. Magruder sent wave after wave of Confederate infantry against Union artillery at Malvern Hill. In 1862, many of the attackers had to cross a largely treeless landscape of small ridges and ravines that bisected their route, terrain that both exposed them to deadly fire and temporarily sheltered them. The last fighting on this part of Malvern Hill occurred at dusk, as Georgians, Virginians, Louisianans, and North Carolinians approached the high ground here and to the right front. Some reached the slave cabins before Union counterattacks ended the Confederate advance. Most Confederate survivors spent an uneasy night among the dead and wounded. Asa Winn of the 3rd Georgia Infantry recalled that canister killed their men in large numbers and that each time they went to the top of the hill to fire, someone would fall.

Virginia · United States