The Peninsula Campaign and Jackson in the Shenandoah Valley, 1862

Abstract

The 1862 Peninsula and Shenandoah Valley campaigns were transformative events for those who experienced the escalation of the Civil War in both size and scope. Its battles, the first in Virginia employing mass, people’s armies, marked the emergence of the famed command relationship between Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee and Maj. Gen. Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson. For the Federals, the operations exacerbated differences between Northern radicals and the Union’s principal eastern commander, Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan. Adhering to the early war policy of conciliation in the occupied South, McClellan and other federal officers and soldiers confronted a resistant White population, engendering retaliation from Union troops, while African American slaves flocked to Northern arms for protection and support. This, when coupled with Jackson’s stunning battlefield victories in the Shenandoah Valley and McClellan’s painstaking operational approach upon the Peninsula, frustrated President Abraham Lincoln and sharpened the ongoing debate over federal confiscation policy and emancipation.