Existing comment:
Final Battle: Malvern Hill:
"Had the Union engineers searched the whole countryside below Richmond, they could not have found ground more ideally set for the slaughter of an attacking army."
-- Historian Douglas Southall Freeman
Darkness ended the fighting on June 30, but the Union army remained active all through the night. Long columns of infantry and artillery, with hundreds of walking wounded mixed in, slowly moved south on the Willis Church Road. Toward sunrise they emerged from the flat woods around Glendale and found the surprisingly vast and open spaces of Malvern Hill.
The Confederates did not pursue until the next morning. Multiple roads had aided their march on June 30, but on July 1 only two small country byways were available. All morning Lee's men struggled along the clogged roads. This was familiar ground to the army commander. Malvern Hill lay just 5-1/2 miles from "Shirley" plantation, girlhood home of his mother. He knew that terrain now favored the Union army, and that any further victories would require immense effort and good fortune.
While McClellan arranged his lines of defense at Malvern Hill and sent his wounded to hospitals along the James River, a frustrated R. E. Lee conferred with his deputies. General D.H. Hill cautioned that "If General McClellan is there in strength, we had better let him alone." Nonetheless, Lee determined to press forward, hoping to uncover an opportunity to deliver one last punishing blow to the Federal army before his offensive ended. |