The Peninsula campaign of the American Civil War was a major Union operation launched in southeastern Virginia from March to July 1862, the first large-scale offensive in the Eastern Theater. The operation, commanded by Major General 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.
George B. McClellan and Joseph E. Johnston, respective commanders of the Union and Confederate armies in the Peninsula campaign
Brig. Gen. Samuel P. Heintzelman
Brig. Gen. Erasmus D. Keyes
Maj. Gen. D. H. Hill
Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a state in the Southeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States between the Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains. The state's capital is Richmond and its most populous city is Virginia Beach, though its most populous subdivision is Fairfax County, part of Northern Virginia, where slightly over a third of Virginia's population of 8.72 million live as of 2023.
The story of Pocahontas was simplified and romanticized by later artists and authors, including Smith himself, and promoted by her descendants, some of whom married into elite colonial families.
In 1699, after the statehouse in Jamestown was destroyed by fire, the Colony of Virginia's capitol was moved to Williamsburg, where the College of William & Mary was founded six years earlier.
In 1765, Patrick Henry led a protest of the unpopular Stamp Act in the House of Burgesses, later depicted in this portrait by Peter F. Rothermel.
Eyre Crowe's 1853 portrait, Slaves Waiting for Sale: Richmond, Virginia, which he completed after visiting Richmond's slave markets, where thousands were sold annually