William Dorsey Pender was a general in the Confederacy in the American Civil War serving as a brigade and divisional commander. Promoted to brigadier on the battlefield at Seven Pines by Confederate President Jefferson Davis in person, he fought in the Seven Days Battles and at Second Manassas, Fredericksburg, and Chancellorsville, being wounded in each of these engagements. Lee rated him as one of the most promising of his commanders, promoting him to major general at twenty-nine. Pender was mortally wounded on the second day at Gettysburg.

The Seven Days Battles were a series of seven battles over seven days from June 25 to July 1, 1862, near Richmond, Virginia, during the American Civil War. Confederate General Robert E. Lee drove the invading Union Army of the Potomac, commanded by Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan, away from Richmond and into a retreat down the Virginia Peninsula. The series of battles is sometimes known erroneously as the Seven Days Campaign, but it was actually the culmination of the Peninsula Campaign, not a separate campaign in its own right.