In November 1861, Union Major General George B. McClellan was called upon to lend his prestige and organizational talents to the task of commanding the Army of the Potomac, the grand army raised to suppress the Southern rebellion. Over the next few months he organized and trained that army and molded it into the form it would maintain until war’s end in 1865. Ninety-day volunteers were replaced with three-year men, regular units were added as they came East, and brigades and divisions with their own artillery were organized, as were cavalry units. Technical services such as medical, signal and quartermaster units also began to function, and the whole was trained and exercised while defending Washington, D.C. Men from all the states, as well as the farflung Regulars, concentrated around the capital, drilling in larger and larger units.

The Regulars needed the drill as much as the volunteers–they had been scattered in company-size garrisons for years, chasing Indians. Only one post in the whole United States was garrisoned by all three arms–infantry, artillery and cavalry–prior to the Civil War, and the Regulars had not faced a European-style enemy since 1848.

The Regulars’ evolution mirrored that of the volunteers. The first battalion of infantry and cavalry to come East became a Provost Brigade, separated into a nine-regiment Infantry Reserve Brigade and a three-regiment Cavalry Reserve Brigade. The artillery went into a multiple-brigade Artillery Reserve. By early 1862 the 1st and 2nd brigades, Reserve Division, contained nine exclusively Regular regiments, while the cavalry reserve contained three regiments of U.S. Cavalry. Each division in the Army had a Regular battery brigaded with two or three volunteer batteries, and the Artillery Reserve contained a Regular Horse Brigade (four batteries), a Regular Light Brigade (six batteries), and a fifth Volunteer Brigade with two U.S. batteries. The designation ‘Reserve marked the Regulars as the dependable backbone of the Army.

What was the character of these Regulars? Essentially there were two types of Regulars in two types of organizations. One kind of Regular was the veteran of some years’ service, commanded by West Pointers and commissioned former soldiers. Of the officers who survived the first battle to write reports, nearly all were West Pointers, although the eventual commander of the 2nd Regular Brigade, Major C.S. Lovell, had enlisted in 1831 and been commissioned in 1838. Captain T. Hendrickson, commanding the 6th Infantry, had enlisted in 1819 and was appointed from the ranks in 1838. They possessed all the qualities that make good soldiers: training, discipline and morale. Large portions of their days before the war had been spent in drills and other duties that promoted teamwork and obedience to superiors. Coupled with life governed by Army regulations and the Articles of War, their environment was one of purposeful subordination of the individual. They were inured to hardship and were grouped in the regiments of the Old Army.

The second type of Regular was the recruit assigned to an older regiment or to a regiment of the so-called New Army. They were typical Americans, enthusiastic individuals with no military experience. Their main advantages were the men who led them–the experienced cadres of officers and noncommissioned officers transferred from the Old Army–and their desire to equal or exceed the reputation of the older regiments.

In the infantry arm of the Union Army, soldiers drew on their prewar and early war experiences to help develop effective tactics. As a defensive or delaying tactic, infantry would use cover and concealment to shield itself from an enemy moving toward them. The soldiers would then spring up, firing muskets, shouting and thrusting bayonets to halt the enemy and either drive him away or trap him in the open, exposing him to protracted fire at close range.

Artillerists aided the infantry by massing on important terrain and seeking to place enfilading fire on the advancing enemy. Their main effect was at close range, using canister or spherical case shot. Artillery, like the bayonet and the prearranged shouting, was often an effective psychological weapon, too. Frequently its mere presence would alter enemy plans. The tradition and reputation of the U.S. artillery, as well as the organizing skills of artillery chiefs William Barry and Henry Hunt, made the Federal artillery exceptionally powerful.

Undoubtedly the cavalry was the most glamorous arm. But were mounted regiments to function as light dragoons or heavy cavalry? Should they rely on mobility and firepower, or mobility and shock? Answers to these questions would come soon. At Gaines’ Mill, the three arms of Regulars would demonstrate their capabilities against Robert E. Lee’s Confederate forces.

Having created an army of 100,000 men, McClellan began to feel pressure to use it. After all, to re-establish its sovereignty the Federal government would have to regain Southern territory. The enormous public expense of raising the army also had to be justified. McClellan and President Abraham Lincoln finally agreed, after a lengthy debate, on a movement from Fort Monroe, up the York-James River peninsula to capture the Confederate capital, Richmond. It is indispensable to you that you strike a blow, Lincoln told the reluctant general. You must act.

Lincoln was adamant that corps be added to the chain of command, an evolutionary step that McClellan was not ready to take. On March 3, 1862, LinColn presented him with a corps structure and commanders, including one, V Corps, commanded by Maj. Gen. Nathaniel P. Banks, a politician turned general. Little Mac was aghast, but he was given a golden opportunity to remedy the situation. He had been ordered to leave garrison and mobile troops to defend Washington from a Rebel thrust via the Shenandoah Valley while he moved south. Left behind were Maj. Gen. Irwin McDowell’s I Corps and, not coincidentally, Bank’s V Corps.

The Army of the Potomac moved up the Virginia Peninsula from April 4 to May 27, besieging Yorktown, fighting a battle at Williamsburg and establishing a base at White House on the Pamunkey, a tributary -of the York. Although confronted by only small Confederate forces commanded by Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston, McClellan’s green intelligence sources somehow convinced him that he was outnumbered. He constantly called for reinforcements and moved slowly, allowing the Confederates to shorten their lines and reinforce Johnston. Although McClellan had been promised that McDowell’s forces would operate with his army, the activities of Confederates in the Shenandoah Valley had so alarmed Washington that the release of I Corps was not forthcoming. McClellan, now near Richmond, was forced to split his army, leaving three corps north of the Chickahominy River, which runs southeast across the peninsula, to await McDowell and protect White House. Meanwhile, two corps were moved south of the river to confront Richmond.

During the operations, Brig. Gen. Fitz-John Porter, as division commander, had justified McClellan’s personal confidence, and on May 18 he assumed command of the Provisional V Corps, containing the two brigades of Regular infantry. On May 20, Porter received command of the artillery reserve of the army, in addition to the guns already in his divisions.

On May 31, Johnston attacked to destroy the two Federal corps south of the river at Fair Oaks. His inexperienced subordinates bungled the converging attack, however, and Johnston himself was wounded and replaced by General Robert E. Lee. Lee knew McClellan well. He correctly predicted to Confederate President Jefferson Davis, McClellan will make this a battle of posts.

After Fair Oaks, McClellan was indeed determined to besiege Richmond. He spent the interval building siege works and conducting local attacks to force Lee into Richmond. Gradually, he moved all his forces south of the Chickahominy, except Porter’s. However, on June 11, Brig. Gen. G.A. McCall’s division of McDowell’s corps arrived at White House and was assigned to Porter. Also on the 11 th, McClellan moved his headquarters south of the river, leaving Porter on the north bank near Mechanicsville, controlling his own divisions, those of Brig. Gens. George W. Morell and George A. Sykes, McCall’s division and all the cavalry not assigned to divisions or army headquarters. Porter now controlled three of the four mounted regiments in the Army of the Potomac, 18 Regular batteries and nine Regular infantry regiments. The cavalry screened his front between Meadow Bridge and the Pamunkey River. Porter’s mission was to await the ephemeral McDowell and prevent a thrust by the Confederates to White House.

On June 10, Confederate Maj. Gen. Thomas Jackson had begun moving from the Shenandoah Valley to Richmond. Lee conceived a ruse in front of the city while his force, joined by Jackson, attacked and destroyed the exposed V Corps. A reconnaissance by Confederate cavalry (Maj. Gen. J.E.B. Stuart’s celebrated Ride Around McClellan), however, may have tipped Lee’s hand to McClellan. The Union commander suddenly decided to change his base from White House to the James. His friend Porter and the reinforced V Corps were all that stood between the Rebels and the reorganizing Army of the Potomac,

While McClellan hesitated, convinced that he was dangerously outnumbered, his audacious Southern counterpart continued fine-tuning his own plan of attack. Richmond, Lee told his subordinates, could not be defended against a prolonged enemy siege; it was necessary to go on the offensive. The Union left, South of the Chickahominy, was too strong for a frontal assault, but a turning movement against the weaker of the enemy’s two wings–Porter’s–might welt succeed. Lee intended to attack with Stonewall Jackson’s vaunted foot cavalry, which had proven itself in the just-concluded Valley campaign. While Jackson descended from the valley to fall on the Union right flank and rear, the divisions of Confederate Generals D.H. Hill, A.P. Hill and James Longstreet would begin a frontal attack designed to sweep the Yankees southward. With speed and luck, McClellan’s over-extended army could be trapped between the swiftly closing Confederate pinchers.

The same night that Lee was meeting with his generals, McClellan was having something in the nature of a vision–a gloomy one, at that. Writing to his wife, he admitted: I have a kind of presentiment that tomorrow will bring forth something-what, I do not know. We will see when the time comes.

After a Confederate deserter disclosed to McClellan the frightening news that Jackson was coming down from the Shenandoah Valley to strike the Union rear, McClellan decided to conduct a reconnaissance-in-force to feel out the Southern defenses east of Richmond.

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