Battle of Beaver Dam Creek  "Second of the Seven Days"  June 26, 1862

In the early morning of June 26, 1862, Gen. Robert E. Lee waited impatiently for the start of his first battle as commander of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia. Lee had decided to attack the right wing of Gen. George B. McClellan's huge Union army, which was poised to capture Richmond, just six miles away. McClellan had placed one lone corps under the command of Gen. Fitz John Porter on the north side of the Chickahominy River, and Lee massed 47,000 men in three divisions to attack Porter from the front while Gen. Stonewall Jackson's command, just arrived from the Shenandoah Valley, swept down upon Porter's rear.

Lee's Confederate division, commanded by Gen. A.P. Hill, was to force a crossing of the Chickahominy and begin the attack once Hill heard the sound of Jackson's guns. The agonizing hours passed slowly as Hill waited impatiently to start the battle. Finally, at 3:00pm, without hearing from Jackson, Hill decided that he must be near and began the offensive on his own. His five brigades crossed the river, swept through the hamlet of Mechanicsville, and located Porter's Union corps strongly entrenched on high ground behind Beaver Dam Creek.

A little before 5:00pm, Hill started his men attacking across a large open plain toward the creek and the almost impregnable Union position. A Pennsylvania division of 36 cannon delivered a rain of iron and lead that decimated Hill's ranks. Lee brought over the other two divisions and sent reinforcements to Hill, who launched them towards the Union lines. "The result was, as might have been foreseen, a bloody and disastrous repulse," wrote one Rebel officer. Nightfall brought an end to the fighting. Lee's first day in battlefield command was a miserable failure. He had suffered 1,484 men killed and wounded, while Porter, still holding his very strong position, had lost only 361.

Fascinating Fact: The Battle of Beaver Dam Creek is also known as the Battle of Mechanicsville and the Battle of Ellerson's Mill.


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