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18621776 Club

Lee sends wave after wave up Malvern Hill; 171 Union guns shatter each charge

McClellan holds the 130-foot rise with artillery and James River gunboats, winning the field decisively even as his army prepares to fall back to Harrison's Landing.

After nearly a week of grinding combat across the Virginia Peninsula, George McClellan had finally found ground worth holding. On July 1, 1862, Robert E. Lee sent wave after wave of Confederate infantry up Malvern Hill — a 130-foot rise in Henrico County held by 171 Union guns — in assaults his own senior subordinate James Longstreet had advised against. Union artillery, supported by gunboats on the James River, shattered each charge before it reached the Federal line. McClellan's army won the field decisively, then abandoned it anyway, retreating to Harrison's Landing and ending the Peninsula Campaign…

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More from July 1
1863

Hill's men march on Gettysburg for supplies; Buford's cavalry is waiting on the ridges

Trading ridge for ridge all morning, Union troopers hold long enough for infantry to arrive; Hancock picks Cemetery Hill as the ground to stand on.
1946

Blandy detonates the bomb over Bikini; the target fleet survives, and the Navy claims vindication

Test Able misses its aim point by 2,130 feet, scattering results that disappoint the Navy's critics but settle nothing about the weapon's power at sea.
1898

Roosevelt and the Buffalo Soldiers take Kettle Hill; San Juan Heights fall to the Fifth Corps

Outnumbered 16-to-1, Spanish defenders under Linares y Pombo inflict punishing losses before the heights are carried and the road to Santiago opens.
19631776 Club
The Zone Improvement Plan assigns a unique ZIP code to each address nationwide, with the first digit narrowing a region and each that follows pointing closer to a single post office.
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More from Civil War & Reconstruction
1864

Lincoln signs Yosemite Valley over to California; the federal government sets aside scenic land for the public for the first time

Senator Conness shepherded the bill through Congress; the valley the Ahwahnechee called Ah-wah-nee for 3,000 years is now a public trust.
1863

Out of ammunition, Chamberlain orders the bayonet; the 20th Maine sweeps Little Round Top

The Union left had no plan to hold the hill; Oates's 15th Alabama breaks when the Maine men charge downhill, and a portion of the regiment is taken.
1863

Lee turns south; 12,500 men sent across an open mile are thrown back, and the Army of Northern Virginia retreats

The assault on Cemetery Ridge collapsed under Union artillery and rifle fire before it reached the line; survivors streamed back across the same field.
1863

Gardner surrenders Port Hudson; the Union holds the Mississippi from source to sea

After 48 days on the bluff, half his men sick and the food gone, the Confederate general yields the last rebel stronghold on the river.
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