Booknotes: Retreat From Victory

New Arrival:

• Retreat from Victory: The Battle of Malvern Hill and the End of the Seven Days, July 1, 1862 by Francis Augustín O’Reilly (Savas Beatie, 2026).

With book-length popular and scholarly histories detailing Civil War battles of all sizes and significance released in great numbers over the years, one might have expected that all of the big fights of the 1862 Peninsula Campaign, and perhaps most of the smaller ones, would have been the objects of one or more standalone studies by now. Oddly enough, though, that has not been the case. However, two long-anticipated projects, R.E.L. Krick's Gaines's Mill study and now Frank O'Reilly's Retreat from Victory: The Battle of Malvern Hill and the End of the Seven Days, July 1, 1862, are finally in our hands.

From the description: "Malvern Hill on July 1, 1862, marked the climax of the Seven Days’ Battles around Richmond, Virginia. For the first time since the Civil War began, the full might of Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan’s Union Army of the Potomac and Gen. Robert E. Lee’s Confederate Army of Northern Virginia met on one field. The world watched and wondered as this high-stakes combat played out on the doorstep of the Confederate capital. The Union army emerged victorious with its superior positions and overwhelming artillery firepower, yet McClellan retreated from victory to establish a safe base on the James River. Lee’s army secured a default victory simply by holding the battlefield and saving Richmond from capture."

Prior to O'Reilly's work, the best overall account of Malvern Hill sat inside Brian Burton's excellent Seven Days campaign study Extraordinary Circumstances (2001). Of course, in describing one of many major battles fought during that week, the space devoted to Malvern Hill coverage was necessarily limited. Now, in O'Reilly's book we get "the first book-length treatment of this critical and pivotal combat."

Indeed, O'Reilly's book, with its nearly 400 pages of main narrative supported by 20 original maps, offers a comprehensive portrait of the battle that's unprecedented in detail and scope. More from the description: O’Reilly's Retreat from Victory "examines the singular struggle at Malvern Hill in depth and from a wide variety of perspectives, including its implications for the war, the armies, the opposing governments, the people, and slavery. He pieces together the tactical movements of troops on the battlefield and the intentions of leaders on the front lines and in the halls of government in Washington, D.C., and Richmond, Virginia. Above all, he gives voice to the soldiers, sharing their experiences in combat and on campaign."

In the larger picture, Malvern Hill, the bloody conclusion to the Seven Days epic, "elevated General Lee’s career and marked the beginning of the end of General McClellan’s. It was a watershed moment when the Civil War transformed from a rebellion into a revolution."