Lee’s First Strike
The Confederate plan did not call for an attack against the Union position along Beaver Dam Creek. Instead, a series of manuevers would make the Union defenses here untenable. But poor communication and unexpected obstacles caused delays. Lee felt vulnerable. A large portion of his army lay isolated on the other side of the Chickahominy. He decided to test the Union defenses here while his primary plan unfolded.
Southern infantrymen suddenly found themselves advancing from the village of Mechanicsville across nearly one mile of shell-swept ground behind you. Most of the regiments had seen little if any combat. Their inexperience quickly became apparent. Some units advanced too far. Others stubbornly held their ground along the creek bottom, long after they should have fallen back. None advanced beyond the creek. The first battle of the most critical campaign in the Confederacy’s short history ended disastrously.
“As you near Beaver Dam, you descend to a road which turns abruptly to the right and left, and runs along the edge of the bluff [now the park’s entrance road]….In front of the road all the trees and bushes have been cut away and felled….Beyond this abattis was an open swamp, eighty or a hundred yards wide, in which man or beasts mire to the waist.” Confederate newspaper correspondent, July 1862
Marker can be reached from Cold Harbor Road (Virginia Route 156).
Courtesy hmdb.org
