From the Mountains to the Bay
The war in Virginia, January-May 1862
By Shane D. Makowicki
Article published on: April 1, 2024 in the Army History Spring 2024 issue
Read Time: < 6 mins
Over the past 150 years, historians have spilled a tremendous amount of ink detailing military operations in the
Civil War’s Eastern Theater, particularly Virginia. For this reason, Ethan S. Rafuse acknowledges that his
study, From the Mountains to the Bay: The War in Virginia, January–May 1862, is “to a great
extent a work of synthesis” (xvii). Nevertheless, Rafuse’s holistic approach to this period of the
war allows him to cast an oft-covered subject in a new light. By treating the varied operations as “part
of a single grand effort” by the U.S. and Confederate high commands, Rafuse demonstrates how small-scale
campaigns and battles of seemingly minor importance had “major ramifications for every other part of the
system” (xviii).
In his preface, which functions as the book’s introduction, Rafuse makes a compelling case for
Virginia’s importance in the war writ large. Although it was the location of the Confederate capital,
Virginia held more than just symbolic value. In addition to the Confederacy’s largest population
(1,596,318 inhabitants, of whom 31 percent were slaves), the state boasted the rich agricultural lands of the
Shenandoah Valley, the commercial centers of Alexandria, Fredericksburg, and Petersburg, and the growing
industrial hub of Richmond. As Rafuse points out, Jefferson Davis, Abraham Lincoln, and their military
commanders realized that “without the Old Dominion’s agricultural, human, and industrial resources .
. . the Confederacy’s ability to wage warfare in the industrial age would be severely, if not fatally,
compromised” (xiv).
These critical factors combined to make Virginia the scene of a “remarkably diverse range of
operations,” conducted by U.S. and Confederate military forces on a grander scale than had ever been
attempted in North America (xiii, xvii). The bulk of Rafuse’s work, divided into ten chapters, is devoted
to describing these campaigns, which stretched from Bath and McDowell in western Virginia to the Tidewater
region and the Virginia Peninsula. The book progresses chronologically from Maj. Gen. Thomas J.
“Stonewall” Jackson’s Romney Campaign in January 1862, through the arrival of Maj. Gen. George
B. McClellan’s Army of the Potomac outside the gates of Richmond in late May.
The first three chapters discuss McClellan’s appointment as general-in-chief of the Federal armies, his
subsequent (and often contentious) debates with Lincoln regarding U.S. strategy, the Confederate retreat from
Manassas Junction in the early spring of 1862, and the clash of the CSS Virginia and the USS
Monitor—the first fight between ironclad warships—at the Battle of Hampton Roads on
8–9 March. Chapters 4–5 describe fighting in the Shenandoah Valley, including Jackson’s defeat
by Brig. Gen. James Shields at Kernstown on 23 March, and the opening of McClellan’s campaign on the
Virginia Peninsula (between the York and James Rivers). The greater portion of Chapters 6–8 focuses on
McClellan’s subsequent siege of Yorktown, which lasted from 5 April to 4 May. The final two chapters cover
Jackson’s victory at the Battle of McDowell (Sitlington’s Hill) in the mountains west of Staunton on
8 May, the repulse of Cdr. John Rodgers’s Navy squadron at the Battle of Drewry’s Bluff below
Richmond a week later, and the Army of the Potomac’s advance up the peninsula to the Chickahominy River.
Throughout the book, Rafuse demonstrates his mastery of writing operational narrative. He possesses a keen sense
of when to zoom out to discuss larger strategic or political questions and how much detail to apply when
describing tactical engagements. Moreover, he never loses sight of what sets his work apart from the scores of
other studies on the spring 1862 campaigns in Virginia. Repeatedly, he draws clear connections between the
fighting in disparate regions of the state and illustrates how one military action or decision fed into another.
For instance, Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston’s withdrawal from Manassas Junction in early March,
which was partly a result of U.S. advances in the Shenandoah Valley, forced McClellan to adjust his
“vision of operations” and abandon his initial plan to shift the Army of the Potomac to Urbanna on
the Rappahannock River (57). Another example is Rafuse’s analysis of Kernstown. Although the battle was a
tactical U.S. victory, Jackson’s aggressiveness convinced Lincoln to detach Brig. Gen. Louis
Blenker’s division from McClellan’s control and send it to Maj. Gen. John C. Fremont in western
Virginia. This weakened McClellan’s field force and placed additional pressure on the already strained
relationship between the general and the president.
Apart from his deft handling of military operations, numerous other factors strengthen Rafuse’s work. He
consistently notes how terrain, weather, and logistics imposed limitations on campaigns and affected their
outcomes. Jackson’s movements during the Romney Campaign were hampered by winter snows and a shortage of
rations. At the same time, the “unusually wet” weather on the Virginia Peninsula throughout the
spring flooded roads and bogged down horses, wagons, and artillery trains (136). Rafuse also pays due attention
to related developments such as the “professionalization” of the U.S. Army’s officer corps in
the decades preceding the Civil War (11) and the creation of Thaddeus Lowe’s “corps of
aeronauts,” which provided reconnaissance for McClellan (159). Yet while Rafuse’s analysis of these
subjects helps to contextualize the operations he describes, he avoids getting mired in tangential material.
Another refreshing aspect of Rafuse’s book is his willingness to challenge common perceptions of major
military figures. The most notable example here is General Joseph E. Johnston, who is often treated as a purely
defensive general with no inclination for offensive operations. Conversely, Rafuse notes that Johnston advocated
drawing Confederate forces closer to Richmond not because he was obsessed with retreating but because he sought
to husband strength for an attack that would assist the Confederate cause far more than a futile attempt to hold
Yorktown ever could. “We must change our course, take the offensive,” Johnston told General Robert
E. Lee in late April 1862. “Our troops have always wished for the offensive and so does the country”
(187).
Nevertheless, Rafuse’s study would benefit from connecting the campaigns in Virginia to those that occurred
simultaneously in other theaters. The book is about the Old Dominion, and there its focus must lay, but just as
operations in the state could not be isolated from each other, nor could they be isolated from the larger war
effort. This is particularly true because, until mid-March 1862, McClellan was general-in-chief of all U.S.
armies. McClellan acknowledged this in the strategic vision he outlined for Lincoln in February, in which he
stated that Brig. Gen. Ambrose E. Burnside’s command in eastern North Carolina and Brig. Gen. Don Carlos
Buell’s army in Kentucky were critical parts of his “general plan.”1
This is, however, a relatively minor quibble that does not seriously detract from the book’s significant
contributions. Rafuse’s engaging and informative operational narrative, his ability to link each campaign
to the larger whole, his impressive archival research, and the extremely useful orders of battle that he
provides (Appendixes A and B) make From the Mountains to the Bay a worthy addition to the shelf of any
military historian who seeks to understand the interconnected nature of strategy, operations, and tactics.
Footnotes
1. U.S. War Department, The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation
of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, 128 vols. (Washington, DC: U.S.
Government Printing Office, 1880–1901), ser. 1, vol. 5, 44.
Author
Shane D. Makowicki is a PhD candidate at Texas A&M University, where he studies American military
history with a focus on the Civil War. His dissertation analyzes the interplay between conventional
operations, guerrilla warfare, and military occupation in eastern North Carolina from 1862 to 1863. He
holds a bachelor’s in history from the University of Connecticut and a master’s in history
from Texas A&M. He currently works as a historian for the U.S. Army Center of Military History.