Union Invasion of Virginia 1862

The Union's invasion of Virginia, in 1862, is explained in a three part video filmed on location in Virginia. The narrative begins at Fort Monroe, in Hampton Road, and ends in Thoroughfare Gap in the Bull Run Mountains as Stonewall Jackson passes through on his way to Manassas Junction.  The relationship between George McClellan and President Abraham Lincoln is analyzed and the obstacles it created for McClellan are examined and the decisions he made with regard to them analyzed, with a summing up of his performance as a professional soldier and the place it gives him in American civil war history.

Starting at Fort Monroe, in the spring of 1862, General George B. McClellan moved an army of 85,000 men and 20,000 animals 90 miles up the Yorktown Peninsula, past the Confederate defenses at Yorktown and Williamsburg, to the Chickahominy River and the suburbs of Richmond, the Capital of the State of Virginia and the Confederacy. McClellan's campaign is presented with video from the actual locations where the movement occurred. The narrative takes you into the mind of McClellan, showing how he dealt with Lincoln and the problems the relationship created for the success of his mission and offers a comparsion between McClellan's performance in the East and General Grant's in the West.

Finally, as General Lee takes command of the Army of Northern Virginia and McClellan is ordered by Lincoln to return his army to the environs of Washington, we follow General Lee as he moves on Pope.