Civil War Letters

One of the greatest and bloodiest battles of modern days has just closed, resulting in the complete rout of the enemy, who attacked us at daybreak Sunday morning...The Slaughter on both sides is immense...

--New York Herald, April 9, 1862

   reporting the first word about the Battle of Shiloh

University of Virginia history professor Gary Gallagher talks about the Seven Days' Battles, a series of conflicts fought during the last week of June 1862. In those battles, Confederate forces under Robert E. Lee thwarted George B. McClellan's Army of the Potomac in the Union attempt to take the Confederate capital of Richmond. Professor Gallagher argues that, in many ways, the Seven Days' Battles were more of a turning point in the Civil War than was the Battle of Gettysburg a year later. The Virginia Historical Society hosted.