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Mistakes That Helped Shape U.S. into What it Is Today

Khalid Elhassan October 16, 2019 34 min

15. The Confederate Con

The Warwick Line and Siege of Yorktown. Wikimedia

Magruder ordered his men to create a ruckus and din, with drumrolls and cheering in woods behind the lines, to fool their foes into believing there were far more Confederates in the vicinity than was the case. He also used the same column of men over and over, marching them within sight of the federals to take up positions on the defensive line, then slipping them away outside the Union observers’ line of sight. He then reassembled in column, and marched them again to the defensive line to take up defensive positions once more.

Magruder’s theatrics convinced McClellan that the Confederate positions were too strong for a frontal attack – a task made easier by McClellan’s readiness to believe himself outnumbered. On April 5^th, 1862, the Union commander ordered a halt on his side of the Warwick River, had his men dig in, and set out to conduct a siege when he could have simply bulled through, swatted Magruder aside, and seized Richmond.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.