Hey everyone, thanks for tuning in to episode number 135 of our Civil War podcast.

I'm Rich and I'm Tracy. Hello y'all. Welcome to the podcast. In the last episode, we talked about the federal failure at Dury's bluff on the James River.

The accurate fire of the Confederate guns on the bluff and effective sharp shooting from the river banks proved too much for the unsupported union naval attack.

But while the federal ships weren't able to proceed all the way up river to bombard Richmond that didn't change the fact that the James, at least up to Dury's bluff, was now under union control.

This was important because as we said before, the York River boarded the peninsula to the north and the James River boarded it to the south.

With the destruction of the CSS Virginia and the opening of the James, the Confederates, including Jefferson Davis's military adviser Robert E. Lee, greatly feared that McClellan would take advantage of the opportunity to shift his entire line of advance to the James.

Abraham Lincoln also had seen this opportunity and hoped that with the opening of the James McClellan would shift his line of advance, but little Mac had no such plans.

Instead, as we said last time, having pushed up the York River to West Point, he then moved up the Pomunky River and established a huge supply base at White House Landing.

From there, he could follow the line of the nearby railroad and advance on Richmond from the east.

The shortcoming of this approach to the enemy capital was that a march on Richmond from the east, using the railroad as his axis of advance, would force McClellan to straddle the Chica-Homony River with part of the army north of the river and part south of it.

By contrast, an advance based on the James would allow McClellan to approach Richmond from the south, meaning his left flank could be protected by the Navy and his right flank, if he withdrew his whole force south of the Chica-Homony and destroyed the bridges, his right would be guarded to a large extent by the Chica-Homony.

McClellan, though, refused to switch his line of advance to the James. He later claimed this was because he needed to extend his line north to meet up with McDowell's Corps as it marched from Fredericksburg to join him.

As Joel recall, we talked about this development with regard to McDowell at the end of the last episode.

Just to review, though, McDowell's Corps was originally slated to be part of McClellan's Peninsula campaign, but then it was withheld from Little Mac after Lincoln and Secretary of War Edwin Stanton discovered that he had fudged the numbers with regard to the troops left behind to safeguard Washington.

After Little Mac through a hissy fit over this development, he was eventually given one division of McDowell's men and now was to get the rest of the Corps and even additional troops commanded by James Shields. The reinforcements added up to about 40,000 men.

This welcome development contained an important and unwelcome catch however. Though McClellan wanted McDowell's troops to come by water, joining him at White House Landing, the president insisted that the reinforcements march south toward Richmond by the most direct route.

As Lincoln saw it, this overland route would save time and also let McDowell stay between Washington and the Confederate Army.

All of this is important because McClellan later said, essentially, hey, look, I couldn't switch my line of advance to the James because I had to extend my line's northward to meet up with McDowell's march from Freddicksburg.

So I had to straddle the Chica harmony with part of my army north of it and part of it south of the river.

This is important because this arrangement north and south of the Chica harmony left the army of the Potomac vulnerable and Joe Johnston would take advantage of this and go over to the offensive with the result being the battle of Fair Oaks.

And later on we'll see that Robert E. Lee also takes advantage of the situation with the result being the seven days battles.

The only problem with Little Max later excused making is that he had already committed himself to an advance on Richmond from the east even before he learned that McDowell would be joining him.

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