The Peninsula and the Seven Days: A Battlefield Guide

By Brian K. Burton
Illustrated, maps, appendices, softcover, 169 pp., 2007. University of Nebraska Press, 1111 Lincoln Mall, Lincoln, NE 68588-0630, $21.95 plus shipping.

Reviewer: Frank Piatek
Frank Piatek graduated from Geneva College with a B.A. in history. He received his J.D. from Duquesne University in 1972. He is a member of several reenactment groups and past president of the Mahoning Valley Civil War Round Table.

Review:
Sometime ago, I had the pleasure of reviewing Brian K. Burton's Extraordinary Circumstances: The Seven Days Battles for Civil War News. At that time, I said his book was perhaps the most detailed tactical rendition that one might find, a well-balanced presentation and analysis of the fighting.

This offering by the author is a "user-friendly" concise tour book of those battlefield sites as well as other sites in Gen. George McClellan's Peninsula Campaign. One can take this book with its precise driving directions and orientation and literally tour the entire campaign.

There are maps, done by cartographer Christopher L. Brest, with the stops clearly denoted. They also depict the positions of the contending forces in that sector. The text provides an overview of each day and then goes into specific sites with a recitation of what occurred, and analysis, and suggestions for further reading.

Burton adds certain asides, termed "vignettes," that offer anecdotal accounts of the fighting and "excursions" that direct one to close-by areas of special interest.

The appendices include separate orders of battle for the armies in the early part of the campaign and during the Seven Days' battles and a concise but well-written discussion of the organization of the armies, weapons and military tactics.

These make the guide so much more useful to the neophyte, especially when one is standing on the actual site trying to appreciate what occurred.

This book is a part of the "In This Hallowed Ground" series of guidebooks of Civil War battlefields by the University of Nebraska Press. They currently include Chickamauga, Gettysburg, Shiloh and the Wilson's Creek, Pea Ridge, Prairie Grove battlefields which are done by equally distinguished historians.

But unlike touring other battlefields where the fighting took place between two large armies in one static area that is protected today by the National Park Service, the entire Peninsula Campaign is comprised of separate smaller engagements all over the Williamsburg to Richmond corridor. Many of the sites are not protected, which is unfortunate, but they are still accessible.

The fluidity of McClellan's movements within this large territorial span begs for someone to put it all together and Burton does just that. This makes his book even more essential to put some semblance of order into the scattered actions and make meaningful what this particular campaign was all about.

Perhaps Burton's passion is the Peninsula Campaign by virtue of his writing thus far. This short volume is a valuable adjunct to his tactical study of the Seven Days, both of which are required reading for anyone wanting to get into real details from the ground up.