Video: June 26, 1862 (at 19:54)

(Thursday June 26, 1862, the first major engagement of the Seven Days Battles during the Peninsula Campaign of the American Civil War) — Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia struck Union Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan’s Army of the Potomac today in the Battle of Beaver Dam Creek in Hanover County, Virginia.

Although the Confederates sustained heavy losses and did not succeed in decisively defeating the Yankees, the battle unnerved McClellan. During the next week, Lee drove him from the outskirts of Richmond, Virginia, back to his base on the James River.