Civil War in Hampton Roads: Peninsula Campaign continues the story begun in the previous two episodes of this series and picks up with the events that followed the Battle of the Ironclads. Major General George Brinton McClellan assumed command of the Army of the Potomac following the Union debacle at Bull Run. He arrived on the Virginia Peninsula on April 2, 1862. The Federal commander thought that he could trap Major General John Bankhead Magruder’s Army of the Peninsula at Yorktown like George Washington had cornered Lord Cornwallis during the American Revolution in 1781. The conflicts in Southeast Virginia during the first six months of 1862 comprise the Civil War’s greatest amphibious operation – the Peninsula Campaign. 


Civil War in Hampton Roads: Battle of the Ironclads
In the second episode in the series tensions increased as the North and the South simultaneously built Ironclad ships. The side finishing first could win the Civil War.  As it turned out, it was a virtual tie. On March 8th 1862 the U.S.S. Monitor was at risk of sinking in a storm on the Atlantic Ocean as it steamed south along the east coast. That very morning the C.S.S. Virginia almost destroyed the Union’s wooden fleet in Hampton Roads Virginia. But on March 9th the U.S.S. Monitor surprised the captain and crew of the Virginia who upon returning to the Roads expected to make short work of the remaining ships in the Union fleet. The stakes were high and the whole world was watching as the two ships pounded each other for four hours at close range. Battle of the Ironclads brings this story to life and illustrates how naval warfare was changed forever.

Civil War in Hampton Roads: First Episode, 1861
WHRO is producing a series of one-hour historical documentaries about the War Between the States.  The first episode illustrates the events at the beginning of the war in 1861.  This was the year that Southern Militia soldiers captured Gosport Navy Shipyard and Fort Norfolk, Brigadier General Benjamin F. Butler arrived at Fort Monroe and issued his Contraband of War decision, new technologies changed the way this war would be fought and residents of Hampton burned their city to the ground, shocking the Union command at Fort Monroe.  Fort Monroe’s moat-encircled masonry bastion was the only fort in the Upper South not to fall into Confederate hands when the war erupted.  Future episodes of this series will focus on the Battle of the Ironclads as well as the Peninsula Campaign.  John V. Quarstein, director of the Virginia War Museum, will host this series of programs focusing on the Civil War in Hampton Roads.