“Everybody is upon the tip-toe of expectation,” John B. Jones wrote in “A Rebel War Clerk’s Diary” about May 31, 1862 as the Battle of Seven Pines was unfolding. “It has been announced (in the streets ...
A Union offensive near the Confederate capital of Richmond, Va., triggers fierce fighting on May 31, 1862, at the Battle of Seven Pines -- or Fair Oaks -- just eight miles east of that city.