On the 1st June 1862 Jeff Davis appointed his military advisor, general Robert E Lee, to lead the Confederate Army in Virginia. The former commander and joint victor of the earlier(Summer 1861)1st Manassas battle, General Joseph E Johnston, had been seriously wounded the evening before. The 31st May had seen the Confederates given a good opportunity to wreck a part of the Union Army of Potomac as it straddled the Chickahominy river, just a few miles East of the Confederate capital of Richmond. Johnston’s plan had been good: he had planned to throw 22 of his 29 Infantry Brigades at the two Union Corps South of the river. Here he outnumbered the Northern forces, who would have been defeated before the other larger half could have come to its aid. Unfortunately for the South, General Longstreet commanding the attacking force took the wrong road and never got his attack coordinated with the other Division heads and both sides ended up losing about 5000 casualties apiece and the Northern army escaping relatively unscathed.
General Lee would push the Northern Army of Potomac, commanded by General George B McClellan, back from the gates of Richmond, bottling him up on the Peninsular, then defeat another Northern army under a bombastic General Pope in Northern Virginia and invade Maryland all in the next three months. Johnston’s wounding at the battle of Seven Pines was the best and most significant thing to happen that day. The South would never look back after the 1st June 1862 as Lee took them from seeming defeat to victory after victory. As the South’s fortunes waned over the next two years, it was Lee’s command of the Army of Northern Virginia and his hold over the state and threat to Washington, that gave it and its people hope.