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The Battle of Yorktown or Siege of Yorktown was fought from April 5 to May 4, 1862, as part of the Peninsula Campaign of the American Civil War. Marching from Fort Monroe, Union Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan's Army of the Potomac encountered Maj. Gen. John B. Magruder's small Confederate force at Yorktown behind the Warwick Line. McClellan suspended his march up the Peninsula toward Richmond and settled in for siege operations. On April 5, the IV Corps of Brig. Gen. Erasmus D. Keyes made initial contact with Confederate defensive works at Lee's Mill, an area McClellan expected to move through without resistance. Magruder's ostentatious movement of troops back and forth convinced the Union that his works were strongly held. As the two armies fought an artillery duel, reconnaissance indicated to Keyes the strength and breadth of the Confederate fortifications, and he advised McClellan against assaulting them. McClellan ordered the construction of siege fortifications and brought his heavy siege guns to the front. In the meantime, Gen. Joseph E. Johnston brought reinforcements for Magruder. On April 16, Union forces probed a point in the Confederate line at Dam No. 1. The Union failed to exploit the initial success of this attack, however. This lost opportunity held up McClellan for two additional weeks while he tried to convince the U.S. Navy to bypass the Confederates' big guns at Yorktown and Gloucester Point and ascend the York River to West Point and outflank the Warwick Line. McClellan planned a massive bombardment for dawn on May 5, but the Confederate army slipped away during the night of May 3 toward Williamsburg. The battle took place near the site of the 1781 Siege of Yorktown, the final battle of the American Revolutionary War in the east. ==Background== McClellan had chosen to approach the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia, with an amphibious operation that landed troops on the tip of the Virginia Peninsula at Fort Monroe. His Army of the Potomac numbered 121,500 men, transported starting on March 17 by 389 vessels.〔 McClellan planned to use U.S. Navy forces to envelop Yorktown, but the emergence of the Confederate ironclad CSS ''Virginia'' and the Battle of Hampton Roads (March 8–9, 1862) disrupted this plan. The threat of the ''Virginia'' on the James River and the heavy Confederate batteries at the mouth of the York River prevented the Navy from assuring McClellan that they could control either the York or the James, so he settled on a purely land approach toward Yorktown.〔Eicher, p. 215.〕 The Confederate defenders of Yorktown, led by Maj. Gen. John B. Magruder, initially numbered only 11–13,000 men;〔Kennedy, p. 88, states 11,000; Eicher, p. 215, and Salmon, p. 76, state 13,000.〕 the rest of the Confederate forces, under the overall command of General Joseph E. Johnston, remained spread out across eastern Virginia at Culpeper, Fredericksburg, and Norfolk. Magruder constructed a defensive line from Yorktown on the York River, behind the Warwick River, to Mulberry Point on the James River (even taking advantage of some trenches originally dug by Cornwallis in 1781〔Sears, p. 48.〕) to effectively block the full width of the Peninsula, although he could adequately man none of the defensive works at that time. This became known as the Warwick Line. McClellan's plan called for Maj. Gen. Samuel P. Heintzelman's III Corps to fix the Confederate troops in their trenches near the York River, while the IV Corps under Brig. Gen. Erasmus D. Keyes enveloped the Confederate right and cut off their lines of communication. McClellan and his staff, ignorant of the extent of Magruder's line, assumed the Confederates had concentrated only in the immediate vicinity of Yorktown.〔Eicher, p. 215,〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Siege of Yorktown (1862)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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