Schematic plan · American Civil War

Battle of Seven Pines

31 May 1862
Virginia
Victory for USA

All battles The event in the chronicle Wikipedia

A schematic plan, generated from the statistics of the CAA Database of Battles: the armies' size and width, the hours of fighting, the plan of attack and the outcome are as recorded; the ground and the positions are not.

Confederacy (Cs Army, 41,816 men under J. E. Johnston & Smith) attacked USA (US Army of the Potomac, 41,797 men under Mcclellan) in Virginia. The CAA Database of Battles records 13.5 hours of fighting on a front of 6.4 km, a frontal attack against hasty defense, and that USA held. Losses: Confederacy 6,100 (15%), USA 5,000 (12%).

This plan is generated from those figures. It shows the shape of the battle the database describes: the size and width of the armies, the plan of attack and the outcome. It does not show where the units actually stood.

The armies

Confederacy

J. E. Johnston · Smith

Unit	Arm	Men
Confederacy left wing	Infantry	10,036
Confederacy centre	Infantry	13,381
Confederacy right wing	Infantry	10,036
Confederacy reserve	Infantry	8,363
J. E. Johnston & Smith	Commander	—
In this plan		41,816

USA

Mcclellan

Unit	Arm	Men
USA left wing	Infantry	10,031
USA centre	Infantry	13,375
USA right wing	Infantry	10,031
USA reserve	Infantry	8,359
Mcclellan	Commander	—
In this plan		41,796

What the sources report

	Confederacy	USA
Strength, this plan	41,816	41,797
Losses, this plan	6,100	5,000

In the CAA Database of Battles

CDB90 no. 183, “Seven Pines (Fair Oaks)”, compiled for the US Army to study what decides battles. These are the figures a what-if engine can be calibrated against.

Fighting: 13.5 hours
Winner: the defender
Terrain: Rolling, Mixed
Weather: Dry, Sunny, Temperate, Spring, Temperate
Defender’s posture: Hasty defense
Front width: 6.4 km (attacker), 6.4 km (defender)

Force	Strength	Losses	Horse	Guns	Plan and outcome
Confederacyattacker	41,816	6,100	—	—	Frontal attack; Penetration; Repulse; Stalemate
USAdefender	41,797	5,000	—	—	Defensive plan

Attacker’s advantages initiative +1

CDB90 (US Army Concepts Analysis Agency, 1990), tidy edition by Jeffrey B. Arnold; data under ODC-BY 1.0.

Notes

On this reconstruction

Generated automatically from the statistics in CDB90. Frontages, depths, distances, the order of events and the terrain are schematic: they follow the recorded strengths, front widths, hours of fighting, tactical plan and outcome, not maps or accounts of the battle. The sources give no hours; the timing is conjectural.

Sources

US Army Concepts Analysis Agency; tidy edition by Jeffrey B. Arnold, CAA Database of Battles (CDB90), no. 183 · ODC-BY-1.0Strengths, losses, front widths, hours of fighting, tactics and outcome.
Wikipedia contributors, Battle of Seven Pines · CC-BY-SA-4.0

Facts gathered from Wikidata (CC0), Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0) and Wikimedia Commons (licence per file); the plan and its text are timeastra’s own.