In his brief West Virginia campaign, where he first came in contact with McClellan, being looked upon as an invader rather than a friend, Lee had scant success.  Some therefore called him a “mere historic name,” “Letcher’s pet,” a “West Pointer,” no fighting general.  He went to South Carolina to supervise the repair and building of coast fortifications there, and it was no doubt in large part owing to his engineering skill then applied that Charleston, whose sea-door the Federals incessantly pounded from the beginning, probably wasting there more powder and iron than at all other points together, was captured only at the end of the war and then from the land side.  In March, 1862, General Lee again became President Davis’s military adviser.

But though thus in relative obscurity, Lee was not forgotten.  President Davis knew his man and knew that his hour would come.  When, in May, 1862, the vast Federal army stood almost at Richmond’s gates, Albert Sidney Johnston being dead and Joseph E. Johnston lying wounded, the Confederacy lifted up its voice and called Robert E. Lee to assume command upon the Chickahominy front.  This he did on June 1, 1862.

The Confederates’ ill-success on the second day of the Fair Oaks battle was to them a blessing in disguise.  It put McClellan at his ease, giving Lee time to accomplish three extremely important ends.  He could rest and recruit his army, fortify the south of Richmond with stout works, a detail which had not been attended to before, and send Stonewall Jackson down the valley of Virginia, so frightening the authorities in Washington that they dared not re-enforce McClellan.

Brilliant victory resulted.  Leaving only 25,000 men between his capital and his foe, Lee, on June 26, threw the rest across the upper Chickahominy and attacked the Federal right.  Fighting terribly at Mechanicsville and Gaines’s Mill, A.P.  Hill and Jackson, the latter having made forced marches from the Shenandoah to join in the movement, pushed back Fitz-John Porter’s corps across the Chickahominy, sundering McClellan entirely from his York River base.  The Union army was now nearer Richmond than the bulk of Lee’s, which was beyond the Chickahominy, at that time none too easily crossed.  Had McClellan been Lee or Grant or Sherman he would have made a dash for Richmond.  But he was McClellan, and Lee knew perfectly well that he would attempt nothing so bold.  Retreat was the Northerner’s thought, and he did retreat—­in good order, and hitting back venomously from White Oak Swamp and Malvern Hill—­till he had reached Harrison’s Landing upon the James, where gunboats sheltered and supply-ships fed his men.

Lee felt disappointed with the seven days’ fighting in that he had not crushed McClellan.  He had, however, forced him to raise the siege of Richmond and to retreat thirty or forty miles.  The Confederacy breathed freely again, and its gallant chieftain began to be famous.