The Battle of Big Bethel, also known as the Battle of Bethel Church or Great Bethel, was one of the earliest land battles of the American Civil War. It took place on the Virginia Peninsula, near Newport News, on June 10, 1861.
Virginia's decision to secede from the Union had been ratified by popular vote on May 23, and Confederate colonel (later major general) John B. Magruder was sent down the peninsula to deter any advance on the state capital Richmond by Union troops based at the well-defended post of Fort Monroe. This garrison was commanded by Major General Benjamin Butler, a former Massachusetts lawyer and politician, who established a new camp at nearby Hampton and another at Newport News. Magruder had also established two camps within range of the Union lines, at Big Bethel and Little Bethel, to lure his opponent into a premature action.
Butler took the bait, when he and an aide, Major Theodore Winthrop, devised a plan for a night march, followed by a dawn attack to drive the Confederates back from their bases. Butler chose not to lead the force in person, for which he was later criticized. The plan proved too complex for his poorly trained subordinates to carry out, especially at night, and his staff had also omitted to communicate the passwords. They were trying to advance without knowledge of the layout or strength of the Confederate positions when a friendly fire incident gave away their own. The commander in the field, Massachusetts militia general, Ebenezer Peirce, received most of the blame for the failed operation.
The Union forces suffered 76 casualties, with 18 killed, including Maj. Winthrop and Lt. John T. Greble, the first regular army officer killed in the war. The Confederates suffered only eight casualties, with one killed. Although Magruder subsequently withdrew to Yorktown and his defensive line along the Warwick River, he had won a propaganda victory, and local Union forces attempted no further significant advance until the Peninsula Campaign of 1862. While small compared to many later battles, Big Bethel attracted exaggerated importance because of the general feeling that the war would soon be over.
After the American Civil War began with the formal surrender of Fort Sumter to Confederate forces on April 14, 1861, and President Lincoln's call for volunteers to suppress the rebellion on April 15, 1861, Virginia's political leaders quickly set in motion the process of seceding from the Union and joining the Confederacy. Even before secession was formally accomplished, Virginia agreed to coordinate its state military forces with the Confederacy and began to seize federal property. The United States Regular Army garrison under the command of Colonel Justin Dimick held Fort Monroe, a nearly impregnable fortress at Old Point Comfort on the southern tip of the Virginia Peninsula between the York River and the James River where they empty into the Chesapeake Bay. The bay was to the east of the fort and Hampton Roads was to the south. The fort was supported by the Union Navy at Hampton Roads and could be reinforced and resupplied by water without attack by shore batteries or harassment by the nearly non-existent Virginia or Confederate naval forces. The fort was nearly immune from attack from the land side since it could be approached only over a narrow causeway and a narrow isthmus and had massive walls and hundreds of cannons. An inlet called Mill Creek was the body of water that almost cut the fort off from the mainland of the Peninsula.
The American Civil War (1861–1865) was the deadliest conflict in American history, killing an estimated 620,000 to 750,000 soldiers and an unknown number of civilians. The Confederate States of America, formed by eleven seceding Southern states, faced the Union in four years of warfare across 23 states and territories. Major engagements included First and Second Bull Run, Antietam (the bloodiest single day in American history, September 17, 1862), Chancellorsville, Gettysburg (July 1–3, 1863), Vicksburg (surrendered July 4, 1863), and Sherman's March through Georgia and the Carolinas (1864–1865). President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, transforming the war's stated purpose to include the abolition of slavery and enabling the enlistment of approximately 180,000 Black men in the United States Colored Troops. Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865. The war resolved the question of secession and ended American slavery, though Reconstruction would face sustained resistance in its attempt to secure civil rights for formerly enslaved people.
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