General Joseph Johnston pulled his outnumbered Confederate troops out of Yorktown under cover of darkness, abandoning the Peninsula Campaign's first defensive line. The withdrawal came after Union General George McClellan spent weeks building siege works instead of attacking, a caution that would define his controversial campaign toward the Confederate capital.
For nearly a month, Confederate troops under General John Magruder had bluffed a much larger Union army into paralysis at Yorktown, Virginia, marching the same units back and forth to appear more numerous than they were. General George McClellan, ever cautious, chose to besiege the town with elaborate siegeworks rather than storm it, giving the Confederates precious time.
By early May, General Joseph E. Johnston, who had taken overall command, judged the position untenable against McClellan's growing forces and heavy siege guns finally being wheeled into place. On the night of May 3, 1862, Confederate troops slipped away from Yorktown's trenches, leaving campfires burning and dummy 'Quaker guns'—logs painted black to resemble cannon—to fool Union observers.
McClellan discovered the ruse the next morning and pursued, but the delay at Yorktown had already cost the Union valuable time in its drive on Richmond. The episode became a symbol of McClellan's overcautious generalship, a pattern that would frustrate Lincoln throughout the Peninsula Campaign.