The Battle of Cold Harbor was a major battle of the American Civil War that was fought from 31 May to 12 June 1864 during Ulysses S. Grant's "Overland Campaign" against the Confederate capital of Richmond. The Union Army of the Potomac launched several suicidal charges against the Army of Northern Virginia's entrenchments at the rural crossroads of Cold Harbor, achieving no advantage, and greatly demoralizing both the Union Army and the Northern public. Robert E. Lee and his Confederate army withdrew to the vital railroad town of Petersburg and entrenched themselves, forcing Grant to settle in for a siege of Petersburg, and initiating the grueling Richmond-Petersburg campaign.
Background[]
In the wake of Ulysses S. Grant's masterly disengagement from the North Anna River, both armies continued their running battle, sparring southeastward.
General Robert E. Lee took up a strong position on the south bank of Totopotomoy Creek, with the Pamunkey River to the north and Chickahominy River to the south. On 28 May he sent a cavalry reconnaissance eastward to test Grant's position. His men met Union horsemen near Haw's Shop, a local forge, and the resulting five-hour battle became one of the bloodiest cavalry engagements of the entire war.
On 30 May Grant pushed across Totopotomoy Creek, seeking Lee's right flank. The infantry of both armies clashed at Bethesda Church. Farther east, cavalry units fought at Old Church, but the Confederate horsemen fell back on a crossroads called Cold Harbor. Grant, believing Lee's lines unbreakable, was also casting an eye on Cold Harbor. A major battle was shaping up.
Battle[]
The dusty little hamlet of Cold Harbor sat in country so flat that only ravines cut by sluggish streams provided relief. Five roads radiated from the settlement like wheel spokes, including two to the southwest, which led over bridges across the Chickahominy River to Richmond, 8 miles away.
On 1 June 1864, this hamlet saw cavalry units fighting for its possession. As the afternoon wore on, infantry began arriving. Troopers in blue held the crossroads as Lee's divisions began approaching from the north. Grant's soldiers were marching along a parallel track, but some of them had become lost and were slow coming up. Although Lee's line stretched nearly 7 miles from Totopotomoy Creek in the north to the banks of the Chickahominy, the leading elements managed to block the road to Richmond. Lee's veterans dug in where they halted. Grant's men aligned opposite, and as evening fell the Union commander hurled them at the Southern line. "Aim low and aim well," one Confederate general advised his troops. For a few minutes, the Confederate lines blazed with rifle fire. Everywhere the Yankees fell back, except where one division nearly opened a breach, using a ravine for cover. This near-breakthrough impressed Grant, who thought one big push might divide the Army of Northern Virginia. He therefore ordered a huge attack for 2 June, but not all the Union troops were in place, so he reluctantly postponed to the following morning.
That night Lee's engineers strengthened their lines, shoring up weak spots and designing a broad zigzag pattern that created converging fields of fire, staked out with measured distances so that the artillery could better estimate range. The art of field fortification that the Confederates had been working on since Spotsylvania was now perfected in the flat fields around Cold Harbor. Though there was a steady patter of falling rain, the ominous noise of the Confederate soldiers strengthening their breastworks carried hundreds of yards to the ears of waiting Union soldiers. Grim premonitions swept through the ranks; many men pinned their names to their tunics to that burial parties would be better able to identify them.
Battle resumes[]
At 4:30 AM on 3 June, the signal gun fired and some 25,000 Union soldiers emerged from their works and crossed the muddy fields. Few of them had time to study the Rebel breastworks. Across the nearly 7-mile line, a mighty crash of Confederate cannon and rifle fire erupted that lit up the dawn sky and rattled the windows in Richmond.
Volley after murderous volley tore through the blue-clad ranks. Entire lines were cut down, and whole regiments disintegrated. In the midst of the pandemonium, General Francis C. Barlow's brigade briefly took a section of the Confederate earthworks, amidst a scene of sheer slaughter. In some places only minutes passed before survivors were pinned down by rifle fire as their officers urged them forward in vain. Yet Grant and his staff remained unaware of the situation on the ground. Barlow's fleeting success only prompted more orders to attack. The result was near mutiny among the generals, and it was midday before Grant finally halted the debacle. By then the full extent of casualties was becoming known. While some Confederate divisions reported no casualties, the Union troops had been decimated. Of the 6,500 to 7,000 men felled during the first hour of the battle that morning, most had been hit during the first fatal ten minutes.
The wounded abandoned[]
Among the casualties were masses of wounded men strewn across the ravaged fields. Still the Confederate gunners kept firing. Survivors could only dig in where they lay, using bayonets and tin cups as entrenching tools. The following day, Grant conferred with Le about collecting the wounded, who had lain exposed for over 24 hours. Grant refused to ask for a formal truce, and Lee distrusted Grant's motives. For three days, dead bodies lay on the fields. Under cover of darkness, some soldiers tried slipping out to recover their moaning comrades. But with the battle lines sometimes only 150 feet apart, sharpshooters dared any man who raised his head. Some tried digging trenches to reach the wounded instead. Finally, on the evening of 7 June, Grant asked for a formal truce and Lee agreed. By that time there were few wounded still alive in the fields of festering corpses. Burial parties were given tots of whiskey to help brace them for their task.
News of the repulse at Cold Harbor came as a shattering blow to the North. After a month of bloody assaults, some of Grant's commanders were growing restive; far and wide he was being decried as a "butcher." Grant never responded to the criticism. Two decades later, however, when he was writing his memoirs, Grant, dying of throat cancer, revealed his true feelings: "I have always regretted that the last assault at Cold Harbor was ever made."
Aftermath[]
Continued bad news from the battlefields kept support for the war discouragingly low in the Northern states. News of the carnage at Cold Harbor sapped spirits at the Republican National Convention, meeting on 7-8 June in Baltimore to nominate Abraham Lincoln for a second term. In Georgia, Joseph E. Johnston, withdrawing from one line of forbidding entrenchments to another, eluded Sherman's traps, stalling Union progress toward Atlanta. Soldiers in the Army of the Potomac were so unnerved by the slaughter that, days later, they balked at attacking the thinly defended trenches outside Petersburg.