June 6, 1864---The Battle of Cold Harbor (Day Seven: Combat Shock)

JUNE 6, 1864:                 

The Battle of Cold Harbor (Day Seven): 

Although most historians focus heavily on the violence at Cold Harbor only on June 3^rd, the fact is that Grant’s ill-advised assault cost no more in lives than George Pickett’s equally ill-advised assault at Gettysburg. Pickett’s Charge had also lasted just an hour.

Grant lost just as many men each at The Muleshoe and in The Wilderness.

Another fact, usually overlooked, is that the trench warfare portion of the battle cost the Union another 7,000 men and the Confederacy 6,000. 

All in all, the assault, though its losses were brutal, was not atypical for the Overland Campaign.

What went so wrong at Cold Harbor, and why is it so well remembered?

This question has vexed historians for 150 years. There are two major reasons that Cold Harbor became a Union debacle:

1.  The Union command structure was overly complex:

General Grant was the General-in-Chief of all Union armies (despite the fact that he was traveling with The Army of The Potomac). George Meade was the Commander of The Army of The Potomac. In practice, Grant was the strategist and Meade the tactician, although Grant’s role caused him to have a large hand in establishing tactics as well. 

Although Meade was subject to Grant’s orders, Meade also could issue tactical orders independently, such as the Order of Battle for individual Corps and Brigades.

Grant could also issue such tactical orders, superseding Meade.

Both men maintained separate and independent Headquarters and staff that did not always effectively communicate nor coordinate activities between them. Staff loyalties sometimes meant that Grant’s orders to Meade were delivered slowly or not implemented fully. Meade’s orders to Corps and Brigade commanders were often ignored or overlooked by Grant’s staff as being those of a subordinate. 

Corps and Brigade Commanders sometimes did not know who was in charge in a given situation --- for example, in the case of conflicting directives did Meade’s immediate orders override Grant’s standing orders? Whether they did could have a huge impact on a battle, and often mid-level commanders were left to puzzle out the answers for themselves. 

While the two men generally worked well together on a face-to-face basis, the rapid pace of events during the Overland Campaign meant that they could not always meet or directly coordinate activities. Thus, orders became confused, garbled, or contradictory, and whether or not a Corps or Brigade commander acted often depended on who he considered to be “in command,” whether he had received the order from Meade or from Grant, or whether he had confirmed the order with both HQs.

This, in part, explains the glacial pace of Union progress and organization (or lack thereof) at the outset of the Battle of The North Anna River, and the scattershot condition of Union units during the days preceding their assemblage at Cold Harbor.  It was hard enough for one commander to keep track of the scattered units and the numerous actions. It was impossible for two men to have a clear shared picture of battlefield conditions, especially given the crude state of battlefield communications during the Civil War.

It also explains the confusion regarding the reconnaissance of Confederate positions during the hours leading up to the assault. Perhaps both men overlooked it, or both assumed the other had acted, or it’s possible that a breakdown in communication between the two HQs caused the disastrous oversight. 

If information had a hard time flowing down from the top, it had a worse time flowing up from the bottom. Brigade commanders reported to Corps commanders, who reported to Meade, who reported to Grant --- officially. But some commanders bypassed Meade. Grant might assume Meade knew something he didn’t. Meade might assume the same of Grant. Intelligence might not reach the commanders at critical points, or different information might reach each of them. Under the pressure of battle, confirmations were difficult to come by. And so, The Army of The Potomac would muddle along, its troops being brutalized in the process. 

The Army of Northern Virginia, however, had the simplest possible command structure a complex force could have. Robert E. Lee was the Senior Commander. He gave his orders (most often directly) to his Corps Commanders, who then passed them down to the Brigade Commander level. While misinterpretation and confusion are the bugbears hiding always in the fog of war, it would be difficult to simplify a top-down chain of command any more than did General Lee.

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    2. Combat Shock:

The command conditions in the The Army of The Potomac undoubtedly contributed to the outcome at Cold Harbor. However, those conditions were not unique to Cold Harbor. They were endemic to the Overland Campaign as a whole. By the time of Cold Harbor, the Northern Army was primed for a condition known as “Combat Shock.”

Historian Lawrence Babits diagnoses combat shock as the cause for the abrupt British collapse at the Battle of Cowpens during the Revolutionary War in 1781. At Cowpens, the formerly victorious British Army under Bannister Tarleton (known as “Bloody Ban”) pursued a seemingly beaten Patriot Army across the field. At the last, the Patriots turned at bay and fired pointblank into the first line of British troops. Most of the British soldiery, wounded or not, hit the ground and subsequently surrendered.

Although Tarleton castigated them in his memoirs as cowardly soldiers, the facts are different. Tarleton had driven his men very hard to pursue the Patriots for miles in darkness across rough, unfamiliar, wooded ground for nearly twenty miles without rest, sleep or food in midwinter. When a seeming victory was snatched from them, the psychic shock of defeat, combined with the effects of exhaustion, hunger and demoralization suddenly caught up with the British, who simply threw down their arms.

Much the same thing happened at Cold Harbor but on a huge scale. The Army of The Potomac had been fighting nonstop for a month, taking terrible casualties, but making obvious headway. Grant and Meade both were convinced that The Army of Northern Virginia was “whipped,” and that victory was within their grasp. So did most of their men.

Thus, when Lee’s seemingly defeated men inflicted a brutal punishment on Grant’s men just miles from their stated goal of Richmond, the Union Army suddenly and catastrophically deflated. Both commanders and men refused to fight anymore. The attitude at Headquarters immediately went from elation to despondency.

Although there were no large-scale Union surrenders or desertions and Grant refused to leave the field, the trench warfare portion of the battle was marked by extraordinary distress for the Union men, made worse by the fact that the fighting and dying was continuing. Since mental illnesses were not specifically categorized in Union war records, exactly how many men went “trench happy” in the days between June 4^th and June 12th will never be known. It was probably a significant number.