JUNE 3, 1864:
The Battle of Cold Harbor (Day Four):
Union troops swing into
action at Cold Harbor at 4:30 A.M. in a frontal assault upon Lee’s entrenched
lines. The battle begins in fog and ends in disaster for the Union in less than
an hour.
By 5:30 A.M., the
Union has lost over 7,000 men. Many of these men fall during one horrific ten
minute segment of time, between 4:45 A.M. and 4:55 A.M. In the predawn
darkness, cannons were fired pointblank at the advancing men and flying lead
thickened the very air like a plague of locusts. Said one observer, “The men went down in
lines.”
The “Bloody” 8th New
York Infantry Brigade sustains the heaviest casualties of the battle, losing
about a third of their number in that terrible assault.
Only in four places
do Union troops reach Lee’s lines. In only one place does the Union penetrate
Confederate defenses; but without reinforcements, the men (those who are not
slaughtered) fall back.
The fault is all
Grant’s. Grant has convinced himself (after the Battle of The North Anna River,
and despite the cost of the battles since then) that Lee’s army is on its last
legs. He is not right. But he is not entirely wrong either, as history will
prove.
Lee, even with his
back to the wall, has managed to exploit Grant’s weaknesses. Although Grant is a strategic genius, he has
always been an indifferent tactician who has not outgrown his belief in the
18th Century Napoleonic massed frontal assault. Until today.
Today he has taken
the same bait Lee offered him at The Muleshoe. It is the very same bait he
refused to take at the Hog Snout. Grant will never take it again.
His decision on June
2nd not to attack with exhausted troops may have been a wise one,
but his failure to reconnoiter the Confederate positions (hidden by trees and
rolling hills) in the interim has proven nearly fatal.
The assault formally
goes on until 12:30 P.M., but by 6:00 A.M. hardly any Union troops are in
action. General William Farrar “Baldy”
Smith leading the 18th Corps, is insubordinate in a face-to-face confrontation
with his Commander, and flatly refuses to follow Grant’s orders to press the
attack. It is telling that nothing happens to Smith. Other Brigades simply
refuse to move when so ordered. The refusal to renew the attack is nearly
universal. Again, Grant does nothing to the insubordinate troops.
Long after
Cold Harbor, Grant wrote: "I have
always regretted that the last assault at Cold Harbor was ever made . . . No
advantage whatever was gained to compensate for the heavy loss we
sustained."
The Battle
of Cold Harbor goes on for nine more days from Union and Confederate
entrenchments.
In total,
the Union sustains nearly 13,000 casualties during the protracted battle, half
of them in that deadly opening hour. The Confederacy loses 6,000 men total.
Although
Cold Harbor was “the easiest victory of the war” for the Confederacy, it would
prove to be Lee’s last.
If the
Overland Campaign has accomplished anything, it has altered the momentum of the
Civil War permanently in favor of the Union. No longer will The Army of The
Potomac retire behind the Rapidan River to lick its wounds. It will fight on. And
so it is proved at Cold Harbor. Grant
orders his men to dig in. Trench warfare has become the new métier of the Civil
War.
