June 3, 1864---Slaughter at Cold Harbor

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 2^nd 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 18^th 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.

June 2, 1864---The Battle of Cold Harbor (Day Three)

JUNE 2, 1864:   

The Battle of Cold Harbor      (Day Three):          

After a forced night march, the Union Second, Sixth and Eighteenth Corps arrive at Old Cold Harbor after dawn. The men are so physically exhausted that Grant can make no use of them. He gives his men most of the day off, scheduling the opening of his planned assault until 5:00 P.M.  As the day passes, more footsore Union troops straggle into Old Cold Harbor. He delays the attack again, until 4:30 AM on the 3^rd.

While Union troops arrive and bivouac, Lee puts his arriving men to work digging entrenchments and building earthworks. 

If he had launched an initial attack, Grant may have just been able to overcome the works as they stood on June 1^st. By June 3^rd, the Confederacy has built itself a fortress.

 

Union General Don Carlos Buell, who has been without a Command since the Battle of Perryville in 1862, resigns in disgrace from the Union Army.

June 1, 1864---The Battle of Cold Harbor (Day Two)

JUNE 1, 1864:             

The Battle of Cold Harbor   (Day Two):            

The Confederacy appears to be in deep trouble. For the last month, The Army of Northern Virginia has been forced to give ground steadily as Ulysses S. Grant and The Army of The Potomac have pressed southward in the face of determined resistance. Battle after battle has been fought. Soldiers in blue seem to appear from a well-nigh inexhaustible source. The Confederacy has no such source. In just a single month of intensely concentrated combat, Grant has managed to advance from the Rapidan River to the outskirts of Richmond, a distance of 60 critical miles.

Although most historians hold that most of the many individual battles of Grant’s Overland Campaign were tactically inconclusive, Grant has displayed strategic genius. By simply pressing forward regardless of the intransigence of the enemy, he has forced Robert E. Lee to, time and again, take up blocking positions in an attempt to keep Grant from the gates of Richmond.

As of the morning of June 1, 1864, Lee’s blocking maneuvers have been a failure. Although he has been able to inflict fearsome casualties on the Union Army, this has not deterred Grant from moving forward. As the sun rises, Union troops are in control of the town of Old Cold Harbor, just ten miles from Jefferson Davis’ desk.

Lee’s only advantage is speed, and today he uses it. The Union Army is scattered hither, thither, and yon over a forty mile front twenty five miles deep stretching from the North Anna River to the Chickahominy River. Lee knows it will take time --- a precious day at least --- for the Federals to organize and move in force.

Lee’s smaller army can maneuver faster, and today he puts out the call. His men abandon their positions and race toward greater Richmond.  In the meantime, Lee sends what infantry and cavalry units he already has toward Old Cold Harbor. Lee knows that Union troops are there, and he is determined to retake the crossroads.

Lee orders an attack shortly after dawn, hoping to overwhelm the small Union force at Old Cold Harbor before more Northern troops can arrive. This plan goes awry when the Commander of the assault force, Colonel Lawrence Keitt of South Carolina is killed early in the battle. Keitt’s green 20th South Carolina regiment panics. The inexperienced men in the vanguard beat a frantic retreat. The panic spreads, and the Confederates run off, allowing Sheridan's troops to hold the crossroads. The Union sustains 2,200 casualties, the Confederacy 1,800.

Lee eventually masters his men, and they dig in, just as they have been doing throughout the Campaign. Grant decides that he does not have enough men on hand to overcome an entrenched enemy, and so he decides to wait for the bulk of The Army of The Potomac to arrive before renewing the attack. The delay proves costly. Lee’s forces arrive first.

May 31, 1864---The Battle of Cold Harbor (Day One)

MAY 31, 1864:             

The Battle of Cold Harbor  (Day One):  

 

Union troops enter the town of Old Cold Harbor and occupy it. For the first time since the Peninsula Campaign of the Spring and Summer of 1862, the Union can hear the church bells of Richmond. Richmond’s outskirts lie six miles south. The city center lies only ten miles away. The war may, if all goes well for the Union, end in early June.