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.

*************

  

    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.

June 5, 1864---The Battle of Cold Harbor (Day Six); The Battle of Piedmont

JUNE 5, 1864:             

The Battle of Cold Harbor  (Day Six):         

When the casualty figures from Cold Harbor come in, there is a public outcry in the North.

It grows even louder when stories of the failed assault begin reaching the public’s ears. In the aftermath of Cold Harbor, the Peace Democrat and Copperhead factions are revivified. 

It is a dangerous time for the Lincoln Administration. The Presidential election is only 20 weeks away, and it appears that the still-popular and ever bloviating General George Brinton McClellan (retired) will be the Democratic candidate for President along with Peace Democrat “Gentleman George” H. Pendleton, a Congressman from Ohio who opposes the war. The two Georges run as “Peace Candidates” not Democrats. They formally eschew the Democratic platform, and base their public appeal on favoring a quick end to the war. 

There are calls to remove Grant from command, even some to reappoint McClellan as General-in-Chief. When Lincoln ignores these calls, the public’s anger toward General Grant is transferred on to President Lincoln, and his popularity plummets. The coming summer will see it sink ever further.

One of Grant’s most vociferous critics is Mary Todd Lincoln. The First Lady makes no secret of her disdain for “that butcher,” and some of her comments reach the papers. Mrs. Lincoln’s antipathy toward Grant will have tragic consequences at the war’s end. 

The Northern papers seize angrily, the Southern gleefully, upon the idea of Grant as a butcher. Perhaps it is unsurprising that the papers (both North and South) speculate that Grant was inebriated at Cold Harbor --- however, there is no objective evidence of this.  When Lincoln is pressed to relieve Grant, he answers simply, even to his wife, “I can’t spare this man. He fights.” 

Stories of Grant’s drinking are a dime a dozen, and may be worth just that much:

After his graduation from West Point in 1843, Grant was assigned to a series of armory and garrison posts. At one time, he was one of only 50 Captains in the U.S. Army. The Mexican War gave a boost to his career; he was one of the officers engaged at the Battle of Chapultepec, which won the war for the United States. But after the war, things returned to normal as the army was again stripped to its bare-bones minimum.

Grant married Julia Dent in 1848, and they had four children. In the 1840s, the Army was neither glamorous nor an effective way to support a growing family. Grant actually had to run a small business on the side to supplement his army pay.

In 1854, he was assigned to a frontier post in then- very remote Humboldt, California. When he took up his duty station at the isolated outpost, Grant decided to leave Julia and the children safely back in the East.

Grant was unhappy in Humboldt. He was bored with his do-nothing duty. His commanding officer was a martinet. He desperately missed his wife and family. And so he took solace in the bottle. According to the various tales that have come down the years, he was discovered to be drunk on duty, and was offered the choice between resigning his commission or being court-martialed. He decided to resign. 

Grant himself admitted, “Intemperance had not a little to do with my resignation.” There is little doubt that the man who eventually became President of the United States was an alcoholic as that term is understood today, and was probably a binge drinker. However, tales of his being roaring blind drunk in combat simply don’t seem to be true.  Work (of which there was plenty as General-in-Chief) and the relative nearness of Julia and the children in Washington, D.C. served as an anodyne to liquor.

President Lincoln, for one, did not seem particularly concerned about his General-in-Chief’s storied intemperance: “I wish some of you would tell me the brand of whiskey that Grant drinks. I would like to send a barrel of it to my other generals.”

Grant was no butcher. The son of a tanner, he had grown up among slaughtered animals, and rather than hardening him, the experience made him sensitive. He could not abide cruelty to animals nor men. The sight of blood made him dizzy; the smell of blood made him sick; gore horrified him.

More than one Civil War memoirist tells the same tale of Grant after a battle:  Grant would dutifully view the battlefield. He would not turn away from scenes of carnage. He would visit the wounded at the field hospitals. He would return to his headquarters. And then he would retire to his rooms, giving orders that he not be disturbed. His staff learned to tactfully ignore the muffled sound of wracking sobs that occasionally reached their ears from behind the General’s closed doors. After a few hours or an evening Grant would reappear among them, ready to carry on.

The cost of war was heartbreaking, but Grant understood better than most Union generals that in the Civil War the cost of war was the cost of peace.

The Battle of Piedmont:           

Having pulled most of the Confederate troops out of the Shenandoah Valley in order to fill his own depleted ranks, Robert E. Lee has made it possible for Union cavalry to retake the Valley against a remnant force. Of 5,000 Confederates in the battle, 500 are killed and almost 2,000 are captured when their line breaks. Union killed and wounded are about 800 of 10,000.

June 4, 1864---The Battle of Cold Harbor (Day Five: Trench Warfare)

JUNE 4, 1864:            

The Battle of Cold Harbor  (Day Five):           

In an example of the pillorying Grant is going to receive in the Press, the Richmond Times-Dispatch files the following report on the Battle of Cold Harbor:

  

The ground on which the battle was fought was the same with that on which the battle of '62 was fought. But the positions were reversed, we holding McClellan's and Grant holding Lee's. According to the accounts of prisoners Grant on the night of Thursday caused a quart of whisky to be distributed to each of the soldiers, and about four o'clock yesterday morning, having primed them well for the work, commenced an assault upon our works. repulsed again and again, with unprecedented slaughter, he constantly renewed the attack with fresh troops, sending his men up in columns ten deep, and, in great part, so drunk that they knew not what they were about, and pressed on with the most reckless audacity. Nothing could exceed the coolness with which they were received by our troops, who, standing behind their breastworks and suffering but little, shot them down by thousands, with as much deliberation as though they were firing at so many marks. At one o'clock the action ceased along the whole line, our troops having repulsed the enemy, who left several thousand behind him, dead or wounded, on the field. Gen. lee afterwards rode over to the field, and declared that the slaughter far exceeded that of the 12th of May.

The modern-day remains of a trench at Cold Harbor

In actuality, the bitterly sober Union troops spend the nighttime digging entrenchments. Soon, the trenches stretch for miles from Old Cold Harbor to New Cold Harbor. A seemingly-endless period of misery ensues for both sides. Lee’s earthworks form a labyrinth of interconnected trenches, rifle pits and burrows three lines deep. The Union’s initial trenches are not so complex in plan, but they are equally miserable --- filthy ditches more like elongated and interconnected foxholes, where men skulk just beneath the level of the earth like the rats they are trying desperately to avoid. 

Trench warfare is always crude and dehumanizing to the combatants. But Civil War trench warfare lacks even the crass refinements later adopted in the trenches of World War I. Sanitation is unknown. The walls of the trenches are shored with a hodgepodge of materials that make movement through the trenches difficult --- supporting timbers stolen from fences, the floors of supply wagons, huge rocks hauled into place by main force, uprooted tree stumps, and even large tree branches. Occasionally, the walls give way, and men are buried alive.  

The Cold Harbor trenches lack “duckboards” --- a raised wooden flooring which allows troops to walk on a smooth surface while allowing runoff and rainwater to collect and drain away from underfoot. The duckboards the Civil War troopers do not have would also keep the rats, snakes, spiders and worms out of their sight, at least during daylight. 

The average trench trooper at Cold Harbor is sleeping on the muddy dirt at the bottom of the trench in company with all sorts of critters among stagnant pools of water, urine and floating human waste. Flea, tick, spider and centipede bites are common, as are attacks by rats.

A man daring enough to peer above the parapets will likely be drilled between the eyes by an enemy bullet. Artillery fire is trained to a nicety upon the enemy’s trenches, and the first wartime shouts of “incoming!” echo eerily across the field. Since the Confederacy is using many captured Union guns, it is difficult for the men --- reduced to a weary troglodytism --- to recognize one gun from another, and men are often blasted out of existence at complete unawares.         

All through the days and nights of June 3-5, the horrors of the trenches are punctuated by the screams of wounded, mostly Union, soldiers, who are lying in the heat and stench of No-Man’s Land, begging for water, begging for help, begging for a bullet to the head so as to be put out of their misery. Grant sends messages across the lines to Lee --- he is unwilling to couch his request to rescue his wounded in terms of a “truce” --- and Lee, who knows very well what Grant wants, is uncharacteristically obstinate, and even cruel. By the time Lee and Grant arrange a brief respite to recover the wounded, most of the men have died in agony.