DK - The American Civil War

THE BATTLE OF COLD HARBOR

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 so that burial parties would be
better able to identify them.

Battle resumes
At 4:30 a.m. on June 3, 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 (11-km)

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

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 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 Lee 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 150ft (45m) apart, sharpshooters

dared any man who raised his head.

Some tried digging trenches to reach

the wounded instead. Finally, on the

evening of June 7, 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.”

Berdan sharpshooter frock coat

Named for their commanding officer, Colonel Hiram

Berdan, the 2nd U.S. Volunteer Sharpshooters were a

crack Union regiment. They fought at Cold Harbor, but

with less success than their Confederate counterparts.

DIGGING UP THE REMAINS OF THE FALLEN AT

COLD HARBOR, ONE YEAR AFTER THE BATTLE

Union battery at Cold Harbor
During the battle of June 1, these Union Sixth Corps
gunners fought so close to the Confederate line that
they were nicknamed “Battery Insult.”

BREASTWORK A rapidly constructed,

temporary fortification, erected as a

defense in battle. The name comes

from its walls being breast height.

Continued bad news from the battlefields

kept support for the war discouragingly

low in the Northern states.

LINCOLN’S REELECTION IMPERILED

News of the carnage at Cold Harbor sapped

spirits at the Republican national convention,

meeting on June 7–8 in Baltimore to nominate

President Lincoln for a second term.

SHERMAN IMPEDED

In Georgia, Joseph E. Johnston, withdrawing

from one line of forbidding entrenchments to

another, eluded Sherman’s traps, stalling Union

progress toward Atlanta 292–93 ❯❯.

SHATTERED CONFIDENCE

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 262–63 ❯❯.

AFTER

“I had seen nothing to exceed this.

It was not war; it was murder.”

CONFEDERATE GENERAL EVANDER MIVOR LAW