Again Grant executed a left flank movement to get around Lee, and then
by a series of flanking marches, which the Confederate soldiers called
the “sidling movement,” and the Union soldiers the “jug-handle”
movement, Grant gradually worked his way down to Cold Harbor.
_Cold Harbor_
Where and what was Cold Harbor? Cold Harbor was a seedy-looking tavern,
squatting by a dusty crossroads 8 miles from Richmond, on the flat,
featureless plain, intersected by hundreds of small creeks, gullies, and
swamps, that is characteristic of the land between the Pamunkey and the
Chickahominy Rivers. There wasn’t a harbor for miles and it was anything
but cold. It was the only Cold Harbor in the United States, although
there were many Cold Harbors on the stagecoach routes along the Thames
River in England. The name indicated a place to get a bed for the night
and something cold to drink, but not hot meals.
[Illustration: _Cold Harbor Tavern._ From a photograph taken in 1885
as it appears in _Battles and Leaders of the Civil War_.]
But these dusty crossroads were strategically important if Grant was to
attack Richmond, and both Lee and Grant realized it. Also, it was
Grant’s last chance to continue his strategy of trying to get between
Lee and Richmond—any more flanking movements and Lee would be in the
entrenchments around the Confederate Capital where Grant did not want to
fight him. As Grant stated: “Richmond was fortified and entrenched so
perfectly that one man inside to defend was more than equal to five
outside besieging or assaulting.”
It is significant that Lee also did not want to fight in the
entrenchments around Richmond. There he would be on the defensive, and
in such a position could not possibly destroy Grant’s army. So both
commanders were willing for the test.
And what of the lowly foot-soldier, the unsung hero in the ranks, the
poor bloody infantryman? Was he ready for the awful test?
[Illustration: _Confederate camp._ From a contemporary sketch.]
To the average soldier, this whole campaign was fast becoming just a
series of hazy, indistinct recollections, like the fragments of a
half-forgotten dream: Long columns of sweat-soaked soldiers marching
over hills and rivers and swamps, across ploughed fields and corn
fields, down endless dusty roads through dark, lonely woods; 30 days of
marching by night and fighting by day, until it must have seemed to them
that the only things left in life were stupefying fatigue, merciless
heat, choking dust, smoke and noise, mud and blood.
In the Union ranks many of the men began to find out for the first time
what hunger really was. They had moved so fast and so often the ration
wagons were left far behind. Hardtack was selling for a dollar apiece—if
you could find a seller. And here at Cold Harbor the soldiers wrote
their names and regiments on pieces of paper and pinned or sewed them to
the inside of their dirty blouses, with the forlorn hope that if and
when they were killed someone might take the time to find out who they
were.
To Lee’s barefoot, ragged veterans, hunger had been a constant companion
for a long time, but at Cold Harbor they approached starvation. A
Confederate sergeant recorded in his diary: “When we reached Cold Harbor
the command to which I belonged had been marching almost continuously
day and night for more than fifty hours without food, and for the first
time we knew what actual starvation was.” When scurvy appeared among the
men, owing primarily to a lack of fresh vegetables, Lee advised them to
eat the roots of the sassafras and wild grape, if they could find any.
In the race for initial possession of the crossroads at Cold Harbor,
Lee’s cavalry won by a few hours. But in the afternoon of May 31 Gen.
Philip Sheridan’s cavalry drove them out and held the crossroads until
relieved by the Federal VI Corps under Gen. Horatio Wright. Most of
Sheridan’s troopers were armed with the new Spencer repeating carbine,
which made dismounted cavalrymen effective infantry.
The next morning, June 1, Lee threw Gen. Richard Anderson’s corps
(Longstreet’s old corps—Longstreet having been wounded in the
Wilderness) against the Federal VI Corps in a bold attempt to seize the
crossroads and roll up Grant’s left flank before he could reinforce it,
but Anderson was repulsed. Grant then moved the XVIII Corps under
“Baldy” Smith, which he had borrowed from Butler’s army bottled up on
the south side of the James, over to the right of the VI Corps. That
afternoon they attacked Anderson, now supported by Gen. Robert Hoke’s
division.
The assault failed to break the Confederate line, but it did bend it
back in several places. Grant believed that with a greater concentration
a breakthrough could be achieved. Consequently, he ordered the II Corps
under Gen. Winfield Hancock over to the left of the VI Corps, between it
and the Chickahominy River, and planned an all out attack by the three
corps for the morning of June 2.
Anticipating the move, Lee put A. P. Hill, supported by Gen. John
Breckinridge’s division, over to his right between Anderson and the
Chickahominy and waited.
The expected attack failed to materialize, however. Hancock got lost in
the woods and swamps moving to his assigned position, and after an
all-night forced march the men were too exhausted to mount an attack.
Any chance the assault might have had for success was now gone. The
delay was fortunate for Lee because Breckinridge also got lost and was
not in position to support Hill on the morning of June 2. The attack was
then ordered for that afternoon but again postponed until 4:30 the
morning of June 5. And each corps commander received a telegram from
Grant’s headquarters that read: “Corps Commanders will employ the
interim in making examinations of the ground in their front and
perfecting arrangements for the assault.”
Lee’s veterans took advantage of this fatal 24-hour delay to entrench
themselves quickly and effectively, using every creek, gully, ravine,
and swamp in such fashion that all approaches to their positions could
be covered with a murderous fire. A newspaper reporter present at Cold
Harbor wrote a vivid description of those entrenchments. “They are
intricate, zig-zagged lines within lines, lines protecting flanks of
lines, lines built to enfilade opposing lines * * * works within works
and works outside works, each laid out with some definite design.”
Lee needed this strong position; he would fight at Cold Harbor without a
reserve. He wrote to Jefferson Davis: “If I shorten my lines to provide
a reserve, he will turn me; if I weaken my lines to provide a reserve,
he will break them.”
Grant’s battle plan was relatively uncomplicated. It was, essentially, a
simple, frontal assault. Hancock’s II Corps and Wright’s VI Corps,
between the Chickahominy and the Cold Harbor road (now State Route 156),
together with Smith’s XVIII Corps north of the road, were to attack all
out and break the Confederate lines. Gen. Gouverneur Warren’s V Corps,
north of the XVIII, was to be held in reserve, while Burnside’s IX
Corps, on Grant’s extreme right, was not to enter the fight unless Lee
weakened his line in that sector, then it would attack, supported by the
V Corps. Lee did not weaken any part of his line, so these two corps
were not engaged to any appreciable extent. Thus the battle actually
took place on approximately a 2½-mile front, although the armies
stretched for 6 miles from south to north, with the Union army facing
west. Grant’s total strength was over 100,000 men, but less than 50,000
were actually engaged in the struggle.
Lee now had A. P. Hill, supported by Breckinridge, on his south flank
next to the Chickahominy opposite Hancock and Wright. Hoke’s division
straddled the Cold Harbor road with Gen. Joseph Kershaw’s division just
north of Hoke, then Anderson and Gen. Richard Ewell’s corps. Lee’s total
strength consisted of less than 60,000 men, but only about half were
involved in the action of June 3.
It rained all night the night of June 2. Toward morning the heavy rain
died to a soft, sticky mist that held the area in clammy fingers. The
first gray streaks of dawn warned of the approach of a scorching sun
that would turn the rain-soaked plain, with its myriad streams and
swamps, into a steaming cauldron. Promptly at 4:30 the three corps
jumped off to the attack, knowing nothing of the strength of the
Confederate positions they would have to face. The corps commanders had
ignored Grant’s telegraphed order of the previous afternoon and no
proper reconnaissance was made.
The average soldier saw little in any battle in the Civil War, and even
less at Cold Harbor because of the terrain. But as the first yellow rays
of the sun shifted the gray mists, most of the Union soldiers could see
the main line of Confederate entrenchments across the open spaces in
front of them—a tracing of raw earth that had been turned up like a huge
furrow, along a line of uneven ridges, looking empty but strangely
ominous. Here and there bright regimental colors perched insolently on
the dirt hills.
Suddenly, it seemed, the line was dotted with black slouch hats and
glistening bayonets. Yellow sheets of flame flashed from end to end,
then disappeared in a heavy cloud of smoke. Regiment after regiment
exploded into action with a metallic roar. Gigantic crashes of artillery
split the air. Shells screamed overhead like a pack of banshees,
exploding in clouds of earth, horses, and men. The noise roared to a
crescendo with a volume of sound that left the men dazed and confused.
One veteran said it was more like a volcanic blast than a battle.
It was over in less than 30 minutes, but 7,000 killed and wounded Union
soldiers were left lying in the sun between the trenches. Said one
general sadly: “In that little period more men fell bleeding as they
advanced than in any other like period of time throughout the war.”
Those not already killed or wounded threw themselves on the ground and
desperately heaved up little mounds of earth in front of them with
bayonets, spoons, cups, and broken canteens. They could neither advance
nor retreat—nothing standing could live long in that hail of lead and
iron. They just dug in and stayed there.
A peculiar thing about the battle came to light afterwards. The three
corps commanders sent identical telegrams to Grant’s headquarters, each
accusing the other of not supporting him in the attack. Later it was
discovered what had actually happened. Hancock, on the left, had veered
to his left because of the heavy fire from there and the peculiarities
of the terrain. Wright, in the center, had gone straight ahead. And
Smith, on the right, bore off to his right because of swamps and
ravines. So the farther they advanced the more separated they became and
the more their flanks were left open to a deadly crossfire.
No other major assault was attempted by either army, although the troops
stayed in the hot, filthy trenches until June 12, with constant,
nerve-wracking sharpshooting and skirmishing. From June 1 to 12 the
Union losses totaled 12,700; Confederate losses are estimated at between
1,500 and 2,000.
Cold Harbor proved to be Lee’s last major victory in the field, and
although it was a military zero so far as Grant was concerned, it turned
out to be one of the most important and significant battles fought
during the Civil War. The results of this battle changed the course of
the war in the east from a war of maneuver to a war of siege. It also
influenced the strategy and tactics of future wars by showing that
well-selected, well-manned entrenchments, adequately supported by
artillery, were practically impregnable to frontal assaults.
[Illustration: _Federal trenches at Cold Harbor._ From a
contemporary sketch.]
[Illustration: _Federal coehorn mortars at Cold Harbor._ From a
contemporary sketch.]
[Illustration: _Looking for a friend at Cold Harbor._ From a
contemporary sketch.]
On June 5, Grant decided to bypass Richmond, cross the James and attack
Petersburg, an important railway center 25 miles south of the
Confederate Capital. This would still keep Lee’s army pinned down, and
if successful would cut communications between Richmond and the rest of
the Confederacy.
On June 6 he withdrew Warren’s V Corps from the lines and used it to
secure the passages across the Chickahominy and down to the James. On
June 7 he sent Sheridan, with two divisions of cavalry, back into the
Shenandoah Valley against Early. To counter this, Lee was forced to send
Gen. Wade Hampton’s cavalry after Sheridan, which in effect left Lee
without adequate cavalry. During the night of June 12 Grant secretly
moved all the troops out of the trenches at Cold Harbor, without Lee’s
being aware of the move until the following morning, and by June 16 the
Army of the Potomac of over 100,000 men, 5,000 wagons, 2,800 head of
cattle, and 25,000 horses and mules, were all safely across the James
River. Richmond was saved for another 10 months.
[Illustration: _Pontoon bridge across the James._ Courtesy, National
Archives.]
_Fort Harrison_
In the pre-dawn darkness of September 29, Grant quietly slipped Gen.
David Birney’s X Corps and Gen. Edward Ord’s XVIII Corps back across the
James in a surprise move against the outer defenses of Richmond. The
primary purpose was to prevent Lee from re-enforcing Early in the
Shenandoah Valley. If, however, any weakness was discovered it could be
exploited fully, and it might force Lee to weaken some part of the
Petersburg line.
Shortly after daybreak Gen. George Stannard’s division of the XVIII
Corps successfully stormed heavily armed but badly undermanned Fort
Harrison on the Varina road. Gen. Hiram Burnham, commanding the leading
brigade, was killed in the assault and the Union forces renamed the
captured fort for him. A mile and a half farther north, Gen. Adelbert
Ames’ division of the X Corps was repulsed in a similar attack on
another fortification, Fort Gilmer, on the New Market road.
[Illustration: _Area of the Richmond battlefields._ From _Battles
and Leaders of the Civil War_.]
General Lee regarded the loss of Fort Harrison as serious enough to
demand his personal attention. The next day, with re-enforcements rushed
from Petersburg, he directed several vigorous assaults against the fort.
However, the Union forces had closed in the rear and strengthened it,
and, armed with new repeating rifles, successfully beat back the attacks
and inflected heavy losses on the Confederates.
[Illustration: _Members of the 1st Connecticut Artillery at Fort
Brady, 1864._ Courtesy, Library of Congress.]
The fall of Fort Harrison forced Lee to draw back that part of his outer
line and to build new entrenchments to compensate for the loss. It also
forced him to extend his line north of the James, thus weakening his
already dangerously undermanned defenses in front of Petersburg. The
Union forces, to protect their position further and to neutralize
Confederate gunboats, constructed Fort Brady a few miles south of Fort
Burnham (Harrison) on a high bluff overlooking the James River.
No further serious efforts were made to enter Richmond from the north
side of the James, and the two armies faced each other in these
respective positions until Grant finally broke Lee’s lines at Petersburg
on April 1, 1865, forcing the Confederates to abandon Richmond.
_Richmond Falls_
Spring came gently to Richmond that year of 1865. The winter had been
long and hard. After a cold, wet March, Sunday, April 2, dawned mild and
pleasant. The green buds on the trees and the bright new grass put the
breath of seedtime in the air; sap flowed warm in the lilac and the
magnolia. Under a rich blue sky the people strolled leisurely to church
amid the cheerful music of the bells and the soft murmur of the James
River falls.
In St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, at the corner of Ninth and Grace
streets, Jefferson Davis sat in the family pew listening to the sermon.
The sexton walked up the aisle and handed him a message from General
Lee.
“I advise that all preparation be made for leaving Richmond tonight.”
Davis arose quietly and left the church, walked a block down Ninth
street to his office in the War Department and gave the necessary orders
for evacuation.
Late in the afternoon the official order was posted—then pandemonium
reigned. Trunks, boxes, bundles of every description were piled on the
sidewalks and in the streets. Wagons, carts, buggies, anything that had
wheels and could move, were loaded and raced through the city to fight
their way across Mayo’s Bridge in the mad rush to cross the James and
flee south.
A frantic mob trampled each other without mercy and jammed the streets
leading to the railroad stations, only to be turned back by soldiers’
bayonets. The few trains that would manage to leave were reserved for
government officials, archives, the treasury, and military personnel.
Early in the evening the character of the crowds began to change. From a
city of less than 38,000 before the war, Richmond now had over 100,000
people jammed into every available nook and cranny. They had come by the
thousands to work for the various government departments and in the
munitions factories. Refugees from the many battles fought in Virginia
had poured in, as well as the sick and wounded, followed inevitably by
deserters, spies, criminals, gamblers, speculators, and derelicts of
every kind.
And now the cheap hotels, saloons, and gambling dens began to empty
their customers into the streets, many of them half drunk.
All semblance of law and order disappeared. When the guards at the State
penitentiary fled, the prisoners broke loose to roam the city at will.
The provost guard took the prisoners of war from Libby Prison down the
river to be exchanged. This left only the Local Defense Brigade,
consisting of government and munitions workers. But most of them were
required in government buildings to pack and burn records; some guarded
the railroad depots, while others were engaged in destruction
assignments. The order had been given to burn all tobacco and cotton
that could not be removed by tossing flaming balls of tar into the
warehouses along the riverfront.
In the meantime, Mayor Mayo and the city council had appointed a
committee in each ward to see that all liquor was destroyed, and shortly
after midnight they set to work. Casks and barrels of the finest
southern bourbons were rolled to the curbs, the tops smashed open and
left to drain.
Like flies around honey, the mobs swarmed and fought their way into the
streets where the whiskey flowed like water. Men, women, and children,
clawing and screaming, scooped it up with bare hands, or used pails,
cups, basins, bottles, anything that would hold the amber liquid. They
used rags on sticks dipped in whiskey for torches, and went howling
through the city in search of food and plunder like a pack of mad
wolves, looting, killing, burning.
The soft night sky became pink, then turned a dull red. The blaze from
the Shockhoe Warehouse at Thirteenth and Cary streets, where 10,000
hogsheads of tobacco was put to the torch, flew skyward as if shot from
a huge blowtorch. The flames quickly spread to the Franklin Paper Mills
and the Gallego Flour Mills, 10 stories high. Higher and higher they
soared, and then widened until it seemed a red hot sea of fire would
engulf the whole city.
[Illustration: _Evacuation of Richmond._ From a contemporary
engraving]
A faint hot breeze began to stir from the southeast, scattering burning
embers through the streets and alleys and houses. Powder magazines and
arsenals let go with a whooshing boom. Thousands of bullets and shells
tore through buildings and ploughed up the streets. Shells exploded high
in the smoke cascading a metal spray over the area, followed by the
rattle of bursting cartridges in one great metallic roar. Just before
daybreak a deafening explosion from the James River signalled the
destruction of the Confederate warships and the Navy Yard.
Richmond was now one vast inferno of flame, noise, smoke, and trembling
earth. The roaring fire swept northwestward from the riverfront,
hungrily devouring the two railroad depots, all the banks, flour and
paper mills, and hotels, warehouses, stores, and houses by the hundreds.
About dawn a large crowd gathered in front of the huge government
commissary at Fourteenth and Cary streets, on the eastern edge of the
fire. The doors were thrown open and the government clerks began an
orderly distribution of the supplies. Then the drunken mob joined the
crowd.
Barrels of hams, bacon, flour, molasses, sugar, coffee, and tea were
rolled into the streets or thrown from windows. Women ran screaming
through the flames waving sides of bacon and whole hams. Wheelbarrows
were filled and trundled away. When the building finally caught fire
from the whiskey torches, the mob swarmed into other sections of the
doomed city where the few remaining clothing, jewelry, and furniture
stores were ruthlessly looted and burned. A casket factory was broken
into, the caskets loaded with plunder and carried through the streets,
and the fiendish rabble roared on unchecked.
As the drunken night reeled into morning the few remaining regiments of
General Kershaw’s brigade, which had been guarding the lines east of
Richmond, galloped into the city on their way south to join Lee in his
retreat to Appomattox. They had to fight their way through the howling
mob to reach Mayo’s Bridge. As the rearguard clattered over, Gen. M. W.
Gary shouted, “All over, good-bye; blow her to hell.”
The barrels of tar placed along the bridge were promptly put to the
torch. Soon tall flames shot high into the air, and with the two
railroad bridges already burning, the three high-arched structures were
like blazing arrows pointing to the very gates of hell.
Then down Osborne Turnpike and into Main Street trotted the Fourth
Massachusetts cavalry. When the smoke and heat blocked their path, they
turned into Fourteenth Street past fire engines blazing in the street
and proceeded up the hill to Capitol Square, where a tragic scene
awaited them.
[Illustration: _Richmond burns._ From a contemporary sketch.]
Like a green oasis in a veritable desert of fire and destruction, the
sloping lawn around the Capitol was jammed with frightened people
seeking safety from the flames. Family groups, trying desperately to
stay together, huddled under the linden trees for protection from the
burning sparks. Piles of furniture were scattered in every
direction—beds, chairs, settees, paintings, silverware, gilt-framed
mirrors—the few possessions left, the family heirlooms, the treasures
faithfully passed down from generation to generation. In the background
the massive white columns of the Capitol, designed by Thomas Jefferson
as a replica of the famous Maison Carée at Nimes, stood guard over the
huddled masses below.
The soldiers in blue quickly dispersed the mobs at bayonet point. Guards
were immediately placed to prevent further looting. The fire was
contained by blowing up buildings in its path to create a fire-lane,
leaving the main part to burn itself out. By nightfall everything was
under control, but most of the business and industrial section of the
city was gone.
The stars shone down that night on the smouldering ruins of more than
700 buildings. Gaunt chimneys stood naked against the black velvet sky.
A Federal officer, picking his way through thousands of pieces of white
granite columns and marble facades that littered the streets to inspect
the guard, noted that the silence of death brooded over the city.
Occasionally a shell exploded somewhere in the ruins. Then it was quiet
again.
A week later Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Court House, Va. The
war was over.
[Illustration: _Richmond after the war._ Courtesy, Library of
Congress.]
[Illustration: _Richmond National Battlefield Park._]
_The Park_