COLD HARBOR AND ON TO PETERSBURG
A week of desperate fighting had convinced Grant that he could not
break through or overlap or force back Lee's stubborn line of defense
at Spottsylvania. After another week devoted to a study of the problem
the Federal commander decided to make another movement by his left
flank, similar to that which he had made from the Wilderness. He had
in the meantime replenished his supplies of food and ammunition, and
in spite of continuous fighting in a small way throughout the week of
pause, he had succeeded in reorganizing such of his forces as had been
broken, and in resting those of them whose previous exertions had been
most exhausting.
On the nineteenth the Confederates under Ewell sharply assailed
the Federal right, and a considerable conflict ensued. But in its
proportions it was insignificant as compared with the fighting done a
week before.
Grant's next objective point was the North Anna river at or near
Hanover Court House. He moved one corps at a time, keeping them twelve
hours apart, by way of confusing his enemy, and if possible bringing on
a fight in the open field before Lee could have time to throw up those
hasty entrenchments which had hitherto, slender as they were, given
him a great advantage in the struggle. This hope was disappointed.
Lee was too wily a strategist not to perceive and avoid his enemy's
purpose. Moving hurriedly and upon a somewhat shorter line than Grant's
he reached and crossed the North Anna before Grant got there, and so
established his line that Grant could not assail it without dividing
his own army into three parts, each separated from the others by a bend
of the river, and each in danger of being crushed before it could be
supported. There was some severe fighting at this point, involving a
loss of two or three thousand men on either side, but nothing occurred
that could be called a pitched battle, or that deserves more than a
mention in comparison with the other splendid contests of that campaign.
Having satisfied himself that there was no thoroughfare here, Grant
determined upon a still further movement by his left flank, similar
to those already made. He moved on the night of the twenty-sixth, and
finding Lee still in his pathway he almost immediately moved again,
his destination now being Cold Harbor. The Confederates promptly moved
in the same direction, and the two armies met at various points in
sharp conflict, but no general action resulted. In the end they came
face to face at Cold Harbor with Lee again behind hastily constructed
breastworks.
Lee instantly called to his aid all the troops that could be spared
from the defenses of Richmond, less than ten miles away, while Grant
brought heavy reinforcements for himself from Butler's army, south of
the James.
Again Lee had beaten his adversary in a race to secure the commanding
ground at the place of meeting. He had placed his army in a position
where it could be assailed only in front, and the men, who had learned
the use of spade and shovel as expertly as they already knew the use
of the bullet and the bayonet, had been favored by the nature of the
soil in throwing up a line of breastworks which they felt themselves
competent to hold against any assault. Lee's right rested on the
Chickahominy river, and his left upon a maze of little streams between
which there were impracticable swamps. The river in his rear was at
that season very low and easily fordable at almost any point at which a
crossing might be attempted, so that it offered no barrier to a retreat
of the Confederates, if retreat should be forced upon them. Best of
all, as a source of confidence to Lee was the superb morale of his
army. It might be possible for an enemy to carry his works and force a
way through his lines though that was exceedingly improbable in view
of the stubbornness with which his Confederates had learned to fight.
But even should that improbable thing be accomplished, Lee perfectly
knew that his men would none of them run away, but that they would
stand fast by their colors, and fall back fighting to the works before
Richmond. The time had completely gone by when panic or demoralization
was to be reckoned upon as even a possible factor in either of these
two veteran armies. They had both of them thoroughly learned the trade
of war. They were both composed of as good human material as was ever
employed in the construction of an army. They were both commanded from
top to bottom by officers who knew their business, and were disposed to
do it at their best.
Here, then, were all the conditions for a great battle and it was for
Grant to determine whether or not that battle should be fought. His
critics have contended that he should have determined that question in
the negative--that the position of Lee was too strong to invite direct
assault, or to offer his assailant a tolerable chance of victory. It
was at any rate certain, that no assault could be made which would not
involve tremendous slaughter among the assailants, while no assault
unless successful beyond any promise that the conditions held forth
could possibly inflict upon the Confederates any compensating loss,
even if reckoned upon the arithmetical hypothesis that Grant could
afford to lose two or three men to his adversary's one.
Writing near the end of his life, General Grant said in his "Memoirs":
"I have always regretted that the last assault at Cold Harbor was ever
made.... At Cold Harbor no advantage whatever was gained to compensate
for the heavy loss we sustained. Indeed the advantages other than those
of relative losses were on the Confederate side."
But the assault was made. In spite of the adverse conditions, Grant
determined to assail Lee there, and if possible to force a passage
through his lines. It should be explained that during all these
movements the two armies had kept themselves always within striking
distance of each other, and that conflicts between them had occurred
at every step--conflicts which earlier in the war would have been
reckoned as battles of great moment, but which at this stage of the
struggle were regarded merely as passing incidents of a campaign marked
by tremendous battles. At Cold Harbor there was very heavy fighting on
the second of June, when Lee took the offensive and bent back the right
of Grant's line, thus greatly strengthening the Confederate position of
defense.
The great battle came, however, on the morning of the third of June,
just as the darkness of night began to gray into the dawn. There
was no strategy employed in this action. There was nothing in it of
tactics, grand or petty. As one historian has said, it was a fierce
battle depending for its results "upon the brute strength of the
forces engaged." Grant simply hurled nearly his whole army against
Lee at a single point. The fighting covered scarcely more than a
brigade front of Lee's line, and upon that short front Lee promptly
concentrated troops until they stood six deep at the breastworks, the
men in rear loading rifles, and passing them to those in front to fire.
The Federals were advancing against strong earthworks, and through a
tangled mass of abattis or trees felled with their branches toward the
enemy, and with their limbs sharpened to obstruct a march.
The action lasted scarcely more than twenty minutes. Yet in that brief
time Grant lost, according to his own report, 10,500 men, or at the
rate of more than five hundred men per minute, or nearly ten men per
second. When General Lee sent a messenger to General A. P. Hill, who
commanded at that point, to ask for a report of the results Hill
pointed to the dead bodies of Federal troops piled high upon each
other, and for answer said, "Tell General Lee it is the same all along
my front."
The Confederate loss in this action was reported at about 1,000 men.
This was the most staggering blow that Grant had ever received in
battle, and the news of it appalled the authorities at Washington, and
greatly depressed the people throughout the North. That a little army
like Lee's, reduced by this time to less than 50,000 men, should have
inflicted such a defeat upon an adversary whose forces were generally
estimated at 120,000 men seemed to those persons who do not understand
the conditions of battle to indicate a lack either of commanding
capacity on the part of General Grant or of fighting capacity on the
part of the army under his command.
Both of these judgments were clearly mistaken. It was perhaps an
error on General Grant's part to assail Lee in his strong position
at Cold Harbor, but it was a mistake prompted by that boldness which
so often achieves conspicuous results in war. In criticizing such
operations it is always necessary to bear in mind that "war is a
hazard of possibilities, probabilities, luck and ill luck." At Cold
Harbor there was, to say the least, a possibility that Grant, with his
overwhelmingly superior numbers, might break through the Confederate
lines, and force his way into Richmond. There was the hazard of such
failure as that which the Federal army in fact met with. For the sake
of the possibility Grant accepted the hazard. Had he won there would
have been nothing but praise throughout the North for a boldness
which had achieved so conspicuous a success. As he lost in the hazard
instead, there was bitter criticism which has not ceased even unto this
day.
Fortunately for the Federal cause, the administration at Washington
had at last learned that uniform, continued, and complete success
is a thing not to be expected of any commander in the field. The
administration, therefore, did not withdraw its confidence from Grant
or put some other in his place because Lee had thus far baffled him
in his endeavors, or because in this instance he had met with bloody
defeat at Lee's hands. As for Grant himself, he was always a man of
calm mind in no way given to hysterical exaltations on the one hand, or
morbid depressions of spirit on the other. He accepted his defeat at
Cold Harbor as a mere incident in a campaign which he was determined to
carry on to the end in the best way he could.
The campaign had now endured for almost exactly one month. During that
time Grant had lost about 60,000 men and 3,000 officers. Lee's loss
has been estimated at about 18,000 men, with a proportionate number of
officers. The campaign in the field was now practically over, and it
remained for Grant to settle his army before Richmond and Petersburg as
a besieging force. The object of the campaign in the field, as we have
seen, and as General Grant has himself declared, was to crush Lee's
army if possible, and failing that to cripple it for defense before his
own siege of the Confederate capital should begin. He had succeeded,
though at enormous cost to himself, in reducing the numerical strength
of his adversary by about one third. Such reduction was undoubtedly
less than he had hoped for, but at any rate it was something to the
good, so far as his operations were concerned, and it left him in
better case for the beginning of that siege during which, as he well
knew, he could limitlessly reinforce himself while his adversary had no
reserves anywhere to draw upon, even sufficiently to make good those
daily losses which defensive operations of necessity involve.
After a week of waiting in indecision Grant determined upon his plan of
future operations. He decided that to assail Richmond from the north
or east was rendered hopelessly impracticable by the demonstrated
alertness of Lee in always interposing the Army of Northern Virginia
between the Army of the Potomac and its objective. Halleck proposed
from Washington that Grant should place himself on the north and east
of the Confederate capital, and conduct siege operations from those
directions, thus carrying out that traditional and paralyzing policy
which had prevailed during the whole of Halleck's term of command,
of keeping the Army of the Potomac always interposed between Lee and
Washington. If Halleck had been still Grant's superior in command,
there is no doubt that he would have insisted to the end upon this
plan of operations, dictated as it always had been by an overweening
anxiety lest some Confederate force should succeed in entering the
Federal capital city. Grant was a man of very different type. He was
not given to fearful imaginings. He saw no reason why those in charge
of Washington city--fortified and armed to the teeth as that city
was--should not themselves defend the capital against any force that
Lee might spare from in front of the Army of the Potomac, so long
as that army should continue its operations against the Confederate
general with vigor, determination and ceaseless activity. He decided,
therefore, to transfer his army from the northern to the southern side
of the James river, to seize upon Petersburg, if that should prove
possible, to invest that town, if it could not be taken by assault, and
by continued movements to the left to cut off Lee's communications.
Here a little geographical explanation is necessary. Petersburg lies on
the Appomattox river, twenty-two miles due south of Richmond. It was
connected with Richmond by a line of railway and this line was extended
from Petersburg southward, by way of Weldon, North Carolina. The Weldon
railroad constituted Lee's main line of communication with the coast
country south of him. From Petersburg west, extended another line of
railway to Lynchburg and beyond, while from Richmond a third line,
the Richmond and Danville road, extended southwesterly to Danville,
crossing the south side railroad at Burkesville, or as the place was
more familiarly known, the Junction.
These three lines of railway constituted Lee's sole means of
communication with the country south and west of Richmond. It was
Grant's purpose, while holding Lee rigidly to his defensive works, to
push his own columns around Lee's right and into his rear, threatening
and ultimately cutting these three lines of communication.
Grant hoped so far to conceal his purposes from his wily adversary as
to take Petersburg by surprise and capture it, thus at once and easily
breaking two of the three lines of Confederate communication, and
gaining possession of a position which McClellan two years before had
seen and declared to be the military key to Richmond. In aid of this
purpose of surprise he set men at work, throwing up fortifications to
the north of Richmond, and sent large bodies of cavalry to operate
destructively on the north and west of that city, while he held at and
near Cold Harbor a sufficiently threatening line in Lee's front to give
the impression that he had determined upon making his siege approach in
the same way in which McClellan had sought to take the city two years
before. He transferred his base of supplies to the White House on York
river, where McClellan's base had been.
Then he began his movement upon Petersburg. Sending a large part of his
force by water, he moved the rest across the James river by pontoon
bridges, all his operations being beyond sight of the Confederates.
In his effort to take Petersburg by surprise he was very nearly
successful. At the beginning of the movement he had Butler under his
command and well placed south of the James river, with an army of
30,000 men. In anticipation of his own movement with the main army, he
ordered Butler to advance at once upon Petersburg, capture that place,
and hold it until the Army of the Potomac should come up.
This was a bold movement, and one altogether well planned. But Butler's
advance was met at Petersburg with determination by the small force
present there, aided by the home guards of elderly men, and men
otherwise unfit for the regular service. These men, though unused to
the work of the soldier, did that work well until they were slowly
driven back and forced to fight in the streets of the city itself. But
before Butler could bring up his main body to support the attack he had
made with the head of his column, Beauregard arrived upon the scene
with a small force of Confederate veterans from the south. That always
active commander at once fell with fury upon the Federal advance, and
drove it back to the hills outside the city, where, during the night a
slender line of earthworks was hastily thrown up by the men with their
bayonets, and such spades and shovels as could be found in the city.
In the meantime Lee had penetrated Grant's design, and as usual had
met it with celerity and promptitude. Marching his men at a double
quick which would speedily have killed off two thirds of them if they
had been in less perfect training than they were, he pushed them into
Petersburg, and out upon the hills that guard the city in time to meet
Grant there in a strong position which diligent labor quickly rendered
stronger with earthworks.
Thus began that historic siege of Petersburg which was destined to
last for many months, and which was marked daily by that heroism of
endurance on both sides which is after all, more admirable than the
heroism of dash and daring.
The story of that siege will be told in a later chapter. Meanwhile
other events had been occurring in other quarters, some account
of which must first be given in order that the reader shall fully
understand the course and progress of the war during that fighting
summer of 1864.