COLD HARBOR, VIRGINIA, was neither cold nor a harbor. The name was derived from a hotel in Mechanicsville, Virginia. Cold Harbor Tavern, owned by the Isaac Burnett family, offered weary travelers lodging. It was near this site that the Seven Days’ Battle of Gaines’ Mill took place on June 27, 1862, which is sometimes referred to as the First Battle of Cold Harbor. Almost two years later Cold Harbor would be the most controversial battle of Grant’s Civil War tenure.
Thus far in the Overland Campaign, Grant demonstrated a direct involvement in the details of battle. For example, on the evening of May 5, during the Wilderness, Grant ordered an attack all along the line to be carried out at 4:30 the next morning. Meade responded that he had ordered the attack take place at that time, but suggested 6:00 a.m. instead, adding, “Should you permit this change, I will advise the corps commanders.” Grant replied through his staff that Meade could change the attack to five but not six o’clock. It should have seemed obvious to the most casual observers that this peculiar process, wherein the general in chief and one of his major army commanders were in dispute over time adjustments, was unnecessary. But this was a common occurrence, from the Wilderness to Spotsylvania and on to the North Anna River.
In fact, some did see the absurdity of the situation—but not as one might expect. Grant’s staff began to lobby for the general to ignore Meade’s position and bypass him entirely in directing the campaign. Horace Porter recalled a heated discussion that took place among Grant’s staff after the Wilderness regarding Meade’s “somewhat anomalous position.” With Grant listening intently, they argued that vital time was being lost in transmission of field orders through an intermediary whose position was essentially “a false one.” Some stated that they believed Meade and his staff were modifying Grant’s instructions or that the instructions were “elaborated as to change their spirit.” Finally, as the discussion became more heated, they characterized Meade as having an irascible temper that “often irritated officers who came in contact with him.”1
Grant waited until the arguments were completed and said that, while the present situation was not totally satisfactory, Meade’s presence relieved him of many duties he would otherwise have to undertake if he assumed a more active role. Porter noted, however, that while Grant maintained this view throughout the war, after those discussions he began to give even “closer personal direction in battle to the movements of the subdivisions of the army.”2
On the other side of the coin, Meade, though always calm and cooperative in Grant’s presence, read the newspaper accounts of the campaign, which gave every credit to Grant, and began to resent the control that Grant and his staff were exercising. His temper became increasingly foul, and he grew more abrasive with each day. On one occasion Charles Dana, who was now Assistant Secretary of War, made the mistake of reading a dispatch to Meade from Sherman, informing Grant that his army had engaged the enemy successfully and that if Grant could inspire the Army of the Potomac to do its share, success would be assured. Meade flew into a rage, telling Dana: “Sir! I consider that dispatch an insult to the army I command and to me personally. The Army of the Potomac does not require General Grant’s inspiration or anybody else’s inspiration to make it fight!”3 Not surprisingly, the staffs of Grant and Meade felt even stronger about the situation. Each collective staff had little respect for the other or its respective commander.
Colonel Theodore Lyman, who served on Meade’s staff as aide-de-camp, wrote at length in his journal about the relationship between the two headquarters’ staffs, and his biggest concern was not so much Grant’s treatment of Meade as the disrespect that Grant and his staff showed toward their opponent. Lyman said that from the very beginning, he sensed an air of overconfidence among Grant’s staff, who “talked and laughed flippantly about Lee and his army.” Grant, on the other hand, encouraged some of this attitude in order to dispel the notion that Lee was unbeatable. Most troubling about this kind of talk was that as the campaign continued and the army fought one bloody engagement after another, the bravado evolved into genuine overconfidence that began to affect Grant’s official assessments and command decisions.
Following the brutal and inconclusive fighting at Spotsylvania on May 21, Dana reported to Secretary of War Edwin Stanton that the “Rebels have lost all confidence and are already mortally defeated” and that Stanton could be certain “the end is near as well as sure.” Meanwhile, Grant told Major General Henry Halleck that the Confederate army was “really whipped” and added, “I may be mistaken, but I feel that our success over Lee’s army is already insured.”4 This miscalculation of Lee’s strength by Grant and his staff proved to be a major mistake at Cold Harbor.
In the days immediately following Grant’s and Dana’s pronouncements that Lee’s army was near its end, Grant continued to shift the Army of the Potomac to the left, forcing Lee to remain between the Union forces and Richmond while still trying to get him to come out and fight the climactic battle. Lee, however, would not be tempted. Meanwhile, four weeks of continuous marching and brutal fighting were wearing everyone down. From the soldiers on the line to the generals in command, the emotional and physical strain was quietly and insidiously taking a heavy toll.
On May 29, Grant ordered Major General Philip H. Sheridan, in command of the Army of Potomac Cavalry Corps, to advance to the left and probe for Lee’s right, as he suspected the Confederate commander might be trying to move past the Union left flank. Two days later, Sheridan discovered Lee had indeed moved far to his right and had entrenched infantry and cavalry at the Cold Harbor crossing. Sheridan engaged the enemy forces and, after a hard fight, drove them out. His scouts told him that heavier Confederate forces were moving in, therefore, he elected to withdraw.
When Grant heard this news, he understood the importance of that move. Lee was indeed extending to his right, trying to cut Grant off from the shortest route to the James River and, perhaps more important, his base of supply in Washington, D.C. Grant later wrote, “The enemy knew the importance of Cold Harbor to us, and seemed determined that we should not hold it.” Grant immediately ordered Sheridan to return to the crossing and “to hold the place at all hazards, until reinforcements could be sent to him.”
Not wanting to lose momentum, Grant immediately issued a series of orders that Meade acted upon with great energy. Although it is difficult to determine the precise moment of change, Meade wanted to play the role of the proactive tactical commander, and Grant let him do it. The strategic decisions would be Grant’s, but Meade would attend to the details. Perhaps Grant realized the system he had been using was terribly awkward, or perhaps he thought Meade was capable of tactically executing the campaign as Grant wanted it done. Whatever the reason, Meade was now tactically in control of his army. But things got off to a terrible start.
On June 1, Wright’s Sixth Corps was ordered to pull out of the line and begin marching toward Cold Harbor to relieve Sheridan, but bad roads and slow delivery of orders delayed its arrival. Things were even more confusing for the men of the Eighteenth Corps, led by Major General William F. “Baldy” Smith. This corps was also ordered to move to Cold Harbor, but Grant’s staff made an error in the orders and in actuality they were sent to New Castle Ferry, about five miles from Cold Harbor. But shortly after arriving at New Castle Ferry one of Grant’s staff officers found Smith and told him to move his men out quickly, they were in the wrong place. Smith did not arrive at Cold Harbor until the early afternoon of June 1. With Sheridan’s troopers replaced by Wright’s and Smith’s exhausted infantry, Meade also ordered Hancock’s Second Corps to pull out of the line and march toward Cold Harbor. Shortly thereafter, to the surprise of many, Meade decided to order a frontal assault on the Confederate forces digging in opposite Smith and Wright. Perhaps Meade was trying to prove that if Grant wanted a big push against Lee, he would be aggressive and give him one. The infantrymen, however, were tired from their forced marches, and there had been time only for a quick reconnaissance of the ground in front of the Union lines. At 4:30 p.m. the infantry attacked and after fierce fighting managed to sweep over the Confederate rifle pits and seize their main trenches, but a strong Southern counterattack forced them back. It became a useless bloodletting that accomplished little except to provide reconnaissance on enemy strength and positions.
By nightfall things in the Army of the Potomac became even more unsettled, and Meade began to show signs of stress and fatigue. Theodore Lyman recorded that Meade “was in one of his irascible fits to-night.” Meade complained that Major General Gouverneur Warren and his Fifth Corps had pushed too far forward without orders, adding that Wright was too slow, and that he wished the corps commanders would act for themselves and stop leaning on him. In the midst of the angry outburst, an aide to Major General Smith arrived to report that his commanding officer was in serious need of ammunition and transportation and that Smith “considered his position precarious.” A clearly exasperated Meade shouted with seldom used profanity: “Then, why in Hell did he come at all for?”5
Meade later instructed Smith to be ready for an early morning assault. But Smith cautioned him that his command was not up to such an attack, calling the prospect “simply preposterous.” Meade soon discovered he had more problems than Smith’s concerns. He had been counting on the presence of the hardened veterans of Hancock’s Second Corps to mount the early morning attack, but their night march to Cold Harbor was going worse than Wright’s had the previous evening. The Second Corps had become hopelessly lost and would not arrive until 6:30 a.m.
Learning of Hancock’s lack of progress, Meade issued an order at 12:30 a.m. that the attack would be postponed until 5:00 p.m. on June 2. All those delays, however, were giving Lee time to shift his forces and dig in. Despite these setbacks, after discussing the issue with his key commanders, Grant still believed that attacking Lee in his present position was the best course of action. Concerned that Hancock’s men were not up to an attack that afternoon, Grant advised Meade to delay the assault until the early morning hours of June 3.
While the decision provided Lee’s army with even more time to entrench and reinforce, this in turn gave Meade the opportunity to order his postponement and direct the commanders to conduct a reconnaissance of the ground in front of their positions. This would not only tell them the nature of the terrain between the Union and Confederate lines, but it would also aid in determining the makeup of the enemy’s fortifications. Yet, no such reconnaissance ever took place and it is one of the great mysteries surrounding Cold Harbor. It seems inconceivable that experienced commanders would violate what any soldier then or now would see as a crucial element of battlefield preparation.
In the darkness preceding dawn on June 3, all five corps of the Army of the Potomac began to form up in a long, almost unbroken line. The concept for the attack was simple but lacking solid military logic. The Second, Sixth, and Eighteenth Corps would conduct the main attack on Lee’s right. Meanwhile the Fifth and Ninth Corps under Major Generals Gouverneur Warren and Ambrose Burnside, respectively, would attack the left of the Army of Northern Virginia to hold the units there in place and prevent Lee from transferring them and helping hold the right side of his line. The only preemptive coordination in this plan was that everyone would attack at 4:30 a.m.
At the appointed time, a signal gun sounded, and the Army of the Potomac stepped off in a heavy mist and fog. Within minutes, as the first wave moved forward, the heavy vegetation and previously unseen swamps and wetlands began to break up the neat formations, and any appearance of coordination vanished within the corps. The assault quickly became a collection of isolated, individual actions. Further, as the Fifth Corps advanced and the Confederate fortifications came into view, each Union formation began to square up with the works at its front. Given the configuration of Lee’s lines and the Union troops’ problems in advancing through the area, this approach caused their formations to branch off at odd angles from one another, and each corps began to lose contact with the units next to it. As a result, when the Confederates opened fire, they were able to hit the Union attackers with devastating effectiveness.
In a war that had already seen more than its share of bloodshed, Cold Harbor set a new and terrible standard. The Union forces advanced under harassment of rif le and artillery fire, and men went down in large groups. In the course of the first hour, two waves went forward, and only Brigadier General Francis C. Barlow’s division of Hancock’s corps met with success, managing to seize and hold a portion of Lee’s far right. Here again, however, command cohesion failed. Despite Barlow’s repeated requests, Brigadier General David B. Birney’s division, which was in reserve, stayed where it was and was never ordered to move forward to exploit what Barlow’s men had gained. The remaining four Union corps went forward, some getting farther than others, until the overwhelming fire from Lee’s entrenchments slowed, stopped, and eventually pinned down the Federals. The embattled troops dug in where they were and tried to survive.
Command communications were so severely confused that there was no control over the attack. Meade and his staff were oddly disconnected from the action because the woods filtered the noise of battle, making it more difficult for them to get a feel for what was happening. The reports that came into Meade’s headquarters conveyed a confusing picture, and the lack of planning and coordination soon became apparent. Each of the three corps commanders on the Union left complained to Meade that the corps’ positioned on his right or left had failed to protect him from enfilading fire. Meade responded oddly, sending copies of each corps commander’s complaint to the others. He kept trying to urge his commanders forward, but they became increasingly insistent that, from their particular viewpoint, nothing could be done.
At 7:00 a.m., with attacks failing up and down the line, Meade sent Grant a message advising him, “I should be glad to have your views as to the continuance of these attacks, if unsuccessful.” This dispatch in some ways seemed to indicate that Meade was surrendering his control to Grant, who quickly replied, “The moment it becomes certain that an assault cannot succeed, suspend the offensive, but when one does succeed push it vigorously, and if necessary pile in troops at the successful point from wherever they can be taken.”6 Having sent that dispatch, Grant moved to Meade’s headquarters and, for all intents and purposes, once again took tactical control of the Army of the Potomac.
Grant had been nearby at his headquarters and was apparently receiving the same reports as Meade. His staff went out to ride the lines and gather information, which they funneled back to the general in chief. However, things were happening faster than they could report them. After moving to Meade’s headquarters, Grant himself decided to ride out to the lines and consult directly with the corps commanders. That action could leave no doubt about who was in command. Grant returned to Meade’s headquarters, and at 12:30 p.m. he issued an order suspending the assault. Later that afternoon an order was sent out to try another assault, which caused a variety of reactions. There were some isolated moves forward, but they amounted to nothing more than brief exchanges of rifle fire.
Grant’s initial report to General Halleck, sent at 2:00 p.m., was shocking in its understatement. He reported, “Our loss was not severe, nor do I suppose the enemy to have lost heavily.” The magnitude of what had happened and the ghastly cost of this blunder would soon become apparent, however. Although the exact number of casualties remains debatable, no matter their total, Cold Harbor was clearly a disaster for Grant.
That night Grant finally made his feelings known to his staff: “I regret this assault more than any one I have ever ordered. I regarded it as a stern necessity, and believed it would bring compensating results; but, as it has proved, no advantages have been gained sufficient to justify the heavy losses suffered.”7 With that said, as was his manner, Grant focused his energies on planning his next moves. He seldom spoke of Cold Harbor again.
Nevertheless, the battle resulted in a profound change at Grant’s headquarters. Colonel James H. Wilson described it as a sense of despondency. Wilson said that Grant was deeply disappointed that he had not been able to overwhelm Lee, and upset that his subordinates had not properly attended to the detailed planning required to carry out his orders. According to Wilson, Grant was aware that this was perhaps being done to shift responsibility to him. In addition, his staff was seeing the disastrous effects of the continuous use of frontal assaults and feared the army would come apart if that approach continued. One thing was certain: the confidence that had been the hallmark of Grant’s staff when the campaign began was gone, and a sense of harsh reality had set in.
For his part, Meade assumed a bad-tempered attitude. In a meeting with Baldy Smith two days after the battle, he told his corps commander that he had worked out every plan for every move since the campaign began. He then complained about the newspapers being full of the activities of “Grant’s army” and said that he was tired of it. He finished by saying that he was now “determined to let General Grant plan his own battles.” Smith later wrote that while he had no knowledge of the facts, he believed that Meade did not try to properly execute Grant’s orders at Cold Harbor because he was angry about his treatment by Grant and by the press. Regardless of what Meade thought, the result was that at Cold Harbor no one was in effective command of the Army of the Potomac.
In hindsight Cold Harbor was avoidable and Grant should never have ordered the attack. Its leadership failed miserably. Cold Harbor was a horrible example of what happens when command cohesion breaks down under the weight of an unworkable system, when the stress of battle overcomes professionalism, and when otherwise good officers forget the basics of command and their responsibilities as commanders. In the end, their men, low-ranking soldiers, paid the ultimate and terrible price.
Despite the heavy losses, Grant’s grand strategy was working. While he fought a war of attrition with Lee, his other armies battled the Confederates in the Shenandoah Valley, Middle Tennessee, Georgia, and the Carolinas. Meanwhile, Grant shifted his position from above Richmond to below the James River. After resting eight days around Cold Harbor, he conducted a daring move across the peninsula and over the James River with his sights set on Petersburg, a major rail hub that fed into Richmond.
Grant knew that if he pushed his men, they could likely take Richmond. But as Charles A. Page wrote, Grant did not move his men because he was:
not the cold, calculating, flinty-hearted commander, the man utterly regardless of human lives and human suffering, which Rebels and Copperheads would have us believe. . . . Grant believes that it would be unjust to these men who have gone through so much . . . unnecessary and unjustifiable sacrifice to subject these to the losses of another series of battles, when it is within his power to so soon and so largely re-enforce them and thus distribute the loss, if further loss there must be, among a larger number, or, perhaps, enable him, by means of a larger army, to achieve the same end with far less sacrifice of life.8
Page’s comments were some of the few that supported Grant and the style of combat in which he engaged his troops. Grant himself said, “They call me a butcher, but do you know I sometimes could hardly bring myself to give an order of battle. When I contemplated the death and misery that were sure to follow, I stood appalled.”9
Grant’s campaign during the summer of 1864 was distinguished by almost constant hard and desperate fighting. This style of warfare not only made incredible demands on the average soldier, but it also had a severe impact on those in the chain of command, which in turn affected the entire command process. The decision to make the attack on Cold Harbor was based on poor information and invalid assumptions about the morale and military capabilities of the enemy. More important, the decision to launch the fateful assault and its delayed execution reflected a total lack of command cohesion.
One of Grant’s most vocal critics after Cold Harbor was Mary Todd Lincoln. She told her seamstress and maid, Elizabeth Keckley, “He loses two men to the enemy’s one. . . . According to his tactics, there is nothing under the heavens to do but to march a new line of men up front of the rebel breastworks to be shot down as fast as they take their position. . . . Grant, I repeat, is an obstinate fool and a butcher.”
Horace Porter, wrote that the general gave the assault on Cold Harbor much consideration before commencing the battle:
The general considered the question not only from a military standpoint, but he took a still broader view of the situation. The expenses of the war had reached nearly four million dollars a day. Many of the people in the North were becoming discouraged at the prolongation of the contest. If the army were transferred south of the James without fighting a battle on the north side, people would be impatient at the prospect of an apparently indefinite continuation of operations; and as the sickly season of summer was approaching, the deaths from disease among the troops meanwhile would be greater than any possible loss encountered in the contemplated attack.10
Regardless of how much Grant ached about Cold Harbor, Lee was far from defeated and the Union commander had to rally his disheartened troops to press on. As the war in the Eastern Theater moved into its next phase, Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia seemed prepared to fight to the last man in order to keep the Confederate capitol out of enemy hands.