Battle of Cold Harbor

Battle of Cold Harbor, (May 31–June 12, 1864), disastrous defeat for the Union Army during the American Civil War (1861–65) that caused some 18,000 casualties. Continuing his relentless drive toward the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia, called the “Grand Campaign,” General Ulysses S. Grant ordered a frontal infantry assault on General Robert E. Lee’s Confederate troops, who were now entrenched at Cold Harbor, some 10 miles (16 km) northeast of Richmond. The result was Lee’s last major victory of the war and a bloodbath for the Union army. An earlier battle at Cold Harbor, on June 27, 1862, is sometimes called the Battle of Gaines’s Mill, the First Battle of Cold Harbor, or the Battle of Chickahominy River and was part of the Seven Days’ Battles (June 25–July 1), which ended the Peninsular Campaign (April 4–July 1), the large-scale Union effort earlier in the war to capture Richmond; it, too, was a Confederate victory.

The twin battles of Wilderness and Spotsylvania Court House, fought in Virginia in May 1864, produced victory for neither side, but attrition reduced the much smaller Confederate army’s numbers and sapped its willingness to fight. Union General Grant became convinced that Confederate General Lee’s army was “really whipped,” but his own casualties had also been high, and those troops who in 1861 had joined up for three years were now leaving the army in large numbers.

Grant therefore gambled on a final push to take Richmond. Minor skirmishes followed by delays began on 31 May, with Union General Philip Sheridan leading a cavalry attack against Confederate Major General Fitzhugh Lee, a nephew of Robert E. Lee. The main attack occurred on 3 June, when Grant launched a frontal assault on Confederate defenses. He believed that Lee’s men were overextended, but Lee had taken advantage of a delay in Grant’s assault to bring in reinforcements and improve his fortifications. The result of his preparations was carnage; the advancing Union troops were soon felled, with those making it through the first line of defenses soon being slaughtered at the second. More than 7,000 Union troops were killed or injured in one hour before Grant halted the attack.

For the next nine days, the two armies faced each other in opposite trenches, often only yards apart, until Grant marched off his army on 12 June to threaten the critical rail junction at Petersburg, near Richmond. His own comment on the battle: “I regret this assault more than any one I have ever ordered.” Cold Harbor marked Lee’s last significant victory of the war. The Union losses caused Grant to change his strategy, with no further attempts to take Richmond directly. Instead, by moving to Petersburg, Grant hoped to draw Lee out into a continued battle, a fight he assumed he would win because of both his larger force and his army’s more abundant supplies and equipment. Lee responded instead with a bold but ultimately unsuccessful invasion of Maryland and an assault on the federal capital of Washington under the command of General Jubal Early.

Losses: Union, 1,844 dead, 9,077 wounded, 1,816 captured or missing of 108,000; Confederate, 83 dead, 3,380 wounded, 1,132 captured or missing of 62,000.