Episode Details

Cold Harbor was not a port but a rural Virginia crossroads about 10 miles northeast of Richmond, named for a Burnett family tavern that offered shelter but no hot meals. In the spring of 1864, during the Overland Campaign, Ulysses S. Grant kept sliding southeast around Robert E. Lee's flank, and both sides raced to the intersection. Grant pulled heavy artillerymen from the Washington forts to bring his strength above 100,000, while Lee gathered roughly 59,000 to 62,000.

A small Union gain on June 1 led George Meade to order an army-wide assault, but exhausted night marches pushed it back 24 hours. Lee's men used the delay to build seven miles of zigzag earthworks with interlocking fields of fire. At 4:30 a.m. on June 3 about 35,000 Union troops attacked and lost an estimated 3,000 to 7,000 men in hours, and Grant suspended the attack by 12:30 p.m. Nine days of trench fighting followed before Grant slipped away across the James River toward Petersburg.

• The night before the assault, Union soldiers pinned slips with their names and hometowns inside their coats.
• Confederate gunners drove stakes at 200, 300, and 400 yards to pre-set the fuses on their shells.
• General William F. Smith refused Meade's order to renew the assault, calling it a wanton waste of life.
• Grant and Lee exchanged notes for days, and the two-hour truce on June 7 came too late for most of the wounded.
• Grant later wrote that the final assault at Cold Harbor was the greatest regret of his military career.