The Boys of '61 or, Four Years of Fighting, Personal Observations with the Army and Navy

31 May – 12 June 1864

Battle of Cold Harbor

CHAPTER XIX.

Opening of the Campaign. -- Organization of the Army. -- Grant's Plan. -- The Ninth Corps. -- President Lincoln reviewing the Colored Troops. -- The Army in Motion. -- Across the Rapidan. -- Grant and Meade in Council. -- The Wilderness. -- Position of the Army. -- First Day's Fight. -- Arrival of the Ninth Corps. -- Second Day. -- Movement to Spottsylvania. -- Sheridan's Fight. -- Todd's Tavern. -- Warren engaged. -- Battle of Spottsylvania. -- Song of the Wounded. -- The Vermont Brigade. -- Death of General Rice. -- Attack of the Second Corps. -- A Day in Fredericksburg. -- Sanitary and Christian Commissions. -- Getting Straw for the Hospitals. -- Movement to the North Anna. -- Battle of Jericho Bridge. -- A Night in a Cabin. -- Movement to Hanover. -- Battle of Bethesda Church. -- General Smith's Advance to Cold Harbor. -- Sheridan's Movement. -- Position of the two Armies. -- First Battle of Cold Harbor. -- Hospital Scene. -- Second Battle. -- McClellan at Cold Harbor and the Campaign of '62. -- Grant's Operations. -- Caroline County. -- The Planters and their Property. -- The Day of Jubilee. -- Breaking up of Society. 306

CHAPTER XIX.

The day before the battle of Cold Harbor, McClellan's estimate of Lee's army was two hundred thousand.[60] His own force, sick and well, on the 20th, was one hundred and seventeen thousand. He had present and fit for duty on the day of battle from one hundred to one hundred and five thousand. Lee's force was two or three thousand less.

CHAPTER XX.

General Grant had tried to break Lee's lines at Cold Harbor, and had been repulsed with great loss. The Richmond newspapers were jubilant. "He is floundering in the swamps of Chickahominy. He has reached the graveyard of Yankee armies," said they.

CHAPTER XX.

I conversed freely with the soldiers, and rarely found one who had not full confidence in the ability of General Grant. Round their bivouac fires the history of the Army of the Potomac was freely discussed. The old soldiers, who had fought in the first Cold Harbor battle, remembered how twenty-seven thousand men held Lee at bay on that ground through the long hours of the first of the seven days' fight in front of Richmond; how McClellan kept sixty thousand men on the south bank of the Chickahominy, inactive,--sending a brigade to their aid when too late to be of use. They recalled the scenes of those terrible demoralizing days,--how McClellan kept out of harm's way. When the battle was raging on the north bank of the Chickahominy he was south of it; when Sumner was holding Savage Station, McClellan was across White Oak Swamp; when Glendale was fought, and the Rebels under Hill routed, McClellan was at Malvern, and while Magruder was madly pushing his troops on to be slaughtered at Malvern, McClellan was on board a gunboat; how in the night the whole army was ordered away from a victorious field, from an impregnable position, while Lee was fleeing towards Richmond! Soldiers who had come later into the service remembered the failure at Fredericksburg and the retreat from Chancellorsville, and in contrast saw that Grant had pluck. It is a quality of character which soldiers admire. They could also see that there was system in his movements. They sometimes spoke of him as the Grand Flanker. "He'll flank Lee out of Richmond yet; see if he don't," said a soldier.