Cold Harbor: Saving 7.11 Acres Where Grant's Assault Failed

On June 3, 1864, almost 50,000 Union soldiers attacked Confederate trenches at a crossroads called Cold Harbor, near present-day Mechanicsville, Virginia. They suffered tremendous losses and gained no ground. After another week of fighting and more than 12,000 casualties — more than 10 percent of the Union army — Ulysses S. Grant gave up trying to take Richmond from the east and marched south toward Petersburg. Now 7.11 more acres of that battlefield will be preserved for good.

Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant beside a tree in front of a tent at Cold Harbor, Virginia, June 1864. Credit: National Archives.

The grant

Why Cold Harbor mattered

For most of the war, taking Richmond was the Union's main goal in the East. The Confederate capital was a symbol, and its Tredegar Iron Works supplied southern armies with artillery and other badly needed supplies. From 1861 to 1863, Union attempts to capture it failed. The battles were shocking in their casualties, but they came in bursts, with weeks between them for both sides to rearm and resupply.

That changed in May 1864. Grant, now commanding all Union armies and traveling with the Army of the Potomac, turned the war into one of constant, grinding attrition. In the Overland Campaign, the two armies battered each other almost continuously for a month, until they reached Cold Harbor — a crossroads named for a local inn, and a key gateway to Richmond from east of the James River.

After an indecisive battle on June 1, Grant let his exhausted troops rest and be reinforced. It was a pragmatic decision but a tactical error: by June 3, the Confederates had greatly improved their entrenchments.

The grant program

The American Battlefield Protection Program's Battlefield Land Acquisition Grants help preservation partners acquire and protect threatened Revolutionary War, War of 1812 and Civil War battlefields. The program also offers Preservation Planning Grants for any site of armed conflict on American soil, and newly authorized Battlefield Restoration and Battlefield Interpretation grants — funding community-driven stewardship at the state, tribal and local levels.

Sources

Based on "Civil War Crossroads at Cold Harbor," American Battlefield Protection Program, National Park Service; a work of the United States government in the public domain.