Emerging Civil War

In the aftermath of Cold Harbor, the armies led by Robert E. Lee and George Meade were at a strategic stalemate less than twenty miles from Richmond. The advantage though was to the Confederates. Lee still held Richmond and his army was in overall better shape. Despite some heavy officer losses, Lee’s men had high morale and with some exceptions his brigades were battered but still cohesive fighting units.

General Robert E. Lee

The Army of the Potomac, while not destroyed, had suffered a reverse that was even worse than the infamous charges at Fredericksburg. Their morale had plummeted. John West Haley of the 17^th Maine wrote “we were tired of charging earthworks. Many soldiers expressed freely their scorn of Grant’s alleged generalship, which consists of launching men against breastworks. It is well known that one man behind works is as good as three outside the works.”[1] Surgeon Daniel M. Holt of the 121^st New York wrote, “If losing sixty thousand men is a slight loss, I never want to see a heavy one. We, as a regiment, have almost ceased to exist, and if the next six months prove as disastrous to us as the last six weeks have, not a soul will be left to recite the wholesale slaughter which has taken place on the sacred soil of Virginia.”[2] Charles S. Wainwright, chief of artillery for V Corps, sharply criticized the frontal attacks as “a mere shoving forward of a brigade or two now here now there, like a chess-player shoving out his pieces and then drawing them right back.”[3] Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, who was a little less critical, thought Grant “was like Thor, the hammer, striking blow after blow, intent on his purpose to beat his way through, somewhat reckless of the cost.”[4]

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