Battle of Cold Harbor
7,000 men fell in minutes. Discover the Cold Harbor assault Grant always regretted.
From
Battle of Cold Harbor
Clip: Episode 4 | 4m 37sVideo has Closed Captions
7,000 men fell in minutes. Discover the Cold Harbor assault Grant always regretted.
The night before the attack, Union soldiers pinned their names to their coats so their bodies could be identified. At dawn on June 3, 1864, 60,000 men charged Lee's entrenched lines at Cold Harbor, Virginia, and thousands fell within minutes. Discover the assault Grant always regretted, told through the letters and diaries of those who were there. From Ken Burns's The Civil War.
From
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
Production made possible by grants from General Motors Corporation, National Endowment for the Humanities, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, The Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, John D and Catherine T MacArthur Foundation
Battle of Cold Harbor
Clip: Episode 4 | 4m 37sVideo has Closed Captions
The night before the attack, Union soldiers pinned their names to their coats so their bodies could be identified. At dawn on June 3, 1864, 60,000 men charged Lee's entrenched lines at Cold Harbor, Virginia, and thousands fell within minutes. Discover the assault Grant always regretted, told through the letters and diaries of those who were there. From Ken Burns's The Civil War.
From
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
Where to Watch The Civil War
The Civil War is available to stream on pbs.org and the PBS app.
Buy Now
The Civil War | Timeline
Explore a multimedia timeline that is a companion to Ken Burns's acclaimed documentary series, The Civil War. The timeline provides a comprehensive overview of the war, from its political origins to its social and military consequences.Providing Support for PBS.org
Learn Moreabout PBS online sponsorship- [Narrator] Again and again, Lee anticipated Grant and again and again, the Union Commanders skirted south and east in a semicircle.
Two armies locked in a brutal, clumsy strangle hold, as the battle lines lurched toward Richmond.
- [Lee] We must destroy this army of Grant's before he gets to the James.
If he gets there, it will become a siege and then it will be a mere question of time.
- [Grant] May 11th, we have now entered the sixth day of very heavy fighting and the result after this time, is much in our favor.
I propose to fight it out on this line, if it takes all summer.
- [Narrator] Grant continued his stubborn flanking maneuvers in an attempt to get around Lee's right and move on Richmond.
- He did it with superior numbers and , kept going, move by the left flank, move by the left flank, move by the left flank and Lee backing up the whole time, losing men that he couldn't replace.
- [Roebling] "May 15th 1864, Dear Emily, the papers must have told you that we've been fighting a little.
Our core has only 12,000 left out of 27,000.
Uncle Robert E Lee hasn't licked yet, by a long shot and if we are not mighty careful, he'll beat us.
I think we have done very well to avoid that fate so far.
Tomorrow, we have another battle.
I don't think it will amount to much."
Washington Roebling.
- [Narrator] Grant and Lee now race for crossroads called, Cold Harbor, near the Chickamauga River.
Again, Lee got there first and ordered his men to dig in and prepare for the all out assault he knew would follow.
As they settled down for the night on June 7th, veterans on the Union side sensed what was coming.
- [Porter] "The men were calmly writing their names and home addresses on slips of paper and pinning them to the backs of their coats so that their bodies might be recognized and their fate, made known to their families at home."
General Horace Porter.
- [Narrator] When the boule goes blue for the attack at 4:30AM, 60,000 Union men started toward the unseen enemy.
The battle of Cold Harbor had begun.
- I had seen the dreadful carnage in front of Marye's Hill in Fredericksburg.
But I had seen nothing to have see this.
It was not war, it was murder.
- Those were men who knew how to take a position where you could do the most killing from, that whole army was lined up there, waiting and hoping and praying someone would come at them.
Then Grant threw a three course at them and in approximately seven minutes, they've shot about 7,000 men down.
It was a bloody mess.
It's the only thing Grant had ever admitted that he'd done wrong.
- [Grant] I've always regretted that the last assault at Cold Harbor was ever made.
No advantage whatever was gained to compensate for the heavy loss we've sustained.
- [Narrator] When another assault was suggested, Union officers rejected the idea outright.
"I will not take my regiment in another such charge."
said a New Hampshire Captain.
"if Jesus Christ himself should order it."
After the battle, the diary of a young Massachusetts volunteer was found splattered with blood.
Its last entry read, "June 3rd 1864, Cold Harbor, Virginia, I was killed."
Video has Closed Captions
Clip: Ep4 | 4m 46s | Even Lincoln expected to lose in 1864. Explore the election that became a referendum on the war. (4m 46s)
Providing Support for PBS.org
Learn Moreabout PBS online sponsorship
Support for PBS provided by:
Production made possible by grants from General Motors Corporation, National Endowment for the Humanities, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, The Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, John D and Catherine T MacArthur Foundation