Cold Harbor's Place in History
The battle of Cold Harbor took place outside Mechanicsville, Virginia. It was not the end of a military campaign, it did not end the conflict in the east, and it certainly mimicked the results of previous battles. Unfortunately, there are hardly any memorials or monuments dedicated to such a sanguine encounter. Instead, the memory of Cold Harbor comes from veterans' writings and altered historians' views that characterized the battle from the number of Union casualties. Douglas Southall Freeman characterized the battle as Lee's last field victory.[1] However, how did this failed assault define the outcome of the battle? Other questions emerged as continuous fighting took place between both armies. How did this affect the casualties during the battle? When did the battle officially begin and end? How did people accept Cold Harbor as disastrous if the Union army was not defeated? However, the overarching question remains, “Why was Cold Harbor not a Confederate victory?”
The memory of the battle evolved with the introduction of the Dunning School. The Dunning School is responsible for Lost Cause revisionism, or the belief that the South lost due to many Union soldiers and supplies. They also stipulate and cite Ulysses Grant as an unimaginative "butcher" who did not care about soldiers' lives. The story of Cold Harbor dispels further Lost Cause myths and synthesizes the events of Cold Harbor together without characterizing its end on 3 June 1864. The disastrous assault and casualties do not give proper context or meaning to the battle of Cold Harbor. Both armies remained entrenched there for more than another week, and Grant successfully turned Lee's flank without being detected.
Further, this Union success came at a high price to the Army of the Potomac. Although, it was not any worse than that of the battles of Spotsylvania Courthouse or the Wilderness. Unfortunately, many historians used casualties to define the battle of Cold Harbor. The numbers differ according to each source; Federal casualties range from 12,000-14,000 while Confederate casualties range from 1500-6000 soldiers. In Cold Harbor: Grant and Lee, written by Gordon Rhea, he stipulates that "Totopotomoy Creek and Cold Harbor [until 3 June] had cost Lee about 6,000 soldiers, slightly less than ten percent of his army."[2] However, these numbers do not take into account the 2,287 casualties sustained during the events of 4-12 June[3] Therefore, the total Confederate casualties amount to 8,287 (13%) while Federal casualties amount to around 14,000 (13%) between 28 May to 12 June.[4] The casualty figures are comparable by the percentage of men lost. General Grant’s innovative “Continuous Contact” tactic took a devastating toll on both armies, but Grant continued to fill his ranks with raw recruits. Alfred Young III, a public historian, spent the last decade researching Confederate casualties during the Overland Campaign. In his book, Lee’s Army During the Overland Campaign: A Numerical Study, he concedes that “By the close of the Battle of Cold Harbor in mid-June 1864, it is apparent that the condition of the (Confederate) army was changing. Fractures started forming in the standards of success and unit pride.” His evidence relies heavily on the number of Rebel desertions within this new command structure.[5] Overlooked by many histories, including Ernest Furgurson's Not War But Murder: Cold Harbor, 1864, was the Confederate casualties between 28 May to 31 May. Despite the losses in the June 3 attack, the Battle of Cold Harbor, when viewed in its entirety, must be understood as a Union victory.
These statistics only make up a small part of the work, focusing on military actions, individual experiences, and newspaper clippings. The most significant source will be the Official Records of the War of Rebellion. It gives orders from officers at the highest and lowest level. Soldiers' letters, diaries, and notes will hopefully provide their opinion of battle. Finally, the work of two prominent military theorists, Carl von Clausewitz and Antoine-Henri Jomini, will be necessary to determine the outcomes of Cold Harbor. These works will also put Grant as an "unimaginable general" as the Lost Cause claims. Previous works from The Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant to Gordon Rhea's Onto Petersburg did not utilize military theory or doctrine to approach the battle's consequences. The methodology to examine Cold Harbor's outcomes is utilizing military history, doctrine and analyzing it from the three levels of war. Furthermore, this dissertation will cover the events from 28 May to 12 June 1864 because Union casualty counts begin with 28 May.
As someone familiar with the American Civil War, former author for the Emerging Civil War, and familiar with the works of prominent military theorists, Nathan Provost took the time to compile hundreds of primary sources. He gathered and read these sources from the Richmond Battlefield Archives and received them with the help of great mentors such as Tim Talbot, John Hennessy, Steven Woodworth, and Bryan Cheeseboro. These sources led Mr. Provost to question the military outcome of Cold Harbor and how it affected the Overland Campaign. The memory of Cold Harbor as an overwhelming Union defeat was primarily due to Lost Cause revisionism and the limited number of secondary sources on the subject. His purpose is to put the battle in the context of the Overland Campaign, the war, and its memory.
Bibliography
Rhea, Gordon. Cold
Harbor: Grant and Lee. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Press, 2002.
Young, Alfred. Lee’s Army During the Overland Campaign: A
Numerical Study. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Press, 2013.
[1] Douglas
Southall Freeman, R. E. Lee: Volume III a Biography, (Place of
publication not identified: Pickel Partners Publishing, 2016), 346.
[2] Gordon Rhea, Cold
Harbor: Grant and Lee (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Press, 2002), 393.
[3] Alfred
Young, Lee’s Army During the Overland Campaign: A Numerical Study (Baton
Rouge: Louisiana State Press, 2013), 240.
[4] Ibid, 2.
[5] Ibid, 224.
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