Confederate Fortifications

In June 1864, soldiers at Cold Harbor lived under constant pressure as they labored through the night and skirmished by day to strengthen their trenches with stockades and chevaux-de-frise. At Cold Harbor, the quality of a soldier’s entrenchments could mean the difference between life and death, and men in both armies applied lessons learned earlier in the campaign at the Wilderness and Spotsylvania to build even stronger fortifications. They piled up dirt and framed it with wood to create durable and defensible positions. Though the wood has rotted and the earth has slowly eroded, these sagging lines still convey power and security. Seven consecutive miles of defenses like these stood between Grant and Richmond in June 1864, and modern historian Earl Hess has called the surviving entrenchments at Cold Harbor “the most singular set Civil War fieldworks we have.”

Mechanicsville, Virginia · United States