Read's Battalion

A four-gun battery of the Richmond Fayette Artillery, part of Major J.P.W. Read’s Battalion, held strategic points along the Confederate main line and supported General Alfred H. Colquitt’s Georgia brigade on June 1, 1864, helping repulse a Union attack that evening. On the morning of June 3, Read’s gunners again went into action, directing intense and accurate fire at advancing Federal infantry during General U.S. Grant’s all-out assault against Lee’s lines. Lieutenant Eli Nichols of the 8th New York Heavy Artillery recalled that few men fell until his unit came within eighty yards of the enemy’s first line, when canister and grape tore into their faces and cut down their ranks. Brigadier General E. Porter Alexander, chief of artillery of the First Corps, described the ground as generally flat, with small clearings, thin woods, and scattered pines, favorable to cross fires and smoothbore ricochet firing, and said he put every gun he had into position.

Mechanicsville, Virginia · United States