Military
9
In the spring of 1864, Union armies launched offensives across unconquered parts of the South, and in Virginia General Ulysses S. Grant sent the largest Northern army against General Robert E. Lee’s Confederates in a series of battles known as the Overland Campaign. Costly stalemates at the Wilderness and Spotsylvania slowed Grant’s advance, and Confederates then blocked him at the North Anna River and along Totopotomoy Creek late in May 1864. The armies finally collided at Cold Harbor, eight miles from Richmond, on ground first contested during McClellan’s 1862 campaign. Their lines stretched for nearly seven miles around the Old Cold Harbor crossroads. A Federal attack on June 1 partly succeeded, but the larger assault on June 3 failed badly against Lee’s entrenchments. After nine more days of sniping and misery in the trenches, both armies marched south toward Petersburg, ending the overland portion of the 1864 campaign while Grant began the long process of cutting Richmond’s supply lines.
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Mechanicsville, Virginia · United States
