Between the Lines

After Grant’s attacks ended on the afternoon of June 3, the battle entered a quieter but more sinister phase as Union and Confederate forces spent the next nine days hunkered down in trenches facing each other at close range. Confederate fortifications stood just ahead, while the main Union entrenchments were 200 yards to the left. Sharpshooters kept men from exposing themselves above the earthworks, and mortars sent shells down at random. Vermont soldier Wilbur Fisk, stationed in the woods to the left, wrote that his breastwork was not more than 200 yards from the enemy’s lines, with skirmishers and sharpshooters even closer, and that the open ground between the sides was a strip no man dared cross because any attacking force would be cut down before reaching the opposing works.

Mechanicsville, Virginia · United States