Cold Harbor Battlefield

At Cold Harbor, Grant and Lee fought for two weeks in May and June 1864 with combined armies numbering about 180,000 men after coming directly from the battles of the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, and North Anna River. Grant stretched his line to seven miles and attacked, but his assaults, especially on June 1 and 3, failed. He then marched south to Petersburg and began the long process of cutting Richmond’s supply lines. The fields and woodlots around Cold Harbor saw determined assaults and bitter close combat typical of 1864 battles, but they also witnessed the shift from open-field fighting to trench warfare, as the boom of mortars and the crack of sharpshooters’ rifles came to dominate the front. The ground also saw action in two separate campaigns, including the Battle of Gaines' Mill on June 27, 1862, the largest of the Seven Days battles, and nearly two weeks of fighting there at Cold Harbor two years later.

Mechanicsville, Virginia · United States