Read’s Battalion CSA Artillery

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 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 them and cut down their ranks.

Mechanicsville, Virginia · United States