Cold Harbor Crossroads

Cold Harbor Crossroads. Cold Harbor, 1864. , Carnage returned to Cold Harbor during the 1864 Overland Campaign. On May 31, Gen. Philip Sheridan's Federal cavalry attacked Gen. Fitzhugh Lee's Confederate horsemen at the crossroads. Col. Thomas Devin's brigade advanced from the east along the soutb side of modern Rt. 619, to your right, against Confederates positioned around the intersection and Sheridan took control of the junction., Gens. Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee quickly recognized the importance of Cold Harbor. Roads intersecting here led to Grant's supply base at White House Landing and Lee's capital at Richmond. Each commander rushed reinforcernents to this area. Fighting erupted again on June 1. Utilizing a rail barricade, Union Gen. George A. Custer's brigade successfully defended the intersection from Confederate attacks., Repulsed, Confederate infantry withdrew to a position less than a mile in front of you. A Union attack late in the day gained some ground before being turned back. The next day both sides shifted more troops to Cold Harbor., Grant launched a massive attack on June 3. Blue infantry advanced westward across open fields from the crossroads. Union artillery deployed south of the tavern supported the assault. Gen. Winfield S. Hancock and his staff watched the attack from a point near the tavern. At least one Union physician established a field hospital in the tavern's yard. Grant himself stopped here as he observed the progress of the failed effort., The armies stared at each other for the next nine days. Finally, Grant swung to the southeast, crossed the James River and assailed the railhead at Petersburg, leaving behind a scene of complete desolation., "Of all the wastes I've seen, this first sight of Cool Arbor was the most dreary! Fancy a baking sun to begin with; then a foreground of breastworks ... in the front an open plain, trampled fetlock deep into fine, white dust and dotted with caissons, regiments of weary soldiers ... On the sides and in the distance were pine woods, some red with fires that had run through them ... It was [a] Sahara intensified, and was called Cool Arbor!" , Lt. Col. Theodore Lyman, USA, (captions) , This chilling image captured in 1865 depicts the horrors of war as workers rebury the dead. The remains of 170 soldiers were exhumed from the area around the tavern in 1866 and reinterred in the Cold Harbor National Cemetery. Courtesy of the Library of Congress, Grant hoped his assault on June 3 would break the Confederate line and open the way to Richmond. Instead, it met with failure. Some 7,000 Union soldiers were killed, wounded or captured in the combined June 1 and June 3 attacks.