Confederate Fortifications

Confederate Fortifications. . The diary of Edward R. Crockett, 4th Texas Infantry, illustrates the daily pressure of life in these trenches:, June 4th , “We work hard last night and dawn on the 4th have a heavy work completed. We have quit sleeping almost entirely.”, June 5th , “Last night we strengthened our works with a stockade and a cheaveau de freize, we worked all night, skirmishing all day....", At Cold Harbor the quality of a soldier’s entrenchments could mean the difference between life and death. Men in both armies incorporated lessons learned earlier in the campaign at the Wilderness and Spotsylvania to make their Cold Harbor fortifications even stronger. They piled up dirt and framed it with wood to create durable and defensible positions. The wood has rotted and the earth erodes slowly, yet even today these sagging lines convey power and security. Seven consecutive miles of defenses like these stood between Grant and Richmond in June 1864. Modern historian Earl Hess, in his study on the evolution of fortifications in the Overland Campaign, calls the surviving entrenchments at Cold Harbor “the most singular set Civil War fieldworks we have.”