June 3, 1864 -Battle of Cold Harbor and My 2nd Great Grandfather’s Regiment was in the thick of the battle!
On June 3, 1864 one of the most lopsided battles of the American Civil War was fought near the Cold Harbor Tavern close to Mechanicsville, Virginia. The battle actually was fought from June 1 to June 12th. But on June 3rd the Union forces under the command of Ulysses Grant met the Confederate forces of Robert E Lee fought in one of the bloodiest and most lopsided days of the war. Over 7.000 Union troops were killed or wounded in a hopeless frontal assault against the fortified positions of Gen. Robert E. Lee‘s army in one hour on that day!
The first aspect of this battle, that I researched was the location of the battle in relationship to Richmond. Here is the map…
The Cold Harbor Battlefield is located not that far northeast of Richmond, just slightly northeast of Interstate 295. During the years that my daughter was at William & Mary we pasted close to it many times, as we came down Route 295 and then took Route 64 east to Williamsburg. Why I never stopped I can’t say.
As I thought about the battle, I remembered that my 2nd great-grandfather Mark Trout was a private in the 12th New Jersey Regiment, which fought at Cold Harbor. So I went to Wikipedia and discovered that the NJ 12th was assigned the 2nd Division under the command of John Gibbon and was part of the 3rd brigade commanded by Thomas Smyth. Then I went to find out where the Regiment was on the day of the battle and found this map….
The 12th NJ was positioned almost in the center the Union line, where much of the action was centered. The following is what I found about the action in this area.
The most effective performance of the day was on the Union left flank, where Hancock’s corps was able to break through a portion of Breckinridge’s front line and drive those defenders out of their entrenchments in hand-to-hand fighting. Several hundred prisoners and four guns were captured. However, nearby Confederate artillery was brought to bear on the entrenchments, turning them into a death trap for the Federals. Breckinridge’s reserves counterattacked these men from the division of Brig. Gen. Francis C. Barlow and drove them off. Hancock’s other advanced division, under Brig. Gen. John Gibbon, became disordered in swampy ground and could not advance through the heavy Confederate fire, with two brigade commanders (Cols. Peter A. Porter and H. Boyd McKeen) lost as casualties. One of Gibbon’s men, complaining of a lack of reconnaissance, wrote, “We felt it was murder, not war, or at best a very serious mistake had been made.”
Captain McCoomb, who was in command of the 12th regiment was killed in the battle. McCoomb had assumed the command of the 12th regiment after Lieutenant Colonel Davis was killed in the Battle of Spotsylvania
Grant made these comments about the battle in his memoirs…
, “I have always regretted that the last assault at Cold Harbor was ever made. … No advantage whatever was gained to compensate for the heavy loss we sustained.” The armies confronted each other on these lines until the night of June 12, when Grant again advanced by his left flank, marching to the James River. It was an impressive defensive victory for Lee, but it was his last in the war. In the final stage, he alternated between digging into the trenches at Petersburg and fleeing westward across Virginia.
It must have been a horrible day for the Union soldiers made more poignant knowing the my 2nd great-grandfather Mark Trout may have been right in the middle of the battle!
Links and Sources
Wikipedia: Battle of Cold Harbor
Wikipedia: Cold Harbor Union Order of Battle
Wikipedia: 12th New Jersey Volunteer Infantry
Featured Image:Battle of Cold Harbor by Kurz and Allison, 1888.