The U.S. Army Campaigns of the Civil War

Overland 

Camp ign

the

 4 May – 15 June 1864
CMH Pub 75–12

Cover: Union troops cheering General Grant in the Wilderness, by Edwin Forbes

(Library of Congress)
by

David W. Hogan Jr.

Center of Military History

United States Army

Washington, D.C., 2014

Overland 

Camp ign

the

 4 May – 15 June 1864

5

Introduction

Although over one hundred fifty years have passed since the 

start of the American Civil War, that titanic conflict continues to 

matter. The forces unleashed by that war were immensely destructive because of the significant issues involved: the existence of the 

Union, the end of slavery, and the very future of the nation. The 

war remains our most contentious, and our bloodiest, with over 

six hundred thousand killed in the course of the four-year struggle. 

Most civil wars do not spring up overnight, and the American 

Civil War was no exception. The seeds of the conflict were sown 

in the earliest days of the republic’s founding, primarily over the 

existence of slavery and the slave trade. Although no conflict can 

begin without the conscious decisions of those engaged in the 

debates at that moment, in the end, there was simply no way to 

paper over the division of the country into two camps: one that 

was dominated by slavery and the other that sought first to limit 

its spread and then to abolish it. Our nation was indeed “half slave 

and half free,” and that could not stand. 

Regardless of the factors tearing the nation asunder, the 

soldiers on each side of the struggle went to war for personal 

reasons: looking for adventure, being caught up in the passions 

and emotions of their peers, believing in the Union, favoring 

states’ rights, or even justifying the simple schoolyard dynamic 

of being convinced that they were “worth” three of the soldiers 

on the other side. Nor can we overlook the factor that some went 

to war to prove their manhood. This has been, and continues 

to be, a key dynamic in understanding combat and the profession of arms. Soldiers join for many reasons but often stay in the 

fight because of their comrades and because they do not want to 

seem like cowards. Sometimes issues of national impact shrink 

to nothing in the intensely personal world of cannon shell and 

minié ball.

Whatever the reasons, the struggle was long and costly and 

only culminated with the conquest of the rebellious Confederacy, 
6 

the preservation of the Union, and the end of slavery. These 

campaign pamphlets on the American Civil War, prepared in 

commemoration of our national sacrifices, seek to remember 

that war and honor those in the United States Army who died to 

preserve the Union and free the slaves as well as to tell the story of 

those American soldiers who fought for the Confederacy despite 

the inherently flawed nature of their cause. The Civil War was our 

greatest struggle and continues to deserve our deep study and 

contemplation.

 RICHARD W. STEWART

 Chief Historian
7

The Overland Campaign 

4 May–15 June 1864

The clerk barely gazed over his register as the short, brownbearded man, clad in a plain linen duster and accompanied by 

only his teenage son, approached the desk at Willard’s Hotel. It 

was late on the afternoon of 8 March 1864, and the slouching, 

taciturn traveler looked like any number of office seekers or 

country visitors to Washington, D.C. The clerk told him that a 

room might be available on the top floor. The man said that would 

be fine, and he signed the register. When the clerk swung around 

the book, he saw the entry—“U.S. Grant and son, Galena, Ill.” He 

suddenly remembered that the hotel had an elegant suite on the 

second floor, and he came from behind his desk to personally 

carry the general’s bag upstairs. Having settled into his luxurious 

accommodations and eaten dinner, Ulysses S. Grant went across 

the street to attend a reception at the Executive Mansion, where he 

met President and Mrs. Abraham Lincoln and Secretary of State 

William H. Seward. The next day, he returned to receive from the 

president his commission as lieutenant general, with command 

over all the armies of the United States.

Strategic Setting

The nondescript outward appearance of the 41-year-old Ohio 

native belied the inner toughness and dynamism that had annihi-
8 

lated two Confederate armies and routed a third. One staff officer 

remarked that Grant “habitually wears an expression as if he had 

determined to drive his head through a brick wall, and was about to 

do it.” Plain-spoken and reserved, he impressed people more with 

his moral character than his intellect. He seemed to operate not 

according to principles in books but by intuition and common sense. 

Contrary to so many later evaluations, he did not simply bludgeon 

his way to victory. As the Vicksburg Campaign had shown, he could 

maneuver and improvise, pragmatically adjusting to different situations. Unlike many commanders, he displayed remarkably little 

concern with what his opponent was doing out of his sight, figuring 

he would make the enemy dance to his tune. Above all, he built his 

approach to war on aggression and relentless pressure. His philosophy was to “find out where your enemy is. Get at him as soon as 

you can. Strike at him as hard as you can and as often as you can, and 

keep moving on.”

The new commander 

soon showed his talents as a 

strategist. Although President 

Lincoln and Grant’s predecessors had attempted to take 

advantage of superior Northern 

manpower and materiel 

through coordinated action, 

Grant enforced cooperation 

with orders for simultaneous 

offensives by Union forces 

across the board. Even departments with defensive missions, 

he figured, could carry out their 

tasks best by advancing, thus 

not only keeping the initiative but also diverting scarce 

Confederate troops from more 

critical points. The primary 

objective of these operations 

would be the destruction of the 

South’s armies and resources 

to make war. In the West, Maj. 

Gen. William T. Sherman 

would lead three armies from 

General Grant 

(Library of Congress)
9

Chattanooga, Tennessee, into Georgia, breaking up General Joseph 

E. Johnston’s Army of Tennessee and inflicting all possible damage 

to the Confederate infrastructure. Once he had extricated himself 

from a secondary campaign into Louisiana, Maj. Gen. Nathaniel P. 

Banks would capture Mobile, Alabama, one of the South’s last two 

major ports, and then drive northeast to hook up with Sherman.

In the East, along with his duties as general in chief, Grant 

would exercise direct field supervision of the Virginia Theater and 

the Army of the Potomac, which he would accompany. Although 

he undoubtedly wished to avoid the snares of Washington’s political infighting and the Army 

bureaucracy—which he left in 

the capable hands of his War 

Department chief of staff, Maj. 

Gen. Henry W. Halleck—he was 

clearly influenced by the importance of the Virginia Theater 

and by the popular expectation 

that he himself would take on 

the renowned General Robert 

E. Lee. Implicit in the latter was 

the hope that he could shake 

up the Army of the Potomac, 

which had suffered repeatedly at 

Lee’s hands. That army’s officers 

viewed the newcomer from the 

West with suspicion, and their 

commander, Maj. Gen. George 

G. Meade, offered to step down 

in order to allow Grant to bring 

in his own man. Impressed 

by Meade’s self-effacement, 

Grant chose to retain him and 

his principal subordinates, 

appointing just one protégé, 

Maj. Gen. Philip H. Sheridan, 

to command the army’s threedivision cavalry corps. 

Whoever the army commander was, Grant’s very presence 

created an awkward situation. By and large, he tried to give 

only general directives and leave details and implementation to 

General Meade 

(Library of Congress)
10 

Meade, but having a superior looking over his shoulder and, at 

times, giving tactical direction left the competent, but temperamental, 48-year-old patrician from Philadelphia uncertain over 

his exact sphere of authority. To complicate matters further, a 

distinct clash of cultures existed between the new man and 

the eastern army. As a legacy of its first commander, Maj. Gen. 

George B. McClellan, the Army of the Potomac took a more 

cautious, cerebral approach to military operations, the mentality 

of the careful engineer who wants to know the entire system and 

the factors influencing it before putting it to work. This was the 

culture that the aggressive, intuitive Grant wanted to change.

But first, he would need to develop a strategy for the Virginia 

Theater, and that meant a close look at the terrain (Map 1). One 

hundred miles separated the two capitals of Washington and 

Richmond, a stretch of rolling hills giving way in the east to flatlands. Although this countryside was more cultivated and developed 

than the rough terrain of the West, it still presented obstacles for an 

invader. It was cut by numerous east-west waterways, including the 

Rappahannock River and its tributary, the Rapidan River; the Ni, Po, 

and Matta Rivers, which joined to form the Mattaponi River; the North 

and South Anna Rivers and Totopotomoy Creek, which combined to 

form the Pamunkey River; the Chickahominy River, which flowed 

into the James River; and finally the James itself. These streams all 

eventually reached Chesapeake Bay, ruled by Union gunboats and a 

secure line of supply for Union forces operating near the Tidewater 

coast. Inhabited areas contained farms and small towns, connected 

mostly by dirt roads that, depending on the weather, often turned to 

dust or mud. A few railroads crisscrossed the region: the Richmond, 

Fredericksburg, and Potomac running south from Aquia Landing on 

the lower Potomac through Fredericksburg to Richmond; the Orange 

and Alexandria, curving southwest along the Blue Ridge foothills 

from Union-occupied Alexandria, through Culpeper Court House, 

Gordonsville, and Charlottesville, to Lynchburg; and the Virginia 

Central, running east from the fertile Shenandoah Valley, the breadbasket of Lee’s army, through Charlottesville and Gordonsville to meet 

the Richmond, Fredericksburg, and Potomac at Hanover Junction.

In Virginia too, Grant would aim for simultaneous, mutually 

supporting drives that sought to destroy enemy armies and 

resources. At first, he considered detaching 60,000 men from 

Meade’s army at Culpeper and, using Northern sea power, land 

them along the Atlantic coast for a drive inland to cut Richmond’s 
11

James R

James R

Potomac R

C H E S A P E A K E B A Y

York R

Chickahominy R

Mattaponi R

Pamunkey R

Rapidan R

Rappahannock R

Appomattox R

South Anna R

North Anna R

Ni R

Matta R

Po R

Orange & Alexandria RR

Virginia Central RR

Richmond, Fredericksburg and Potomac RR

Belle Plain

Aquia Landing

White House

Landing

Cold Harbor

Hanover Junction

Fort Monroe

Farmville

Williamsburg

City Point

Spotsylvania

Court House

Bowling Green

Port Royal

Culpeper Court House

Orange Court House

Gordonsville

Port Tobacco

Manassas

Junction

Leesburg

Bermuda Hundred

Petersburg

Charlottesville

Fredericksburg

Alexandria

Norfolk

RICHMOND

ANNAPOLIS

WASHINGTON

VIRGINIA

MARYLAND

DISTRIC T OF COLUMBIA

VIRGINIA THEATER

1864

0 25 50

Miles

Map 1

communications with the South. Finding that the concept 

reawakened old fears in the Lincoln administration of uncovering 

Washington, he opted instead for an overland approach by the 

Army of the Potomac, supported by four subsidiary offensives. 

From West Virginia, two columns, totaling 8,500 men under Brig. 

Gens. George Crook and William W. Averell, would advance into 
12 

southwest Virginia, destroy the lead mines and saltworks in that 

region, and break up the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad. They 

would then turn northeast into the Shenandoah Valley to link up 

with Maj. Gen. Franz Sigel’s 9,000-man force, which would drive 

southwest from Martinsburg, West Virginia. Maj. Gen. Benjamin 

F. Butler’s Army of the James, about 30,000 strong, would advance 

up the south bank of the James River, threatening Richmond and 

the key rail center of Petersburg, thirty miles south of the capital, 

and thereby pinning down Confederate forces in that area.

In his orders to Meade on 9 April 1864, Grant wrote, “Lee’s 

army will be your objective point. Wherever Lee goes, there you 

will go also.” Although Grant anticipated eventual cooperation with 

Butler, he preferred to fight Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia to the 

north, outside the Richmond fortifications. From Culpeper, the 

army could either move farther west, blocking Lee from the Valley 

with its supplies and the Blue Ridge–shielded invasion route to the 

North, or drive southeast, a path that would take him across the 

Rapidan into the tangled woodlands of the Wilderness. The latter 

would leave him less dependent on a long railway supply line that 

was vulnerable to cavalry and guerrilla raids and in a better position 

to cooperate with Butler and to cut off Lee from Richmond. In the 

end, Grant adopted the southeast line of advance.

Whatever line Grant adopted, he would have to deal with Lee, 

who was already a legend in the North as well as in the South. 

For almost two years, the great Southern chieftain had repeatedly hurled back the Army of the Potomac’s drives on Richmond, 

and, on two occasions, he had carried the war into the North. 

Aggressiveness, audacity, and a surpassing moral toughness characterized Lee’s approach to war. Perhaps the war’s best example 

of a Napoleonic commander, he seized every opportunity to take 

the offensive. Even against long odds, he would swiftly maneuver 

for an advantageous position and rain hammer blows against the 

opposing army’s flanks and weak points until his adversary, often 

more mentally than physically beaten, abandoned the campaign. 

Lee’s approach reflected his conviction that, against the North’s 

superior numbers and resources, the South could not afford to 

be passive but must strike, destroying the Union armies when 

possible, and thus achieve a moral ascendancy that would undermine Northern popular support for the war effort. Lee did not 

command all of the Confederate armies—only President Jefferson 

Davis could do that—but his immense prestige gave him great 
13

influence among Confederate leaders in strategic matters beyond 

his army.

Despite Lee’s unceasing 

desire to take the war to his 

opponent, Confederate strategy 

in the spring of 1864—to the 

extent a unified strategy existed—

centered on the defensive. Lt. 

Gen. James Longstreet, Lee’s 

veteran First Corps commander 

who had just returned from a 

disappointing fall campaign in 

east Tennessee, could push for a 

drive into Kentucky, but, in practical terms, the South lacked the 

resources to do much more than 

repulse the coming offensives 

and hope that the war-weary 

Northern public would turn the 

Lincoln administration out of 

office in the election that autumn.

The problem, as always, was that a passive defense required 

scattering slender Confederate resources to guard a vast territory. 

Aside from the Army of Northern Virginia, facing the Army of 

the Potomac from behind the Rapidan near Orange Court House, 

the Confederates had stationed about twenty thousand troops to 

cover railroads and key points in the Eastern Theater from West 

Virginia to South Carolina. Lee could argue that to protect everything was to protect nothing and that these troops would make the 

greatest impact by joining his own army, but Davis and his military 

advisers could not easily ignore threats to populated areas, critical 

resources, and essential transportation networks, to say nothing of 

the clamor for local defense among a Southern populace as tired of 

the conflict as were their Northern counterparts.

When the push did come, at least Lee could count on his thoroughly professional Army of Northern Virginia, numbering about 

sixty thousand men in the spring of 1864. Most were experienced 

troops who had enlisted or been drafted for the duration, with 

fillers going to older regiments, where they learned the warrior’s 

trade from veteran comrades. In general, morale was high; defeat 

did not even seem a possibility—most soldiers discounting the 

 General Lee

(Library of Congress)
14 

debacle at Gettysburg as an anomaly—although desertion was an 

increasing problem by April. Lee’s corps commanders—the steady, 

hard-hitting Longstreet; perky, bald, one-legged Lt. Gen. Richard 

S. Ewell of the Second Corps; and the impetuous but sickly Lt. 

Gen. Ambrose Powell Hill of the Third Corps—were tough, experienced fighters with subordinates well schooled in Lee’s aggressive style. Lee directed them through a minimal staff, consisting 

of a few overworked secretaries 

and personal aides who left 

him with a heavy workload that 

eventually took its toll. For intelligence, Lee relied on the reports 

of his flamboyant, yet capable, 

cavalry commander, Maj. Gen. 

James E. B. “Jeb” Stuart, as well 

as Northern newspapers and an 

extensive network of spies and 

scouts. In addition, he benefited 

from operating in friendly 

country.

Lee’s major problem that 

spring was a lack of subsistence 

and transportation. Although 

the South produced plenty of 

General Longstreet, 

by Alfred R. Waud

(Library of Congress)

General Ewell

(Library of Congress)

General Hill

(Library of Congress)
15

food, poor management, narrow local interests, and a rickety rail 

network left his army with barely enough supplies to maintain 

operations—and then only after Lee had dispersed his troops to 

forage. Thus, as the campaign season approached, the First Corps 

was far south of the rest of the army at Gordonsville, while most 

of Stuart’s three-division cavalry corps remained southeast of 

Fredericksburg to gather provender for men and horses alike.

Meade’s 100,000-man Army of the Potomac did not have 

to worry about its next meal, but it faced other challenges as the 

campaign season loomed. In many of its veteran regiments, the 

three-year terms for which volunteers had enlisted at the start of 

the war were due to expire during the spring and summer, and 

the Federal government could offer only bounties and furloughs as 

inducements to reenlist. Surprisingly, about twenty-seven thousand 

men did so—over half of those eligible—but considerable disruption would plague the army in camp and field as the others left. In 

addition, the short-timer status of several units would affect their 

fighting qualities in the coming battles. To replace the departing 

veterans, Grant turned to heavy artillery regiments that had spent 

the war in the fortifications around Washington and converted 

them to full-time infantry formations. Other units would have to 

cope with green bounty men, draftees, and substitutes to replace 

the heroes of 1861, and the North increasingly relied on African 

American regiments to maintain manpower levels.

The Army of the Potomac 

faced other problems, some 

inherent in its size advantage 

over Lee’s army. Partly to reduce 

the number of headquarters 

reporting to him, Meade had 

recently reorganized the army 

from five corps to three: the II 

Corps under the inspirational 

but ailing Maj. Gen. Winfield 

Scott Hancock; the V Corps 

under the young but controlling Meade protégé, Maj. Gen. 

Gouverneur K. Warren; and 

the VI Corps, under the much 

beloved, solid, but stodgy Maj. 

Gen. John Sedgwick. In addition, 

General Hancock

(Library of Congress)
16 

Maj. Gen. Ambrose E. Burnside 

would bring his 16,000-man IX 

Corps to serve directly under 

Grant, a concession to Burnside’s 

seniority to Meade. In contrast to 

Grant’s small circle of intimates, 

Meade had a huge staff under 

the able Maj. Gen. Andrew 

A. Humphreys. Although this 

group had grown more professional over time, it still was 

prone to lapses and did not 

have the intelligence and operations experts that distinguish a 

modern staff. The army benefited from a sophisticated supply 

system, using an extensive rail 

and water network with depots 

in Washington and Baltimore. 

It was slowed, however, by a 

cumbersome supply train that, despite Grant’s efforts to reduce it, 

still had 4,300 wagons, 835 ambulances, and a huge cattle herd at 

the campaign’s start.

General Warren

(Library of Congress)

General Sedgwick

(Library of Congress)

General Burnside

(Library of Congress)
17

Operations

The Wilderness

On 4 May, as the dogwoods bloomed, the campaign opened. 

Just past midnight, the Army of the Potomac moved out of its 

camps at Culpeper toward the Rapidan River. Behind a cavalry 

screen that drove off Confederate pickets, the V and VI Corps 

marched over two pontoon bridges at Germanna Ford, while the 

II Corps and the supply train crossed downstream at Ely’s and 

Culpeper Mine Fords. By midafternoon, the V Corps had reached 

Wilderness Tavern, where the Culpeper Plank Road met the 

east-west Orange Turnpike, and Grant had ordered the IX Corps, 

which had been guarding the Orange and Alexandria, to make a 

forced march to Germanna Ford. Both Grant and Meade believed 

that Lee would either retreat to the North Anna or take up a strong 

position to the west at Mine Run, where he had blocked a similar 

Union advance the previous November. Although the Union 

generals now halted the V Corps to allow the wagon train to catch 

up, they still hoped to move quickly through the Wilderness to 

the headwaters of Mine Run and outflank that position. But Lee 

had already received word of the Union advance and, instead of 

reoccupying the Mine Run line, moved quickly east to catch the 

Federals in the Wilderness. His Second Corps drove along the 

Orange Turnpike, while the Third Corps moved parallel farther 

south along the Orange Plank Road. Lee, however, hesitated to 

bring on a general engagement until the First Corps had finished 

its long march from Gordonsville.

Largely because of poor cavalry reconnaissance, Grant and 

Meade knew little of Lee’s dispositions until about 0620 on 5 May, 

when Warren reported making contact. His pickets on the turnpike 

had clashed with enemy infantry forming a line of battle on the 

western edge of Saunders Field, a ragged clearing two miles west 

of Wilderness Tavern. As part of the army’s turning movement, 

the V Corps had sent most of its units from Wilderness Tavern 

southwest along a woodland path toward Parker’s Store on the 

Orange Plank Road, leaving Brig. Gen. Charles Griffin’s division 

on the turnpike as a flank guard. The II Corps, meanwhile, was 

taking a wider loop from its bivouac to the east at Chancellorsville 

through Todd’s Tavern to Shady Grove Church, just beyond the 

Po River to the south. Now Lee, instead of retreating or taking 
18 

a strong position at Mine Run, was actually offering battle, and 

Grant and Meade were happy to oblige him. Meade told Warren 

to attack with his whole corps, directed Hancock to bring up the II 

Corps from Todd’s Tavern, and sent Brig. Gen. George W. Getty’s 

division of the VI Corps to occupy the critical intersection where 

the Brock Road from Wilderness Tavern to Todd’s Tavern met the 

Orange Plank Road. Grant also ordered the IX Corps’ advance to 

cross the Rapidan and support the offensive.

Now the rugged terrain of the Wilderness came into play (Map 

2). Brig. Gen. James S. Wadsworth’s division of the V Corps left the 

path to Parker’s Store and tried to move northwest through dark 

thickets of second-growth underbrush—choked with brambles, 

briars, and vines—in order to come up on Griffin’s left. Units found 

it impossible to form any sort of line, nor could they see farther 

than a few yards in any direction. It took Wadsworth four hours to 

advance barely a mile, and, by the time he arrived at his assigned 

position about 1300, he had lost contact with the division on his 

left. He attacked across the Higgerson farm clearing with his flank 

in the air, was hit hard by Confederate Maj. Gen. Robert E. Rodes’ 

division of Ewell’s corps, and fell back in confusion. Alongside the 

View of Brock Road–Orange Plank Road intersection looking southwest, 

c. 1887 (Virginia Historical Society)
19

turnpike, Griffin achieved some success, routing a brigade of Maj. 

Gen. Edward “Allegheny” Johnson’s division, but the Confederates 

rallied, brought forward reinforcements, attacked Griffin’s exposed 

right, and drove him back through Saunders Field. A furious 

Griffin rode up to army headquarters and loudly denounced Brig. 

Gen. Horatio G. Wright of the VI Corps for not moving up his 

division to support Griffin’s right flank. Puzzled by this insubordination, Grant asked Meade, “Who is this General Gregg? You 

ought to arrest him.” Normally tempestuous in battle, Meade 

calmly buttoned Grant’s coat as if he were a child, good-naturedly 

stating, “It’s Griffin, not Gregg, and it’s only his way of talking.”

Meade might not have been so amiable had he known how 

close his army had come to disaster just to the south. Had Hill’s 

Third Corps beaten the Federals to the Brock Road–Orange 

Plank Road junction, it would have cut off Hancock’s II Corps 

from the rest of the Army of the Potomac. When Getty, riding 

ahead of his men, reached the intersection at about 1130, he 

found only a few retreating Federal cavalrymen in the path of 

Maj. Gen. Henry Heth’s Confederate division, whose skirmishers 

were visible in the road to the west. Deploying his staff to simulate 

a larger force and cause the Southerners to hesitate, Getty rushed 

his division into position, where they fired a volley that halted 

the Confederate drive. Shortly afterward, Hancock arrived on 

the scene and took charge. Under appeals from Meade, he tried 

to organize his arriving corps for an assault but encountered 

as many problems in deploying his men in the thick woods 

as had Warren farther north. Finally, at Meade’s insistence, he 

launched an attack late that afternoon with Getty’s division and 

whatever II Corps units he could get into line. The Union troops 

struggled to keep their formation in the tangled underbrush and 

had little idea of enemy dispositions, but they drove back Heth 

until evening, when the counterattack of Maj. Gen. Cadmus M. 

Wilcox’s Confederate division brought the Union assault in the 

smoke-shrouded woods to a halt.

With nightfall, each side took stock. So far, Lee was pleased 

with the course of the battle, having forced the Federals to fight in 

the Wilderness without bringing on a general engagement while 

his army was still separated. Although Hill’s weakened corps was 

too exhausted to entrench against the expected Union attack on 

the morrow, the First Corps and Maj. Gen. Richard H. Anderson’s 

division of Hill’s Third Corps were due to arrive by morning and 
( VI) S

E

D

G

W I C

K

W A R REN

( V )

G R I F F I N

GRAN

MEAD

W A D S W O R T H

J O H N S O N

R O D E S

E A R L Y

W I

L C

O X

E WELL

(SECOND)

Flat Run

U 

Saunders Field

to Germanna Ford to Culpeper Mine Ford

O R A N G E

T U R N P I KE

C U L P E P E R P L A N K

R O A D

Lacy

Chewning

Higgerson

Tap

Parker’s Store

Map 2
HANC OCK

(II)

G E

T T Y

NT

DE

H E T H

A . P .HILL

( THIRD)

LEE

Wilderness Run

n  ni shed Rai l road

to Ely’s Ford

to Todd’s Tavern

O R A N G E

PL A N K R O A D

O R A N G E

T U R N P I KE

B R O CK R O A D

Herndon’s Mill

Wilderness Tavern

pp

Hickman

0 1

Mile

5 May 1864

B AT TLE OF THE WILDERNESS

Confederate Position

Confederate Attack

Confederate Movement

Confederate Retreat

Union Position

Union Attack

Union Movement

Union Retreat

HANC OCK

(II)

G E

T T Y

NT

DE

H E T H

A . P .HILL

( THIRD)

LEE

Wilderness Run

n  ni shed Rai l road

to Ely’s Ford

to Todd’s Tavern

O R A N G E

PL A N K R O A D

O R A N G E

T U R N P I KE

B R O CK R O A D

Herndon’s Mill

Wilderness Tavern

pp

Hickman

0 1

Mile

5 May 1864

B AT TLE OF THE WILDERNESS

Confederate Position

Confederate Attack

Confederate Movement

Confederate Retreat

Union Position

Union Attack

Union Movement

Union Retreat
22 

be available for a counterattack, while Ewell would strike at dawn 

to draw attention from Hill.

For Grant and Meade, it had been a frustrating day, but they 

saw an opportunity to wipe out Hill’s two divisions at dawn before 

Longstreet’s arrival. Reinforcing Hancock with Wadsworth’s 

division, which had made another long trek through the woods to 

get into position north of the Orange Plank Road, Grant directed 

an attack at 0430 by the II Corps to destroy Hill, while the V and 

VI Corps pinned down Ewell, and the newly arrived IX Corps 

advanced down the trail to Parker’s Store to hit Hill’s left and rear. 

Doubtful of Burnside’s ability to reach his position in time, Meade 

asked for a postponement, and Grant moved back the start time to 

0500 on 6 May (Map 3).

As instructed, Hancock struck at precisely 0500. While 

one division faced south on the Brock Road to guard against a 

Confederate attack from that direction, four divisions advanced in 

three massed lines, mostly south of the Orange Plank Road, and 

Wadsworth’s division struck Heth’s left flank north of the road. The 

hungry, tired Confederates fired a volley or two and then retreated 

toward the farm clearing of the Widow Tapp, about a mile to the 

west. The Union offensive fell into some confusion as Wadsworth’s 

advance became entangled with the Federals along the Orange 

Plank Road. Still, Hancock was exultant. To Col. Theodore Lyman 

of Meade’s staff, he shouted, “We are driving them, sir; tell General 

Meade we are driving them most beautifully!” Lyman informed 

the II Corps commander that Burnside’s IX Corps had not yet 

reached the field. “I knew it!” Hancock roared, “If he could attack 

now, we would smash A. P. Hill all to pieces.”

Across the Tapp field, as the remnants of Hill’s corps streamed 

toward the rear and Lt. Col. William T. Poague’s batteries strove to 

keep the Federals at bay, Lee saw Longstreet’s vanguard arrive in 

the nick of time. While Hill’s retreating men passed through their 

lines, Brig. Gen. Joseph B. Kershaw’s division deployed in the fields 

south of the road, and Maj. Gen. Charles W. Field’s division formed 

north of the road. Lee spurred his horse to Field’s lead unit, Brig. 

Gen. John Gregg’s Texas Brigade, as if to lead the attack himself. 

“Go back, General Lee, go back!” screamed the Texans. After a 

reluctant Lee had ridden to the rear, the Texas Brigade launched a 

counterattack that bought the Confederates valuable time but cost 

the unit almost two-thirds of its strength. By midmorning, the rest 

of Field’s division and Kershaw’s division south of the road had 
23

driven the Union troops—their formations hopelessly entangled 

and running low on ammunition—halfway back to the Brock 

Road intersection. At Hancock’s urging, Meade pressed Burnside 

to hurry southwest on the Parker’s Store road, but the IX Corps, 

exhausted by a march of forty miles during the past thirty-six 

hours, had reached only the Chewning farm about a mile short 

of the store by midmorning. Hancock, meanwhile, worried by 

reports of Confederates at Todd’s Tavern a few miles to the south 

and by the whereabouts of Longstreet’s third division under Maj. 

Gen. George E. Pickett—actually posted at Richmond—further 

reinforced the troops guarding the Brock Road.

Hancock was correct to be wary but misjudged the point 

of danger. About 1000, Lee’s chief engineer, Maj. Gen. Martin L. 

Smith, reported to Longstreet that he had found an unfinished 

railroad grade, parallel to and south of the Orange Plank Road, 

that provided a covered approach to within a few hundred yards 

of the Union left flank. Longstreet’s capable chief of staff, Lt. Col. 

G. Moxley Sorrel, funneled four brigades from the First and Third 

Corps into the cut, where they took up a position perpendicular to 

the Union line on the road. At 1100, screaming the rebel yell, the 

Confederates struck, rolling up the Union flank “like a wet blanket,” 

as Hancock later described it. Wadsworth was mortally wounded 

while trying to rally his troops for a counterattack, and the Union 

line, already disorganized by the dense woods and the repulse of 

the morning attack, fled toward the Brock Road junction. There, 

Hancock, looking magnificent astride his horse, rallied his men, 

and they began to dig earthworks along the road.

Now it was the Confederates’ turn to become confused in the 

thick woods. Sorrel’s counterattack force became entangled with 

the units on the Orange Plank Road, and, in the chaos, Longstreet 

fell, severely wounded in the neck by his own men. The same 

volley of musketry mortally wounded one of Longstreet’s brigade 

commanders, Brig. Gen. Micah Jenkins, who was riding at his 

side. Not until 1600 could Lee sort out his troops and launch a 

new attack on the Union works along the Brock Road, but the 

Confederates could penetrate the Federal line at only two points 

and were quickly ejected. In places, the dry woods around them 

caught fire, burning to death the severely wounded of both sides 

who could not escape the rapidly spreading flames.

As the sun fell, a new crisis arose on the Union right. Ewell’s 

dawn attack had made little headway, and Union counterthrusts 
B U R N S I D E

( I X )

W A R R E N

( V )

S E D G W I C K

( VI )

GR

ME

J O H N S O

N

R O D E S

E A R L Y

W I

L C

O X

F I E L D

L ONGSTRE

(FIRST )

LEE

E WELL

(SECOND)

A . P .HILL

( THIRD)

Flat Run

U n  n i s h e d R a i l ro ad

Saunders Field

to Germanna Ford

O R A N G E

P L A N K R O A D

O R A N G E

T U R N P I K E

C U L P E P E R P L A N K

R O A D

Higgerson

Lacy

Parker’s

Store

Tap

Chewning

Map 3
H A N C O C K

( I I)

G E T T Y

RANT

EADE

W A D S W O R T H

H E T H

K E R S H A W

S O R R E L

E T

Wilderness Run

U n  n i s h e d R a i l ro a d

to Todd’s Tavern

O R A N G E

P L A N K R O A D

O R A N G E

T U R N P I KE

B R O CK R O A D

Wilderness Tavern

p

Hickman

0 1

Mile

6 May 1864

B AT TLE OF THE WILDERNESS

Confederate Position

Confederate Attack

Confederate Movement

Confederate Retreat

Confederate Entrenchments

Union Position

Union Attack

Union Movement

Union Retreat

Union Entrenchments

H A N C O C K

( I I)

G E T T Y

RANT

EADE

W A D S W O R T H

H E T H

K E R S H A W

S O R R E L

E T

Wilderness Run

U n  n i s h e d R a i l ro a d

to Todd’s Tavern

O R A N G E

P L A N K R O A D

O R A N G E

T U R N P I KE

B R O CK R O A D

Wilderness Tavern

p

Hickman

0 1

Mile

6 May 1864

B AT TLE OF THE WILDERNESS

Confederate Position

Confederate Attack

Confederate Movement

Confederate Retreat

Confederate Entrenchments

Union Position

Union Attack

Union Movement

Union Retreat

Union Entrenchments
26 

fizzled against the dug-in Confederate line. Brig. Gen. John B. 

Gordon, a brigade commander in Maj. Gen. Jubal A. Early’s 

division on Ewell’s extreme left, confirmed scouts’ reports that the 

Union VI Corps’ right flank was in the air. Early was skeptical of 

achieving much with a single brigade and wary of a counterattack by the IX Corps, so he initially rejected Gordon’s plea for a 

strike. Later in the day, however, the arrival of another brigade and 

reports of the IX Corps’ presence on Longstreet’s front led Ewell to 

authorize the move. 

About 1800, as the Federals on the right stacked arms and 

cooked dinner, two Confederate brigades drove in the Union 

pickets and struck that flank, driving into the VI Corps’ rear, 

while a third brigade hit the Union front. Two Federal brigades 

dissolved under the onslaught, losing their commanders to 

capture. At Meade’s headquarters, consternation reigned among 

staff officers who recalled Lt. Gen. Thomas J. “Stonewall” 

Jackson’s flank attack at nearby Chancellorsville a year earlier, 

and one panicked officer warned Grant that Lee was about to 

cut off the army from its Rapidan crossings. Removing his everpresent cigar, Grant replied, “I am heartily tired of hearing about 

what Lee is going to do. . . . Go back to your command and try 

to think what we are going to do ourselves, instead of what Lee is 

going to do.” Grant’s confidence was fully justified. Sedgwick was 

already rallying his corps and feeding in reinforcements, while 

the Confederates were having trouble maintaining their cohesion 

and direction in the dense woods and growing darkness. Gordon 

later would argue that an attack earlier in the day would have 

won a crushing victory, but, given his force’s limited strength, his 

claims seem overblown. 

Still, in two days the Army of the Potomac had sustained a 

terrific beating. The Confederates had smashed both Union flanks 

and inflicted over seventeen thousand losses, about the same as 

the year before at Chancellorsville, at a cost of eleven thousand of 

their own men. Repeatedly the Union army had shown itself to be 

clumsy, unresponsive, and less resourceful in the Wilderness than 

its Southern counterpart.

Characteristically, however, Grant saw the battle as a draw 

in which he had inflicted significant damage on his opponent. 

While he did not have the foggiest notion of what military 

professionals would later call operational art, he saw the battle 

not as an end in itself, but as the first in a series of engagements 
27

to crush Lee’s army. Since further combat in the Wilderness 

would achieve little, he decided not to retreat, but to move ten 

miles southeast down the Brock Road, around Lee’s flank, to 

Spotsylvania Court House. If he could reach that key crossroads 

first, he would position himself between Lee and Richmond, 

forcing Lee to attack his superior force in open country. At 0630 

on the morning of 7 May, he issued orders for a night march 

to Spotsylvania. During the day, he shifted his supply base from 

Culpeper to Belle Plain, six miles southeast of Aquia Landing 

on the Potomac, and started his wagon train south. At 2030, 

Warren’s V Corps pulled out of line and began its march down 

the Brock Road, behind the cover of the II Corps’ front. Near the 

Brock Road–Orange Plank Road intersection, the Union troops 

cheered lustily as Grant, Meade, and their staffs passed—riding 

not back toward the river crossings or Fredericksburg, but south, 

toward Richmond.

Spotsylvania Court House

It did not take Lee long to discern his adversary’s next move. 

During the morning of 7 May, his patrols had discovered that the 

Federals had taken up their bridges from Germanna Ford and 

were no longer guarding the road to that crossing. To prepare for 

a possible move south, Lee had his engineers cut a new road south 

through the woods, parallel to the Brock Road, to the vicinity of 

Corbin’s Bridge on the Po River, a few miles west of Todd’s Tavern. 

From there, his army would have a clear road to the courthouse. 

When midafternoon reports indicated that the Union artillery 

reserve near Wilderness Tavern was moving south, Lee concluded 

that Spotsylvania was Grant’s objective and told his First Corps, 

now under Anderson, to use the new road to move at dark to the 

courthouse. At 2200, Anderson started. Due to raging fires in the 

Wilderness and the lack of a suitable rest area, he kept his men on 

the march throughout the night. At Blockhouse Bridge, where the 

First Corps recrossed the Po downstream from Corbin’s Bridge, he 

halted his command at daylight to eat breakfast. At this point, a 

messenger arrived from Maj. Gen. Fitzhugh Lee, the commanding 

general’s nephew and one of Stuart’s division commanders, calling 

for help against the V Corps’ advance. Two of Kershaw’s brigades 

immediately marched to Fitzhugh Lee’s line. There, Stuart was 

waiting to position them where the Brock Road, en route to the 

courthouse, crossed a rise named Laurel Hill.
28 

Attacking up Laurel Hill was Warren’s V Corps, which had 

endured a difficult night as the advance of the complex Union 

maneuver. To keep the Brock Road free of unnecessary traffic, 

the VI Corps was to march east to Chancellorsville and then 

southwest on the Catharpin and Piney Branch Church Roads to 

rejoin the Brock Road at Laurel Hill. The IX Corps was to follow 

the VI Corps to Piney Branch Church, where it would remain 

as a reserve, while the II Corps would hold its position and then 

proceed behind the V Corps to Todd’s Tavern. Sheridan’s cavalry 

was supposed to screen the advance and clear the Brock Road all 

the way to Spotsylvania, with one division occupying the crossroads ahead of the infantry.

But the Army of the Potomac’s knack for slowness once 

again came into play. The VI and IX Corps found their path to 

Chancellorsville blocked by ambulances loaded with wounded en 

route to Fredericksburg. The V Corps’ march ran into a 200-yard 

stretch of inch-deep water, which the long column had to pick 

through, one man at a time, backing up the corps for miles. When 

the head of the column reached Todd’s Tavern—five miles south 

of the Orange Plank Road intersection—about midnight, it found 

two cavalry divisions asleep in the fields. An angry Meade ordered 

Brig. Gen. David M. Gregg’s cavalry division to hurry west and 

capture Corbin’s Bridge, while Brig. Gen. Wesley Merritt’s division 

was assigned to capture Blockhouse Bridge and clear the path 

southeast to the courthouse. Merritt had advanced barely two 

miles when he ran into Fitzhugh Lee’s roadblock of felled trees, 

guarded by dismounted Confederate troopers backed by artillery. A brisk firefight ensued, and Merritt requested support 

from Warren’s lead division, commanded by Brig. Gen. John C. 

Robinson. By midmorning of 8 May, the Federals had pushed Lee’s 

cavalry to the foot of Laurel Hill.

Exhausted after an all-night march, the Union advance now 

confronted about four hundred yards of open field, the ground 

rising to a line of pine trees on the crest where Lee’s cavalry had piled 

some logs and fence rails to make a crude breastwork. Robinson 

wanted to bring up his whole division for a full-scale attack, but 

Warren, still burning from criticism that he had acted too slowly 

in the Wilderness, decided to strike before the Confederates could 

finish their works and bring up reinforcements. The lead Union 

brigade advanced on the east side of the road to within sixty yards 

of the enemy line, where it was hammered by a point-blank volley 
29

and forced to take cover behind a shallow depression. West of the 

road, Col. Andrew W. Denison’s Maryland Brigade drove across 

the Spindle Farm, briefly penetrating the works on the crest, 

before Kershaw’s troops threw them back down the hill. Robinson 

fell when a Confederate minié ball shattered his left knee, and his 

attack soon disintegrated. As more V Corps units arrived, Warren 

threw them into action piecemeal, telling his tired, hungry troops 

to clear the road if they wanted to draw rations, but they could 

make no headway against the ever-stronger Confederate position. 

Frustrated, Warren re-formed his troops along the tree line 

in front of Laurel Hill and sent word to Meade that he faced a 

powerful force of enemy infantry. Meade tried to hurry the VI 

Corps to the front, but it took five hours before Sedgwick could 

deploy his men on Warren’s left. Reluctant to put the senior but 

plodding Sedgwick in charge, Meade instead enjoined cooperation between the two corps, earning a blast from the punctilious 

Warren, who demanded that Meade choose a single commander. 

When the combined attack finally began at 1800, just a few V 

Corps units joined two VI Corps divisions, which were speedily 

repulsed.

As darkness fell on 8 May, the two sides rushed up reinforcements and extended their lines. From west to east, the Union 

divisions of Brig. Gen. Samuel W. Crawford, Brig. Gen. Lysander 

Cutler, and Griffin held the V Corps’ front from near the Po River 

to the Brock Road. East of the road, the VI Corps’ line—composed 

of the divisions of Brig. Gens. James B. Ricketts, Thomas H. Neill, 

and Horatio G. Wright—curved northeast to the modest hut of 

a farmer named Brown. The II Corps remained in the area of 

Todd’s Tavern, while the IX Corps shifted northeast toward the 

Fredericksburg Road to extend the Union line in that direction. 

The Federals had only the haziest idea of Lee’s position, which lay 

behind dense woods and numerous skirmishers. 

Having deployed the rest of the First Corps and driven off 

Brig. Gen. James H. Wilson’s Union cavalry division, which had 

briefly occupied the courthouse, Lee hastened to bring up his 

other two corps. Arriving on the First Corps’ right about 1700, 

Ewell extended his line during the night, running it to the north 

along a low ridge and then bending it back to enclose a bulge or 

salient, dubbed the Mule Shoe because of its U-shaped configuration. When told about the salient, Lee expressed his displeasure, 

for he knew that such positions tended to disperse the defenders’ 
30 

fire and therefore required more men than straight-line fortifications. But he made the best of the situation by arranging to pack 

the tip with artillery and ensuring that it would be well entrenched. 

Meanwhile, after initially putting the Third Corps on his left along 

the Po, Lee shifted it to the right to cover the approaches to the 

courthouse from Fredericksburg. To replace Hill, who had asked 

to be relieved due to a chronic illness, he chose Early, a prickly 

personality, but also a rugged, skillful fighter.

Meanwhile, Union army headquarters at Piney Branch 

Church erupted with acrimony. Furious with the bungled night 

march, Meade took out his frustrations on Sheridan. Among other 

things, he blamed the cavalry commander for not screening the 

army, not clearing the road to Spotsylvania, not informing the 

army of the enemy’s movements, and wasting his cavalry’s energies 

on meaningless brushes with Stuart. Never one to suffer criticism 

gladly, the fiery Sheridan shot back that Meade’s orders to his 

cavalry, bypassing him, had foiled his own plans and wasted the 

Union cavalry’s numerical superiority on frivolous missions, when 

it should have been hunting down the enemy’s cavalry. Expecting 

Grant to reprimand his insubordinate cavalry leader, Meade took 

up the matter with the general in chief, only to have Grant tell him 

to give Sheridan the opportunity to whip Stuart in an independent raid. Accordingly, Meade 

issued the necessary orders, and 

Sheridan departed with almost 

all of the cavalry on the morning 

of 9 May. 

Having found his path to 

Spotsylvania blocked, Grant 

thought of following Sheridan 

in a flanking maneuver toward 

the North Anna River, but once 

he saw that Lee was concentrating his whole army at 

Spotsylvania, he decided to stay 

and fight. His main objective 

remained Lee’s army. That army, 

he believed, would be easier to 

defeat if it did not take cover 

in the massive entrenchments 

surrounding Richmond.

General Early

(Library of Congress)
31

Freed from the tangled Wilderness, Grant now maneuvered 

to find—or create—a weak point in Lee’s line. During 9 May, 

the Federal V and VI Corps fortified their positions—the latter 

losing Sedgwick to a sniper’s bullet shortly after he had uttered 

the immortal words, “They can’t hit an elephant at this distance.” 

Meanwhile, the Union II and IX Corps felt for Lee’s flanks. On 

the Union left, Brig. Gen. Orlando B. Willcox’s division of the IX 

Corps drove south on the Fredericksburg Road to reach Gayle’s 

house on the Ni River, just short of the courthouse crossroads, 

at 0700. At the time, only a brigade from Ewell’s corps and some 

cavalry stood in his path, but they fought vigorously, leading 

Willcox to inform Burnside that he faced superior numbers. By 

midafternoon, Early’s Confederate Third Corps had arrived and 

the opportunity for a breakthrough passed. 

The action now shifted to the Confederate left. Hearing that 

Early had departed from Hancock’s front near the Po River on the 

Union right, Grant ordered the II Corps to attack Lee’s left and 

rear. By dark on 9 May, Hancock had crossed the winding Po west 

of Todd’s Tavern and then driven east to Blockhouse Bridge, but he 

found the Po too deep to recross in the face of Lee’s entrenchments 

there. Aware of Hancock’s advance and eager to strike a blow, Lee 

had Anderson’s old Third Corps division, now under Brig. Gen. 

William Mahone, shift to a position facing Hancock, while Heth’s 

division returned from the right during the night to threaten 

Hancock’s right flank from the south. Believing this move had 

thinned the rest of Lee’s line, Grant told Meade at 1000 on 10 May 

to bring the II Corps back across the Po, except for one division to 

serve as a decoy. The II Corps would then join the V and VI Corps 

for a massive assault at 1700 (Map 4).

The splitting of the II Corps resulted in several anxious 

hours for the “decoy” division on the far side of the Po. During 

the morning, the II Corps divisions of Maj. Gen. David B. Birney 

and Brig. Gen. John Gibbon recrossed the Po and took up positions next to and in support of the V Corps’ right. Left between 

the folds of the Po, Brig. Gen. Francis C. Barlow, a former lawyer 

and one of the Union army’s best combat commanders, executed 

a fighting retreat during the afternoon against Heth’s fierce attacks 

and managed to get his division back across the Po by nightfall. 

Recalled by a nervous Meade to supervise Barlow’s withdrawal in 

person rather than to coordinate the main strike, Hancock held 

back Birney from the main assault to support Barlow if necessary.
W A R REN

( V )

HANC OCK

(II)

WRIGHT

( VI )

B A R L O W

B I R N E Y

U P T O N

GIBBON

H E T H

M A H O N E

F I E L D 

ANDERSON

(FIRST )

L a u r e l H i l l

to Todd’s Tavern

to Piney Branch Church

to Corbin’s Bridge

Blockhouse Bridge

Glady Run

Po River Po River

B R O C K R O A D

G O R D O N R O A D

O L D 

C O

U R

T H O U S E R O

A D

Alsop

Jones

Trigg

Block house

Taylor

Hicks

Waite

Spindle

Map 4

W A R REN

( V )

HANC OCK

(II)

WRIGHT

( VI )

B A R L O W

B I R N E Y

U P T O N

GIBBON

H E T H

M A H O N E

F I E L D 

ANDERSON

(FIRST )

L a u r e l H i l l

to Todd’s Tavern

to Piney Branch Church

to Corbin’s Bridge

Blockhouse Bridge

Glady Run

Po River Po River

B R O C K R O A D

G O R D O N R O A D

O L D 

C O

U R

T H O U S E R O

A D

Alsop

Jones

Trigg

Block house

Taylor

Hicks

Waite

Spindle
BURNSIDE

(IX )

M O T T

K E R S H A W

R O D E S

R A M S E UR

W I LCO X

G O RD O N

J O H N S O N

EAR L Y

( THIRD)

E W E

L

L

( S ECO ND)

Ni River

M A SS A P O N A X C H U RC H R O A D

F R E D E R I C K S B U R G R O A D

McCoull

Harrison

Landrum

Gayle

Brown

Spotsylvania Court House

0 1

Mile

10 May 1864

B AT TLE OF SPO TSYL VANIA

Confederate Position

Confederate Attack

Confederate Entrenchments

Union Position

Union Attack

Union Movement

Union Retreat

Union Entrenchments

BURNSIDE

(IX )

M O T T

K E R S H A W

R O D E S

R A M S E UR

W I LCO X

G O RD O N

J O H N S O N

EAR L Y

( THIRD)

E W E

L

L

( S ECO ND)

Ni River

M A SS A P O N A X C H U RC H R O A D

F R E D E R I C K S B U R G R O A D

McCoull

Harrison

Landrum

Gayle

Brown

Spotsylvania Court House

0 1

Mile

10 May 1864

B AT TLE OF SPO TSYL VANIA

Confederate Position

Confederate Attack

Confederate Entrenchments

Union Position

Union Attack

Union Movement

Union Retreat

Union Entrenchments
34 

Without Hancock’s supervision, the Union drive lost 

its coordination. Perceiving a weakness to his front, Warren 

requested and received authorization to launch his attack an 

hour early at 1600. His columns soon lost their cohesion in 

the dense woods and abatis—consisting of sharpened logs and 

other man-made obstacles—in front of the rebel works. When 

the Federals did reach open ground, heavy Confederate fire 

tore them apart within minutes. The repulse forced a delay 

in the general assault to allow the V Corps time to regroup. 

Unaware of the delay, Brig. Gen. Gershom Mott’s small II Corps 

division—already dispersed from having to cover the wide gap 

separating the VI and IX Corps—attacked at 1700 across open 

ground toward the tip of the Mule Shoe and was mangled by 

canister from massed enemy artillery. Two hours later, Gibbon 

and Birney at last began their advance on Laurel Hill, receiving 

just token support from the V Corps. Only a lone brigade of 

Birney’s division breached the works before a counterattack 

drove the Federals back to their starting point.

Confederate entrenchments with abatis at Spotsylvania

(Library of Congress)
35

Only on the VI Corps’ front did the Union attack achieve 

even partial success. In the assault on the western face of the Mule 

Shoe salient, Wright, the new commander of the VI Corps, elected 

to use a task force of twelve picked regiments under Col. Emory 

Upton, a brilliant, intense, young West Pointer from New York. 

Once the Union skirmishers had scattered the Confederate picket 

line, Upton took his regimental commanders to the edge of the 

woods two hundred yards from the enemy position, showed them 

the terrain, and described his plan. They would advance on the 

run from the woods in four lines of three regiments each. No man 

would stop to fire his weapon; indeed, all but the first line would 

forge ahead with their muskets loaded but uncapped. The first line 

would penetrate the works and drive on, spreading to cover the 

flanks of the breach, with the lines behind it ready to support as 

needed.

At 1835, Upton’s 5,000 men burst from the woods and sprinted 

across two hundred yards of open ground. Working through the 

abatis in their path, they stormed the works with fixed bayonets, 

capturing hundreds of prisoners from a surprised brigade of 

Rodes’ Second Corps division and driving off the rest. But the 

Confederates reacted quickly. Ewell brought up his reserves, 

Colonel Upton

(Library of Congress)

General Wright (Library of Congress)
36 

contained the penetration, and counterattacked. Upton’s men fell 

back to the exterior side of the works and repulsed one assault, 

but, when no support arrived, the seething colonel obtained 

permission to withdraw his force. He had lost 1,000 men but had 

inflicted about 1,250 casualties, including 950 prisoners, on the 

Confederates.

Upton’s limited success impressed Grant. He believed the 

attack would have split Lee’s line wide open had it been properly 

supported. Most of those around army headquarters blamed Mott’s 

division for the absence of support, but the general lack of coordination and Wright’s cautious decision not to exploit the breakthrough due to approaching darkness were much more culpable. 

Afterward, Grant reportedly remarked, “A brigade today—we’ll 

try a corps tomorrow.”

True to his word, at 1500 on 11 May, the general in chief told 

Meade to shift Hancock’s II Corps under cover of darkness from 

the right to a position between the VI and IX Corps. From there, 

the II Corps would launch an early morning assault on 12 May 

against the supposedly weak tip of the Mule Shoe salient. The IX 

Corps would make a vigorous attack in support, while the V and 

VI Corps stood ready to strike should the opportunity offer itself. 

The ever-optimistic Grant remained convinced that, even if they 

had not yet achieved a clear tactical victory, the Federals were 

inflicting far more damage on the enemy than the Confederates 

could sustain. Earlier that day, he had sent a wire to Halleck in 

Washington, expressing satisfaction over the course of the battle, 

asking for fresh troops, and informing the chief of staff of his 

intention to “fight it out on this line if it takes all summer.”

Grant’s confidence was betrayed by the comedy of errors that 

now ensued. When Hancock asked for the exact point of attack and 

directions to the jump-off area, he could not get a reliable answer 

from Meade’s headquarters. Two of Hancock’s staff, the chief of 

staff, Lt. Col. Charles H. Morgan, and Maj. William G. Mitchell, 

accompanied by Lt. Col. Cyrus B. Comstock of Grant’s staff, tried 

to conduct a reconnaissance but became lost in a downpour and 

ended up at IX Corps headquarters. The flustered Morgan did not 

return to II Corps headquarters until dark.

Morgan’s rough day was not over. At 2200 he and a member 

of Meade’s staff joined Barlow’s division, which was on its way to 

spearhead the attack, but they could tell Barlow little about the 

objective, the plan of attack, or even the route to the jump-off 
37

point. Maps proved useless. As the already tired troops marched 

along the narrow road through the rain, mud, and darkness—with 

Morgan profanely admitting he did not know the way—the whole 

situation became so comical to Barlow that he finally exclaimed, 

“For Heaven’s sake, at least face us in the right direction, so that we 

shall not march away from the enemy and have to go around the 

world and come up in their rear.”

Shortly after midnight, the head of the column reached the 

Brown house, where Barlow obtained some information from 

a lieutenant colonel who had participated in Mott’s ill-fated 10 

May attack. On this basis, Barlow formed his division in a dense 

column similar to Upton’s, while Birney’s division was arranged 

in a more conventional linear formation on Barlow’s right with 

Gibbon’s division in support. About 0430 on 12 May, nineteen 

thousand men began to advance in the approximate direction of 

the Mule Shoe tip, under orders not to fire until they had reached 

the Confederate position (Map 5).

Now the Federals finally had some luck. Lee was well aware 

of Sheridan’s raid, which was then approaching Richmond, and 

he also was worried about Butler’s threat to the Confederate 

capital and Petersburg. During the day, he had received word of 

Hancock’s departure from the Po line, the movement of the Union 

wagon trains to Fredericksburg, and some shifts in the IX Corps’ 

front. Thinking that Grant might be preparing to withdraw toward 

Fredericksburg, Lee directed his artillery to leave their forward 

positions and be ready for a rapid march. Thus, Ewell’s chief of 

artillery removed thirty-two of the forty guns from the Mule 

Shoe salient without telling Johnson, the senior commander in 

that sector. Around midnight, pickets in front of the Mule Shoe 

reported hearing a noise like rushing water to the northwest. 

Johnson pleaded with Ewell to return the missing guns, and Ewell 

in turn appealed to Lee, who gave his permission. But it took time 

to find the batteries, hitch up the horses, and start them back 

toward the salient. The guns arrived about 0430, just as the Union 

attack was closing on the Confederate works.

Blundering through the early morning fog and uncertain of their direction, Hancock’s men happened to hit just 

the right spot at the Mule Shoe’s tip. They captured or drove 

off Confederate pickets, tore through the abatis in front of 

the enemy position, and then broke into a run over the last 

hundred yards. Confederate infantry, its powder dampened by 
W A R REN

( V )

WRIGHT

( VI )

A N D E R S O N

( F I R S T )

L a u r e l H i l l

to Todd’s Tavern

to Corbin’s Bridge

Blockhouse Bridge

to Piney Branch Church

Glady Run

Po River Po River

Alsop

Jones

Trigg

Shelton

Block house

Taylor

Hicks

Waite

Spindle

B R O C K R O A D

G O R D O N R O A D

O L D 

C O

U R

T H O U S E R O

A D

S H A D Y G R O V E C H U RC H R O A D

Map 5

W A R REN

( V )

WRIGHT

( VI )

A N D E R S O N

( F I R S T )

L a u r e l H i l l

to Todd’s Tavern

to Corbin’s Bridge

Blockhouse Bridge

to Piney Branch Church

Glady Run

Po River Po River

Alsop

Jones

Trigg

Shelton

Block house

Taylor

Hicks

Waite

Spindle

B R O C K R O A D

G O R D O N R O A D

O L D 

C O

U R

T H O U S E R O

A D

S H A D Y G R O V E C H U RC H R O A D
BURNSIDE

(IX )

H A N C O C K

(I I )

B A R L O W

B I R N E Y

G I B B O N

EAR L Y

( THIRD)

GORDON

E W E

L

L

( S ECO ND)

Bloody Angle

Ni River

McCoull

Harrison

Landrum

Gayle

Brown

Spotsylvania Court House

M A SS A P O N A X C H U RC H R O A D

F R E D E R I C K S B U R G R O A D

12 May 1864

B AT TLE OF SPO TSYL VANIA

Confederate Position

Confederate Attack

Confederate Entrenchments

Union Position

Union Attack

Union Entrenchments

0 1

Mile

BURNSIDE

(IX )

H A N C O C K

(I I )

B A R L O W

B I R N E Y

G I B B O N

EAR L Y

( THIRD)

GORDON

E W E

L

L

( S ECO ND)

Bloody Angle

Ni River

McCoull

Harrison

Landrum

Gayle

Brown

Spotsylvania Court House

M A SS A P O N A X C H U RC H R O A D

F R E D E R I C K S B U R G R O A D

12 May 1864

B AT TLE OF SPO TSYL VANIA

Confederate Position

Confederate Attack

Confederate Entrenchments

Union Position

Union Attack

Union Entrenchments

0 1

Mile
40 

rain, could get off only a ragged volley—and the newly returned 

artillery just a few scattered shots—before the Federal attackers 

poured over the earthworks. They overpowered the Southern 

defenders, capturing twenty guns, thirty flags, thousands of 

small arms, and hundreds of men, including Johnson, a brigade 

commander, and a large contingent of the renowned Stonewall 

Brigade. Barlow’s and Birney’s men drove down the shoulders of 

the salient, outflanking defenders and forcing them to retreat. 

Already, however, the impetus of the attack was slowing. The 

victorious Federals had become a disordered mass, twenty men 

deep in places, with more and more troops piling into the works 

from behind—while some escorted Confederate prisoners back 

to Union lines, and others stopped to rifle the enemy bivouac for 

food and valuables before rejoining their comrades in a vague 

forward movement. Hancock ordered up still more reserves, 

and officers strove to rally their men and reorganize for a more 

concerted effort to widen the breach in Lee’s line.

But the Confederates reacted quickly. Behind some intervening pines at the McCoull House a few hundred yards from 

Battle of Spotsylvania, showing Hancock’s attack on the Mule Shoe, 

by Thure de Thulstrup (Library of Congress)
41

the salient tip, Gordon—in temporary command of Early’s 

division—sensed the crisis from the number of fugitives 

streaming to the rear. Sending in a brigade to slow the Union 

advance, he formed his other brigades for a counterattack. Lee 

joined him, and, for a moment, it appeared that the commander 

of the Army of Northern Virginia once again intended to lead 

the attack in person. Finally, as his men chanted, “Lee to the 

rear,” Gordon interposed himself and his staff between their 

commander and the Northerners, and a sergeant guided Lee’s 

horse away from the action. Gordon then struck, driving the 

disorganized Union formations before him. By 0700, he had 

forced his way back to Johnson’s original trench line at the 

tip. Lee and Ewell pumped in additional reinforcements that 

shoved the Federals back to the outer side of the salient earthworks. There, however, Union resistance stiffened, and Grant 

had Meade throw in the VI 

Corps on the II Corps’ right.

For roughly twenty hours, 

the two sides grappled in 

perhaps the fiercest—and most 

fabled—confrontation of the 

Civil War: the fight at the section 

of the Mule Shoe known as the 

Bloody Angle. From the tip of 

the salient to its western face, 

Union and Confederate soldiers 

challenged each other at close 

quarters, separated in places by 

only a rampart of earth and logs. 

Men fired into each other’s faces, 

stabbed between crevices with 

bayonets, or reached over the 

parapet to drag their opponents 

into captivity. Here and there, 

soldiers mounted the works and 

fired muskets passed up to them 

until enemy bullets cut them down. Artillery crews tried to provide 

close support but lost heavily to a tremendous volume of musketry 

that obliterated the surrounding vegetation, sawing in half an oak 

tree that reportedly measured twenty inches in diameter. All the 

while, an intermittent rain filled the trenches with muddy water, 

General Gordon

(National Archives)
42 

in which the dead and wounded commingled and were trampled 

underfoot.

At Grant’s order, the whole Army of the Potomac was now in 

action, Burnside’s IX Corps attacking the east face of the salient 

and Warren’s V Corps launching yet another assault on Laurel 

Hill. The Federals made little effort at maneuver. At this point, 

Grant was trying to conquer by sheer mass, but at the Bloody 

Angle, the length of the front did not allow enough space for all 

the men the general in chief was throwing into the action. While 

the Confederates held, Lee’s engineers rushed to construct a new 

line across the base of the Mule Shoe. By 0300 of 13 May, their 

work was finished, and the Confederates withdrew, leaving Union 

troops in possession of the Bloody Angle. It had been a brutal 

twenty hours. The Army of the Potomac had added another 6,000 

to 7,000 men to its casualty lists, but Lee’s army had suffered an 

even more grievous 8,000 losses, including 4,000 prisoners.

Having endured eight days of almost continuous fighting, the 

exhausted combatants now rested, while Grant considered his next 

move. Probes of the new Confederate line on 13 May indicated 

that it was too strong for a frontal assault, so Grant returned to 

maneuver. He decided to march the V Corps from the Laurel Hill 

sector behind the rest of the Union front to a new position on the 

Union left, on the Fredericksburg Road and next to the IX Corps. 

The VI Corps would follow and form on the V Corps’ left across 

the Massaponax Church Road. The two corps would then attack 

Lee’s exposed flank at 0400 on 14 May. 

The elements now intervened. When Warren’s men began 

their trek at 2100 on 13 May, a torrential downpour turned the 

roads into rivers of mud. Anticipating the problem, Warren had 

posted guides and built fires at intervals along the line of march, 

but the darkness, rain, fog, and mud were too much for the fatigued 

troops. At 0400 on 14 May, only a thousand men had reached the 

attack area, with the rest of the V and VI Corps strung out for 

miles to the rear. After repeated postponements, Grant finally 

canceled the assault at 0900. During the afternoon, Lee discovered 

the V Corps’ withdrawal and began shifting his First Corps to the 

courthouse area, closing Grant’s window of opportunity. 

For the next three days, the two armies faced each other as 

the rain fell, seemingly without respite. Grant moved most of the 

II Corps from his right to a spot near the Ni’s intersection with 

the Fredericksburg Road, ready to reinforce either flank, and the 
43

Army of the Potomac welcomed the first of 17,000 reinforcements, mostly from green heavy artillery regiments that had been 

manning the Washington fortifications. When the sun returned 

on 17 May, Grant quickly marched the II and VI Corps back to 

their old positions on the Union right flank for a dawn attack that 

he hoped would catch Lee unawares.

The 18 May assault, however, was a disaster. This time, the 

Federals did not enjoy the benefits of fog, a vulnerable salient, 

absent enemy artillery, and damp powder among the defenders. 

Confederate lookouts in the belfry of the courthouse had discovered the Union march on the previous day, and Ewell’s Second 

Corps, with Rodes’ division posted on the left and Gordon’s on the 

right, was ready, having had five days to strengthen its position. 

The Union advance bogged down in the abandoned trenches 

around the old Mule Shoe, and it was not until 0800 that two II 

Corps divisions and one VI Corps division attacked.

Within an hour, it was over. Massed Confederate artillery swept the ground in front of the defenses, blasting Union 

troops with shell and case shot. Despite the devastating fire, the 

Federals pressed on through the abatis and made several vain 

attempts to reach the Confederate earthworks. But the attacks 

only succeeded in adding 2,000 of Meade’s men to the casualty 

lists and leaving many of the survivors thoroughly disgusted. 

One Union infantryman remarked that in the thickets of the 

Wilderness, no one had expected brilliant generalship, but, in 

the more open country of Spotsylvania, “it was the duty of our 

generals to know the strength of the works before they launched 

the army against them.”

The Shenandoah Valley, the James River, and Yellow Tavern

The Army of the Potomac’s flagging morale was not 

buoyed by news from elsewhere in Virginia—news especially 

dismaying after some early successes. In southwest Virginia, 

Crook’s 6,500 Federals had defeated Brig. Gen. Albert Jenkins’ 

3,000 Confederates at Cloyd’s Mountain on 9 May, and the 

next day they burned the railroad station and supply depot at 

Dublin and the New River Bridge on the Virginia and Tennessee 

Railroad. Hearing false reports of Grant’s defeat, however, Crook 

withdrew to Union, West Virginia, where he was joined on 15 

May by Averell. With just 2,000 cavalry, Averell had stopped 

short of the saltworks at Saltville when he received word of 
44 

superior Confederate forces there; later, Brig. Gen. William E. 

“Grumble” Jones with 4,500 men repulsed Averell’s assault on 

the lead mines at Wytheville. The Union general managed to 

tear up only a few miles of track near Christiansburg before 

meeting Crook.

In the meantime, Sigel had driven south on the Valley 

Turnpike from Martinsburg to the village of New Market, 

where on 15 May his 9,000 Federals met Maj. Gen. John C. 

Breckinridge’s 5,300 Confederates—including 227 cadets from 

the Virginia Military Institute. Breckinridge skillfully advanced 

his brigades between the turnpike and the north fork of the 

Shenandoah River, leapfrogging his artillery batteries to create 

a steady barrage of fire support. At one point, he reluctantly 

ordered the cadets to fill a gap in his line. Though outnumbered, Breckinridge pressed the Union ranks back to Bushong’s 

Hill, where Sigel launched a feeble counterattack in a futile bid 

to stem the tide. Breckinridge then made a final thrust that 

captured five guns, inducing the Union commander to order 

a general retreat down the Valley. In the Battle of New Market, 

the Federals had lost 840 men, the Confederates 530. From 

Washington, Halleck wired the bad news to Grant, remarking 

that the hapless Sigel “will do nothing but run. He never did 

anything else.”

As was the case in other parts of Virginia, the reports from 

Butler’s theater of operations were initially encouraging but soon 

turned sour. Protected by Northern sea power, Butler landed 

his army at Bermuda Hundred on 5 May. A peninsula formed 

by the confluence of the Appomattox River and the James River, 

Bermuda Hundred lay about twenty miles down the James from 

Richmond and eight miles down the Appomattox from Petersburg. 

Butler’s orders were to entrench, concentrate his 30,000-man 

force, and operate along the south bank of the James against 

Richmond, gaining a foothold as far upriver as possible. At most, 

the Confederates had about 7,000 men in the entire RichmondPetersburg department and just 750 men in Butler’s immediate 

vicinity at Petersburg.

Aware that his proximity to these key points would draw 

considerable attention, Butler turned cautious despite his heavy 

numerical superiority. Instead of driving on the Confederate 

capital, he had his troops fortify his base at Bermuda Hundred and 

make tentative probes toward the Richmond-Petersburg Railroad. 
45

An amateur general, Butler bickered with his more seasoned, if 

disingenuous, corps commanders—Maj. Gen. Quincy A. Gillmore 

of the X Corps and Maj. Gen. William F. “Baldy” Smith of the 

XVIII Corps—rather than listen to their advice.

Hearing that Grant was moving south, on 12 May Butler 

began advancing toward Richmond to divert attention from the 

Army of the Potomac. By 14 May, he had penetrated Richmond’s 

outer defenses near Drewry’s Bluff. Meanwhile, the Confederate 

commander, General Pierre G. T. Beauregard, rushed troops to the 

threatened sector. On 16 May, Beauregard attacked Butler with a 

hastily assembled force of twenty thousand men. The Confederates 

drove the Union right flank from the river and the protection of 

the Union gunboats, forcing Butler to retreat into his fortifications 

across the Bermuda Hundred peninsula. Beauregard also dug in, 

containing Butler’s Army of the James as effectively as if he had 

corked it inside a bottle.

The only bright spot in these subsidiary Union operations 

came courtesy of Sheridan (Map 6). Departing on 9 May from the 

Army of the Potomac’s rear area, his twelve thousand horsemen 

and thirty-two guns started down the Telegraph Road toward 

Richmond in a massive, thirteen-mile-long column, intent on 

fighting Stuart’s cavalry wherever they could find it. At Jerrell’s 

Mill on the crossing of the Ta 

River, Sheridan’s column took 

the Mountain Road, a more 

westerly route that ran parallel to 

the Telegraph Road. The Federal 

rear guard, meanwhile, clashed 

with Confederate horsemen at 

Jerrell’s Mill and Mitchell’s Shop, 

five miles to the south. Stuart 

led three of his brigades in a 

vain attempt to strike Sheridan 

as he crossed the North Anna 

River, but the Union cavalry 

commander had his advance, 

under Brig. Gen. George A. 

Custer, safely over the river by 

dark on 9 May. Once across, 

Custer seized the Confederate 

supply depot at Beaver Dam 

General Sheridan

(Library of Congress)
W R I G H T W A R R E N

H A N C O C K

B U R N S I D E

S H E R I D

A N

YELLOW TAVERN 11 May

A N D E R S O N E W E L L

S T U

A R T

S T U

A R T

A. P. H I L L

Pamunkey R

James R

Rappahannock R

Mattaponi R

South Anna R

North Anna R

Po R

Ta R

Ni R

Chickahominy R

Old Cold Harbor

Atlee’s Station

Ashland Station

Hanover Junction

Beaver Dam Station

Jerrell’s Mill

Milford Station

Guinea Station

to Fredericksburg

Port Royal

Bowling Green

Spotsylvania Court House

Mechanicsville

RICHMOND

Hanovertown

Virginia Central RR

Richmond, Fredericksburg and Potomac RR

Richmond and York RR

U n ­ n i s h e d RR

0 5

Miles

9–23 May 1864

M ANEUVERING SOUTHWARD

Union Cavalry Movement, 9–11 May

Confederate Cavalry Movement, 9–11 May

Union Movement, 18–23 May

Confederate Movement, 19–23 May

Map 6
47

Station on the Virginia Central, burning a hundred railroad cars, 

two locomotives, some much-needed medical supplies, and 1.5 

million rations of bread and meat, while freeing about 300 Union 

prisoners.

As the Northern troopers continued south on the Mountain 

Road, Stuart led his cavalry down the Telegraph Road and, thanks 

to some hard riding, managed to get between Sheridan and 

Richmond. He had already notified the authorities in the capital of 

the Federals’ approach, and he now planned to block the advance 

with two brigades while the third attacked the Union rear. At Yellow 

Tavern, an abandoned way station where the Telegraph Road met 

the Mountain Road, Stuart’s two forward brigades assumed an 

L-shaped ambush formation that Stuart hoped would enable him 

to trap his foe between his own forces and the Richmond garrison. 

But such was not to be. Enjoying a three-to-one numerical superiority, the Federals easily broke through two successive Confederate 

blocking positions, first in the morning and then in the late afternoon of 11 May.

A tactical victory for Sheridan, Yellow Tavern had mixed 

overall results. The futile attempt to trap the Union cavalry 

proved costly to the Confederates, for Stuart was mortally 

wounded while trying to rally 

his men in a driving thunderstorm. The battle, however, did 

give the Richmond garrison 

time to man its fortifications, 

inducing Sheridan to bypass 

the Confederate capital and 

continue to the James, reaching 

Haxall’s Landing on 14 May. 

The Richmond expedition cost 

each side about 600 casualties, including the irreplaceable Stuart. Sheridan also had 

destroyed a priceless quantity of 

Confederate supplies, damaged 

rail communications, and 

defeated the Southern cavalry, 

but his absence left Grant and 

Meade blind until his return on 

24 May.

General Stuart

(Library of Congress)
48 

The North Anna

Back at Spotsylvania, Grant had some thinking to do in 

the aftermath of the 18 May debacle. Through 20 May, he 

had lost 18,400 men at Spotsylvania compared to Lee’s 12,000 

casualties. However, Confederate successes elsewhere had 

enabled Lee to draw 2,500 reinforcements from the Valley and 

7,000 from Richmond, with more to come. Grant, likewise, 

had received some reinforcements from Washington—mostly 

green heavy artillerymen—but Meade’s army continued to 

hemorrhage veterans due to combat losses and expiring enlistments. At the close of the battles for Spotsylvania, the numerical disparity between the two armies was narrower than at any 

other time in the campaign—67,000 Federals to about 53,000 

Confederates. 

Furthermore, morale in the Union army had dropped to 

a low point. For two weeks, the soldiers had endured fierce 

combat, frequent night marches, incessant battle noise, and 

prolonged contact with the enemy that left little time for 

sleep. Some units, notably the V Corps at Laurel Hill, had 

displayed considerable reluctance in attacking works that they 

had already failed to seize. Although Grant, Meade, and their 

respective staffs still got along relatively well, mounting tension 

bubbled just beneath the surface, mostly due to the strains of 

the awkward command situation and frustration over missed 

opportunities. The real frustration, though, lay in the Federals’ 

inability to pry the Confederates out of their entrenchments for 

a decisive fight in the open. 

Despite his brave words of the previous week, Grant had 

decided that it was time to leave the Spotsylvania line, and, on 

18 May, he drafted orders for yet another shift around Lee’s 

right flank. (See Map 6.) His next maneuver resembled his 

earlier side steps to the southeast—but with a twist. Once again, 

the Army of the Potomac would change its base, this time from 

Belle Plain to Port Royal, a small tobacco town farther down the 

Rappahannock. To induce Lee to leave his entrenchments, Grant 

planned to hold most of Meade’s army near Spotsylvania, while 

Hancock’s II Corps executed an elaborate turning movement. It 

would first march east to the Richmond, Fredericksburg, and 

Potomac Railroad at Guinea Station and then south across the 

Mattaponi River to Bowling Green and Milford Station, roughly 

twenty miles distant. Grant hoped that Lee would take the bait 
49

and strike Hancock’s isolated corps, thereby exposing Lee’s own 

army to an attack in the open. 

Grant immediately began to set his trap. During the night of 

18–19 May, the VI Corps and then the IX Corps leapfrogged the V 

Corps to take position on the Union left, near the lower reaches of 

the Po River. After shifting to Anderson’s Mill on the lower Ni, the 

II Corps was ready to start its march from behind the Union left. 

On the extreme right, the V Corps’ line bent back and ran across 

the upper Ni along the northern side of the Fredericksburg Road 

to the hills near the Harris farm, where a brigade of heavy artillery 

regiments guarded the flank.

Suspecting that Grant might have uncovered his supply line 

to Fredericksburg, Lee directed Ewell to probe the Union right 

flank. By this time, Ewell could count only about six thousand 

men in his decimated Second Corps, and he chose to take most 

of them on this rather hefty reconnaissance in force. He set out 

around 1400 on 19 May. 

Hearing reports of Ewell’s approach, the Army of the 

Potomac’s senior leadership once more overreacted to a suspected 

Confederate flank attack. Meade ordered Brig. Gen. Robert O. 

Tyler’s division of heavy artillery regiments to reinforce the right 

flank. He also postponed the II Corps’ scheduled move for that 

evening, telling Hancock and Warren to each send a division as 

additional support.

Meade’s concern proved unfounded. Standing upright in 

exposed ranks to trade volleys with Rodes’ and Gordon’s veteran 

divisions at close range, Tyler’s artillerymen-turned-infantrymen 

lost heavily but held their ground until Ewell finally withdrew 

about 2100. The fight at the Harris farm had cost the Confederates 

about 900 casualties, including 400 prisoners, compared to the 

Union heavies’ 1,500 losses.

Freed from the momentary distraction at the Harris farm, 

Grant launched his maneuver. Hancock began his turning 

movement at 2200 on 20 May and reached Milford Station by the 

next afternoon, capturing a few troops from Pickett’s division on 

their way from Richmond to reinforce Lee. The rest of the Army of 

the Potomac followed Hancock on 21 May. Originally supposed to 

drive down Telegraph Road, the V Corps instead took a safer route 

farther east and closer to the II Corps via Guinea Station, its lead 

brigade advancing as far as a little crossroads named Madison’s 

Ordinary. Next in line, the IX Corps skirmished with Confederate 
50 

troops at the Telegraph Road crossing of the Po before angling 

east toward Guinea Station. The VI Corps brought up the rear. In 

Caroline County, the Federals found themselves in a rich, open 

countryside largely untouched by war. Union foraging parties and 

stragglers had a field day plundering sheep, chickens, and cattle. 

Lacking cavalry, however, the Federals missed Lee’s army by the 

narrowest of margins. During the night of 21–22 May, Union 

outposts near Madison’s Ordinary heard the noise of troops—Lee’s 

Confederates—marching along the Telegraph Road, only a mile 

and a half to the west.

Lee had responded quickly to Grant’s maneuver. It is 

doubtful that the Virginian even realized the exposed position 

of the Union II Corps. As far as he was concerned, Grant was 

just shifting southeast to cross the Pamunkey, outflank the North 

Anna line, and force the Army of Northern Virginia into the 

Richmond fortifications, an outcome that Lee dreaded. Instead, 

Lee decided to pull back to only the North Anna. Having just 

moved Ewell to his right during the night of 20–21 May, he 

started the Second Corps at about midday on 21 May down 

the Telegraph Road toward the key railroad center of Hanover 

Junction, just behind the river. The First Corps followed the 

Second Corps down the road, while the Third Corps, once again 

under A. P. Hill, marched farther to the west.

As Lee’s army approached the North Anna, the campaign’s 

rigors were starting to tell on the Confederate high command. 

In addition to the gravely wounded Longstreet, both Ewell and 

Hill were ill, and Lee was intervening in lower-level tactics to an 

unusual degree, a strain that was taking a severe toll on his health. 

But Lee was cheered by the arrival of Breckinridge’s division from 

the Valley, along with Pickett’s three brigades and another brigade 

from Beauregard. During 22–23 May, his forces assembled along 

the North Anna, with Hill on the left, Anderson in the center, and 

Ewell on the right.

Situated just twenty-one miles north of Richmond, the North 

Anna River provided a good—if not ideal—defensive position for 

Lee short of his capital. One hundred fifty feet wide, it could be 

forded or bridged at only a few points, but, because the northern 

bank was generally higher than the southern, Union artillery 

would command most of the crossings, making a close defense of 

the river line difficult. Running parallel to the river on the south 

bank, the Virginia Central Railroad, Lee’s critical supply line to 
51

the Valley, made its way to Hanover Junction, which was shielded 

by the eastern end of Lee’s line. On its way south to Hanover 

Junction, the Richmond, Fredericksburg, and Potomac Railroad 

traversed the North Anna just east of the Telegraph Road crossing 

at Chesterfield Bridge. Covering the north side of the bridge was a 

redoubt held by Col. John W. Henagan’s South Carolina brigade of 

Kershaw’s First Corps division. 

During 23 May, the Army of the Potomac closed up to the 

river line. Lee had thought that Grant might rest his forces once 

he found the Confederates in his path behind the river, but Grant 

had no such intention. Optimistic as ever, he believed that the 

Confederates had been shaken by the fighting around Spotsylvania, 

and he decided to keep up the pressure on Lee by forcing the 

river line. Poor maps hindered the army’s concentration, as the 

V Corps took a road that the II Corps intended to use and then 

lost precious time working out a new route. By early afternoon, 

however, the II Corps was approaching Chesterfield Bridge, while 

the V Corps had moved five miles upstream toward Jericho Mills. 

Discovering Henagan’s position, Hancock brought up twenty guns 

to lend support, and then, about 1600, he launched an attack with 

three brigades. The Federals quickly overran the works, capturing 

some Confederates and driving the rest across the river. Having 

occupied the north bank, the II Corps’ advance halted for the 

night. 

Farther west, the V Corps secured a lodgment at Jericho Mills 

Ford. Starting in the early afternoon, Warren sent Griffin’s division 

across the North Anna’s fifty yards of waist-deep water and up the 

steep banks on the far side, while engineers scrambled to build a 

pontoon bridge. The rest of the corps soon followed. By evening, 

Warren had almost all of his infantry over the river and in line of 

battle: Crawford in the woods next to the river on the left, Griffin 

in the center, and Cutler moving into position in the more open 

ground to the right.

Dug in behind the Virginia Central less than two miles to 

the south, Confederate General Wilcox received word that three 

Union brigades had crossed the North Anna, and, with Hill’s 

blessing, he advanced with his division to crush them. His left 

wing struck Cutler’s troops in motion, sending the once-stalwart 

Iron Brigade and the Pennsylvania Bucktails fleeing to the rear. 

Warren threw in reinforcements, including the Maryland Brigade, 

which shoved some of Cutler’s fugitives off the bridge as it hurried 
52 

to the south bank. The V Corps artillery, meanwhile, unleashed a 

hailstorm of fire that stopped the Confederates. Unsupported by 

the rest of Hill’s Third Corps, Wilcox withdrew to the railroad after 

dusk, having lost 730 casualties to Warren’s 370. The Federals had 

forced the North Anna line at one point and were poised to do so 

at another, compromising Lee’s defenses.

That evening, an ailing Lee met with his key subordinates 

and staff officers under a tall oak tree at Hanover Junction. All 

agreed that the junction was too important a site for the army to 

abandon. After consulting with his engineers about the terrain, 

the Confederate leader laid out a new and ingenious defensive 

position. It took the shape of an upside-down V, with the point 

at Ox Ford, one of the few places where the southern bank of 

the North Anna rose above the northern bank (Map 7). From 

west to east, Heth’s, Wilcox’s, and Mahone’s divisions of the Third 

Corps would hold the high ground along the western shank of 

the V, while Kershaw’s and Field’s divisions of the First Corps 

and Rodes’, Gordon’s, and Early’s divisions of the Second Corps 

occupied the swampy terrain along the eastern shank. Some of 

View from the north bank of the North Anna River crossing at Jericho Mills 

(Library of Congress)
53

Ewell’s units, along with Pickett’s and Breckinridge’s divisions, 

formed the reserve. After the war, one of Lee’s former aides stated 

that the general had planned to draw the Union army across the 

North Anna on both flanks, enabling him to use his interior lines 

and reserves to crush one wing before the other could come to 

its support.

If setting a trap was indeed Lee’s intent, then Grant and Meade 

came far closer to tripping it than they would have liked. During 

the morning of 24 May, the II Corps crossed the North Anna and 

occupied the abandoned Confederate trenches in the sector, while 

the V Corps, supported by the VI Corps, advanced southward 

from the Jericho Mills bridgehead. Fugitive slaves and Confederate 

prisoners told credulous Union officers that Lee’s army was in full 

retreat, and Union commanders saw an opportunity to catch the 

Confederates in the open. 

Burnside’s IX Corps, however, was stymied by the formidable Confederate position at Ox Ford. Seeking to outflank what 

appeared to be a mere outpost, Burnside had Maj. Gen. Thomas 

L. Crittenden’s division cross upstream at Quarles’ Mill Ford to 

clear the south bank for the rest of the corps. But Crittenden’s lead 

brigade under Brig. Gen. James H. Ledlie ran into Hill’s imposing 

earthworks. Ledlie asked Crittenden for reinforcements but was 

rebuffed and told to proceed with the “utmost caution.” His martial 

ardor likely inspired by the bottle, Ledlie disregarded Crittenden’s 

admonition and launched a frontal assault, which Mahone’s 

Confederate division easily repulsed with a lethal combination of 

rifled musket and canister fire.

On the other side of Ox Ford, Gibbon drove to within a mile 

of Hanover Junction, where he was hit by a ferocious counterattack 

launched by Rodes’ division. Only then did it dawn on the Union 

commanders that Lee had not retreated and that the Federals now 

occupied a precarious position. The Confederates’ Ox Ford salient 

had split the Union forces in two, with the V Corps and VI Corps 

on the western half of the inverted V and the II Corps on the 

eastern half. But if Lee had any intention of crushing the isolated II 

Corps, a fever that kept the general bedridden for most of the day 

prevented him from doing so. In the meantime, Grant and Meade 

sought to extricate the Army of the Potomac from Lee’s trap. They 

ordered the II Corps to dig in, canceled the V Corps’ advance, and 

directed the IX Corps to cut roads and build bridges to improve 

the line of communications between the two wings of the army.
A . P. H I L L

AN D E R S O N

EW E L L

B R E C K I N R I D G E

FIRST C O RPS

THIRD C O RPS

SECON

H ANCOC K

B U R N S I D E

WAR R E N

W R I G H T

VI COR

II CORPS

IX C

South Anna R

North Anna R

Chickahominy R

Yellow Tavern

Hungary

 Station

Ashland Station

Hanover Junction

Mt. Carmel Churc h

Beaver Dam

Station

to Richmond to Richmond

to Fredericksburg

to Charlottesville

Virginia Central RR

Richmond, Fredericksburg and Potomac RR

W A

R R E N

( V)

B U R N S I D E (IX)

H A N C

(II)

O C K

W R I G H T

( VI)

GIBBON

BIRNEY

CRITTENDEN

BARLOW

A .

P .

 H I L L

( THIRD)

E W E L L

(SECOND)

A N

D E R S O N

(FIRST )

MAHONE

K E R S H A W

F I E L D

G O R D O N

R O D E S

EA R LY

HETH

WILCOX

PICKET T

BRECKINRIDGE

Virginia Central RR

Richmond, Fredericksburg and Potomac RR

TELE G R A P H R O A D

North Anna R

Little R

B eave r D a m S t a t i o n

Ches tere l d

S t a t i o n

M t . Car m e l

Churc h

Hanover Junction

Quarles’ Mill

 Ford

Ox Ford Chestereld Bridge

Jericho Mills Ford

to Fredericksburg

to Milford

Station

SKETCH OF NORTH ANNA BAT TLEFIELD

25 May 1864

Morning

Map 7

A . P. H I L L

AN D E R S O N

EW E L L

B R E C K I N R I D G E

FIRST C O RPS

THIRD C O RPS

SECON

H ANCOC K

B U R N S I D E

WAR R E N

W R I G H T

VI COR

II CORPS

IX C

South Anna R

North Anna R

Chickahominy R

Yellow Tavern

Hungary Station

Ashland Station

Hanover

 Junction

Mt. Carmel Churc h

Beaver Dam

Station

to Richmond to Richmond

to Fredericksburg

to Charlottesville

Virginia Central RR

Richmond, Fredericksburg and Potomac RR

W A

R R E N

( V)

B U R N S I D E (IX)

H A N C

(II)

O C K

W R I G H T

( VI)

GIBBON

BIRNEY

CRITTENDEN

BARLOW

A .

P .

 H I L L

( THIRD)

E W E L L

(SECOND)

A N

D E R S O N

(FIRST )

MAHONE

K E R S H A W

F I E L D

G O R D O N

R O D E S

EA R LY

HETH

WILCOX

PICKET T

BRECKINRIDGE

Virginia Central RR

Richmond, Fredericksburg and Potomac RR

TELE G R A P H R O A D

North Anna R

Little R

B eave r D a m S t a t i o n

Ches tere l d

S t a t i o n

M t . Car m e l

Churc h

Hanover Junction

Quarles’ Mill

 Ford

Ox Ford Chestereld Bridge

Jericho Mills Ford

to Fredericksburg

to Milford

Station

SKETCH OF NORTH ANNA BAT TLEFIELD

25 May 1864

Morning
A . P. HI L L

A N D E R S O N

B R E C K I N R I D GE EA R LY

HAW’S SHOP 28 May

ND CORPS

H A N CO CK W R I G H T

WA R R E N

B U R N S I D E

RPS

VI CORPS

II CORPS

VI CORPS

II CORPS

V CORPS

V CORPS

CORPS

V CORPS

IX CORPS

IX CORPS

Pamunkey R

Totopotomoy Cr

Matadequin Cr

R

Mattaponi R

Walnut Grove Churc h

Bethesda Churc h

Polegreen Churc h

Shady Grove

Churc h 

Mangohick

 Churc h

Enon Churc h

Cash Corner

Pea ke’s Station

Atlee’s Station

Old Churc h

d

Nelson’s Crossing

Virginia Central RR

Hanover Court House

Mechanicsville

Hanovertown

0 5

Miles

25–28 May 1864

MOVEMENT T O TOT OPO T OMOY

Confederate Position, 25 May

Confederate Position, 28 May

Confederate Movement, 25–28 May

Confederate Entrenchments

Union Position, 25 May

Union Position, 28 May

Union Movement, 25-28 May

Union Entrenchments

Cavalry Battle

A . P. HI L L

A N D E R S O N

B R E C K I N R I D GE EA R LY

HAW’S SHOP 28 May

ND CORPS

H A N CO CK W R I G H T

WA R R E N

B U R N S I D E

RPS

VI CORPS

II CORPS

VI CORPS

II CORPS

V CORPS

V CORPS

CORPS

V CORPS

IX CORPS

IX CORPS

Pamunkey R

Totopotomoy Cr

Matadequin Cr

R

Mattaponi R

Walnut Grove Churc h

Bethesda Churc h

Polegreen Churc h

Shady Grove

Churc h 

Mangohick

 Churc h

Enon

 Churc h

Cash Corner

Pea ke’s Station

Atlee’s Station

Old Churc h

d

Nelson’s Crossing

Virginia Central RR

Hanover Court House

Mechanicsville

Hanovertown

0 5

Miles

25–28 May 1864

MOVEMENT T O TOT OPO T OMOY

Confederate Position, 25 May

Confederate Position, 28 May

Confederate Movement, 25–28 May

Confederate Entrenchments

Union Position, 25 May

Union Position, 28 May

Union Movement, 25-28 May

Union Entrenchments

Cavalry Battle
56 

Once again, General Grant took stock. Sheridan’s cavalry had 

just returned from its Richmond expedition, and Grant had cleared 

up a longstanding command problem by officially assigning the 

IX Corps to the Army of the Potomac. In order to rejuvenate 

operations in the Shenandoah Valley, he sent Maj. Gen. David 

Hunter to replace Sigel and to destroy the Confederate logistical 

infrastructure in the Valley, driving as far south as Charlottesville 

and Lynchburg. No longer expecting any results from Butler, he 

directed that the bulk of the Army of the James join the Army of 

the Potomac, leaving just enough troops on the Bermuda Hundred 

peninsula to hold the mouth of the Appomattox River at City Point.

As for Meade’s army, Grant and his generals met on the 

evening of 25 May to consider their next move. For a time, Grant 

pondered a quick drive west to cut the Virginia Central and then 

launch a direct attack on Richmond from the north, a move that 

might surprise Lee after so many shifts to the southeast. In the 

end, he chose the safer option of another sidestep to the southeast, which would protect his communications and enable him 

to cover his right flank with the Pamunkey River as he advanced. 

Once again, the army changed its base, this time to White House 

Landing, where the Pamunkey River flowed into the York River. 

Having lost about 4,000 casualties in the North Anna fighting 

compared to the Confederates’ 2,500, the weary Union army 

prepared for the next phase of the campaign.

Cold Harbor

The two armies were returning to familiar ground. Roughly 

two years before, they had grappled on the eastern outskirts 

of Richmond between the Pamunkey River to the north and 

the James River to the south. Between the two rivers, a series 

of streams cut across the low-lying terrain from west to east, 

including Totopotomoy Creek and Matadequin Creek, which 

flowed into the Pamunkey; and the Chickahominy River, 

which wound north and east of Richmond and then emptied 

into the James. (See Map 7.) Early summer rains could turn 

the low, wooded banks of these waterways into all but impassable swamps. Settlement in this muggy Tidewater region went 

back to colonial times. An intricate road network crisscrossed 

the region, but most roads were little more than dirt paths that 

connected the area’s numerous farms, their sandy soil worn out 

from years of tobacco farming. Col. Edward Porter Alexander, 
57

the noted Confederate artillerist, remembered “a country generally flat with many small clearings, & thin woods, & scattered 

pines. No long ranges, but favorable to cross fires and smoothbore ricochet firing.”

During the last days of bloody May 1864, the Army of the 

Potomac was again on the march. Before leaving the North 

Anna, Federal demolition details tore up track and burned 

crossties along the Virginia Central and the Richmond, 

Fredericksburg, and Potomac Railroads. By early morning on 

27 May, all Union troops south of the North Anna had returned 

to the north bank under cover of darkness. In the meantime, 

while Wilson’s cavalry division demonstrated on the Army of 

the Potomac’s right flank, Sheridan’s other two cavalry divisions led the way, heading southeast along the north bank of the 

Pamunkey. The VI Corps, with the II Corps following, moved 

on a course roughly parallel to the river, while the V Corps, 

trailed by the IX Corps, took a similar route past Mangohick 

Church, a short distance to the north and east. Grant, meanwhile, directed Butler to send Baldy Smith’s XVIII Corps by 

transport to White House Landing, and Brig. Gen. Henry W. 

Benham in Washington received orders to proceed with his 

engineer brigade and pontoon bridges to Fort Monroe at the 

mouth of the James.

The Union vanguard 

moved fast. By 0900 on 27 

May, Sheridan’s lead cavalry 

division under Brig. Gen. 

Alfred T. A. Torbert had 

traversed the Pamunkey, driven 

off Confederate pickets, and 

occupied the old tobacco port 

of Hanovertown, about thirty 

miles from the North Anna. 

Screened by the cavalry, Brig. 

Gen. David A. Russell’s advance 

division of the VI Corps crossed 

there two hours later. The 

next day, 28 May, the V Corps 

reached Hanovertown, while 

the rest of the VI Corps and the 

II Corps moved over the river at 

General Smith, by Alden F. Smith

(Library of Congress)
58 

Nelson’s Crossing several miles to the northwest. By the end of 

the day, the Federals had established a bridgehead three miles 

wide and over a mile deep and were edging farther south.

Alerted by his pickets and cavalry along the Pamunkey, Lee 

had his army on the move by 27 May. Unsure of Grant’s precise 

route, he withdrew south to Ashland, ten miles below the North 

Anna, and then headed southeast for nine miles to Atlee’s Station 

on the Virginia Central, just nine miles northeast of Richmond. 

Lee wanted to establish another blocking position on the high 

ground behind Totopotomoy Creek, the next natural barrier 

between Grant and Richmond. On 28 May, he placed the Second 

Corps, now under Early—who had taken command from the ailing 

Ewell—on his right flank near Polegreen Church. He stationed 

the rest of his army parallel to the Totopotomoy, along the Shady 

Grove Road, ready to counter a Union flanking movement across 

the Pamunkey.

During 28 May, each side’s cavalry was cautiously probing the 

no-man’s-land between the Pamunkey and Totopotomoy, trying 

to learn the other’s intentions. Both Sheridan and Maj. Gen. Wade 

Hampton—a wealthy South Carolina planter who had become 

the senior cavalry officer in Lee’s army after Stuart’s death—had 

their horsemen reconnoiter the intervening roads in force. At 

midmorning, Hampton’s cavalry contingent collided with Gregg’s 

cavalry division near a hamlet known as Haw’s Shop. After driving 

in the Union advance with a mounted charge, the Confederates 

dismounted and dug in near Enon Church, their flanks protected 

by a stream on the left and a pond on the right. Despite enjoying 

a distinct firepower advantage with their breech-loading and 

repeating carbines, the Union horsemen could make little headway 

against the Confederate position, and, about 1500, Sheridan had 

Torbert send Custer’s brigade to reinforce Gregg. Having learned 

from prisoners the dispositions of the V and VI Corps to his front, 

Hampton was disengaging when Custer’s dismounted troopers 

launched an attack that routed the Confederates and inflicted 

heavy casualties. The Federals suffered 300 killed and wounded 

at Haw’s Shop compared to slightly higher Confederate losses, but 

both sides had obtained the information they needed. 

With the Union army only about ten miles from Richmond, 

Lee’s concern was real. To Early he stated, “We must destroy this 

army of Grant’s before he gets to [the] James River. If he gets there, 

it will become a siege, and then it will be a mere question of time.” 
59

As he aligned his forces along the Totopotomoy—placing Early on 

the right with Anderson in support, Breckinridge in the center, 

and Hill on the left—he renewed his pressure on President Davis 

for reinforcements from Beauregard. Finally, after two days of 

tense messages—followed by a high-level meeting and a warning 

from Lee of impending disaster—on 30 May Beauregard agreed to 

send Maj. Gen. Robert F. Hoke’s division.

Before long, however, the ever-aggressive Lee saw an opportunity to deal the Federals a crippling blow. The Union advance 

had split Meade’s army into two sections. From west to east the 

VI and II Corps held the north side of the Totopotomoy, and the 

IX and V Corps lined up on the south side. On 30 May, Early 

used the discretion Lee had given him to strike the presumably 

exposed V Corps on the Union left (Map 8). Using two newly cut 

military roads that led from the Shady Grove Road south to the 

Old Church Road, Rodes’ division caved in the Union flank at 

Bethesda Church and drove Crawford’s division northward all the 

way to Shady Grove Road.

The Confederates, however, could not finish the job. Warren 

formed a new line facing south and buttressed it with massed artillery, which may explain why Early’s efforts to goad Anderson into 

joining the assault came to naught. At 1830, Maj. Gen. Stephen 

D. Ramseur launched an attack with Early’s old division, but he 

received no support from either Gordon’s division, which was still 

moving into position on his left, or from Rodes’ division, which 

was protecting the Confederate right flank. One of Ramseur’s 

brigades closed to within fifty yards of Warren’s line but lost its 

commander, most of its officers, and 60 percent of its men to a 

firestorm of musketry and artillery before withdrawing. To the 

east, at Matadequin Creek, Torbert’s troopers threw back Brig. 

Gen. Matthew C. Butler’s cavalry probe around the Federal left 

and pursued the Confederates toward a dusty crossroads called 

Old Cold Harbor. 

The gravity of war seemed to be drawing the two armies 

toward this obscure dot on the map. It consisted of one stormbeaten inn, where weary travelers could get a cold drink and a 

bed—hence its name, rendered doubly incongruous by the steamy 

summer weather and the inland locale. The place was called Old 

Cold Harbor to distinguish it from New Cold Harbor, a road 

junction one mile to the west. For the armies, the real significance 

of Old Cold Harbor lay not in the tavern but in five key roads that 
BRECKINRIDGE

(SECOND)

E A

R L Y

( THIRD)

A. P. H I L L

ANDERSON (FIRST )

HANCOCK

W ARREN ( V)

HANC O C K (II)

(VI) W R I G H T

W R I G

H T

W

A R R E N

(IX) B U R N S I D E

(II)

H A N C O C K

B U R N S I D E

Pamunkey R

Pamunkey R

Totopotomoy Cr Chickahominy R

Matadequin Cr

Walnut Grove Churc h

Bethesda Churc h

Old Cold Harbor

New Cold Harbor

Shady Grove

Churc h

Mangohick Churc h

Enon Churc h

Haw ’s Shop

Cash Corner

 Peake’s

Station

Atlee’s Station

O ld

Churc h

Nelson’s Crossing

to Richmond

Virginia Central RR

Hanover Court House

Mechanicsville

Hanovertown

0 5

Miles

30 May 1864

B AT TLE OF TOTOPOTOMOY CREEK

Confederate Position, 30 May

Confederate Attack, 30 May

Union Position, 28 May

Union Position, 30 May

Union Movement, 29 May

Cavalry Battle

Map 8
61

met there, connecting the hamlet to Richmond, Bethesda Church, 

Old Church, White House, and the bridges over the Chickahominy. 

Having begun to land at White House on the afternoon of 30 May, 

Smith’s XVIII Corps from the Army of the James was supposed 

to move up the Pamunkey the next day, and Grant, via Meade, 

ordered Sheridan to keep a close watch on Old Cold Harbor in 

case Lee tried to interpose himself between the XVIII Corps 

and the rest of the army. Meanwhile, on 31 May, the Army of the 

Potomac probed Lee’s line along Totopotomoy Creek but found it 

well entrenched and in a naturally strong position.

To the south, Sheridan went beyond the usual reconnaissance 

and screening mission of cavalry, instead employing his troopers as 

a well-armed, mobile strike force to seize key points. At Old Cold 

Harbor, Fitzhugh Lee’s two brigades had dug in astride the roads 

approaching from the east. Late that afternoon, Lee was joined by 

the advance brigade of Hoke’s division, which filed into line on the 

Confederate left. Within the hour, Sheridan attacked dismounted 

with Torbert’s and Gregg’s divisions. After an initial repulse, 

Torbert outflanked Hoke’s poorly deployed North Carolinians on 

the northern end of the line, while Custer’s brigade launched a 

mounted saber charge against the center. The Confederates gave 

way, leaving the important intersection in Union hands. Sheridan 

wasted no time gloating. Believing that Confederate reinforcements were on the way, he quietly withdrew his troopers from the 

crossroads late that evening.

But Cold Harbor had suddenly become a focal point for both 

armies. The presence of Union cavalry at Cold Harbor confirmed 

Lee’s belief that Grant was again shifting around the Confederate 

right flank. Eager to regain the initiative, on the afternoon of 31 May, 

he pulled Anderson’s First Corps out of the center of his line and 

sent it south to join Hoke, drive off Sheridan, and strike the Union 

advance. At first Grant and Meade did not share Lee’s appreciation 

of Cold Harbor’s importance, but that would soon change. Late 

on the afternoon of 31 May, V Corps pickets detected Anderson’s 

movement, and then Sheridan reported that he had captured Cold 

Harbor but had encountered infantry as well as cavalry. Alarmed 

about his left, at 2145, Meade ordered Wright’s VI Corps to leave 

its position on the Union right and march fifteen miles behind 

the rest of the army to support Sheridan at Cold Harbor. To fill 

what would become a three-mile gap between the V and VI Corps, 

Grant directed Smith’s XVIII Corps to go to Cold Harbor from 
62 

the Pamunkey. Through Meade, he also instructed Sheridan to 

reoccupy Cold Harbor and hold the place at all costs until the VI 

Corps arrived. Fortunately for Sheridan, the Confederates had not 

discovered his departure, and he was able to resume his position 

without a fight by 0300 on 1 June.

For the Federal high command, 1 June was a day of frustration. Fatigued by weeks of forced marches and incessant fighting, 

and feeling its way through a maze of dusty, unfamiliar roads, 

the VI Corps did not reach Cold Harbor until 1000. In Smith’s 

orders, one of Grant’s staff officers had mistakenly substituted New 

Castle Ferry on the Pamunkey for Cold Harbor, causing the XVIII 

Corps to lose four or five hours in repeated marching and countermarching before arriving at Cold Harbor that afternoon.

Nevertheless, the Federals were able to concentrate their 

strength at the crossroads. Left to fend for himself, Sheridan still 

managed to turn back several Confederate attempts at daylight 

to dislodge him—thanks to the firepower of his repeaters and 

breechloaders and to Anderson’s poorly managed assaults. The 

Confederates at length gave up their attacks and dug in, with 

Kershaw’s division going into position on Hoke’s left, Pickett 

deploying to the left of Kershaw, and Field forming the First Corps’ 

left flank. For much of the day, the Union VI Corps filed into line 

mostly south of the Richmond road, with Neill’s division refusing 

its flank to guard the far left, Russell anchoring the center, and 

Ricketts occupying the right, just north of the road. It was not until 

late afternoon that Smith’s XVIII Corps finally arrived: Brig. Gen. 

Charles Devens’ division tied into the VI Corps’ right, followed by 

Brig. Gen. William T. H. Brooks’ division in the center, and then 

by Brig. Gen. John H. Martindale’s division on the right.

Under orders from Grant and Meade, who both saw an opportunity to strike a Confederate corps before it could dig in, the two 

Union corps attacked at 1800 and achieved a few minor breakthroughs, especially near the VI Corps–XVIII Corps boundary 

area, where a ravine sheltered the Federal approach. Angered by 

poor coordination between the VI and XVIII Corps and by the V 

Corps’ inactivity in the face of enemy diversions from its front, at 

2100, Grant and Meade directed the II Corps to execute a night 

march to the far left and join the VI Corps and XVIII Corps in a 

dawn assault at Cold Harbor.

The long succession of mishaps only confirmed the utter 

exhaustion and frustration plaguing both the Union commanders 
63

and their fighting men, who—after a month of relentless 

campaigning—had clearly reached the limits of their endurance. 

Marching on a dark night amid oppressive heat and choking dust 

and having to rely on inaccurate maps of a road network that 

resembled a rat’s maze, Hancock’s II Corps took what a staff officer 

assumed to be a shortcut, only to find that the path was too narrow 

for its artillery train. The corps therefore had to backtrack, adding 

six miles to what should have been a nine-mile trek. Even under 

ideal conditions, the II Corps probably would not have reached 

Cold Harbor in time for a dawn assault. As it was, the weary 

troops took all morning to stumble into position on the VI Corps’ 

southern flank, while the XVIII Corps, having rushed to the scene 

the day before, was just then being resupplied with ammunition. 

Given these circumstances, at 1330, Meade called off the attack 

for another four hours. Grant, apparently convinced that Lee’s 

army was on the verge of collapse, postponed it until 0430 the next 

morning in order to deliver the knockout blow. 

The delay would prove fateful. It did not take Lee long to 

discern what Grant was planning to do. Assuming that Grant 

must have weakened his right, Lee sent Early‘s Second Corps 

and Heth’s Third Corps division to strike Burnside’s IX Corps, 

which was refusing the Union right flank near Bethesda Church. 

Rodes’ and Heth’s divisions scattered two IX Corps brigades and 

took almost six hundred prisoners, but Griffin’s V Corps division 

counterattacked and the IX Corps rallied, stalling Early’s assault. 

His probing attack completed, Lee took steps to strengthen his 

position. He shifted Breckinridge’s division to Hoke’s right and 

then deployed Wilcox’s and Mahone’s divisions of Hill’s Third 

Corps on Breckinridge’s right. The newly arrived Confederates, as 

well as Anderson and Hoke to the north, had plenty of time to 

study the terrain, lay out their trenches with clear fields of fire, 

and occupy Turkey Hill near the Chickahominy, in order to secure 

their right flank.

On the Union side, Grant ordered a general assault for 3 

June, with the II, VI, and XVIII Corps making the main effort, 

supported by the V and IX Corps (Map 9). The general in chief left 

the details to Meade and his staff, but, aside from designating the 

0430 jump-off time, Meade made few other arrangements to ensure 

a coordinated attack. Throughout the rainy night of 2–3 June, the 

Federals could hear the Confederates laboring on their fortifications with pick and shovel. According to a member of Grant’s staff, 
HETH

RODES GORDON

R A M SEUR

PICKET T

KERSHAW

FIELD

HOKE

MAHONE

WI

LC

OX

BRECKINRIDGE

EARL Y

(SECOND)

ANDERSON

(FIRST )

A . P . HILL

( THIRD)

CUTLER

GRIFFIN

WILLCOX POTTER

CRAWFORD

CRITTENDEN

BURNSIDE

(IX)

W ARREN

( V)

DEVENS 

MARTINDALE

BROOKS

NEILL

RICKETTS

S MIT H

(XVIII)

WRIGHT

( VI)

RUSSELL

GIBBON

BIRN

BARL

EY

OW

HANC OCK

(II)

Totopotomoy Cr

Chickahominy R

Matadequin Cr

New Bridge

to Richmond

Walnut Grove Churc h

Bethesda Churc h

Old Cold Harbor

New Cold Harbor

Enon Churc h

Polegreen Churc h

Haw ’s Shop

0 3

Miles

3 June 1864

B AT TLE OF C OLD HARBOR

Confederate Position

Confederate Entrenchments

Union Position

Union Attack

Map 9
65

a sense of foreboding led some Union soldiers to write their names 

and addresses on pieces of paper that they pinned to their backs, 

so that their bodies could later be identified.

The Federal assault at Cold Harbor on the morning of 

3 June was an unmitigated tragedy. At 0430, following a tenminute bombardment of the Confederate entrenchments, the 

Union troops climbed from their fieldworks and charged. The 

Confederates sprang to their parapets and opened fire with a 

devastating combination of minié ball and case shot. Given the 

convex shape of the Union line and the lack of coordination, 

the attack formations soon diverged, leaving the advancing 

Federals even more exposed to a deadly crossfire.

Here and there a few Union units enjoyed some limited 

success. South of the Richmond road, near the extreme Federal 

left, Barlow’s division struck a portion of Breckinridge’s line, 

where an excessively solicitous Confederate colonel had allowed 

his regiment to withdraw from their rain-filled trenches and dry 

out. Barlow’s men quickly overran the position, capturing over 

four hundred prisoners and eight artillery pieces, but they soon 

found themselves isolated and under a tremendous fire, which 

forced them back to a patch of sheltered ground fifty yards below 

the enemy works.

Elsewhere, the attack soon stalled. On Barlow’s right, Gibbon’s 

division found its way barred by a swamp and suffered heavy 

losses in working around it. From a starting position ahead of the 

II Corps’ right, Russell’s VI Corps division waited to allow Gibbon 

to come up on its left, but Gibbon’s line was shattered before the 

connection could be made, leading Russell’s division to suspend 

its advance. Along the VI Corps’ center and right, Ricketts’ and 

Neill’s formations disintegrated in the face of an overwhelming 

Confederate fire. Meanwhile, on the XVIII Corps’ front, Baldy 

Smith borrowed a page from Upton’s Spotsylvania tactics and 

attempted to funnel Brooks’ division through a ravine with 

Martindale’s division advancing on the right, but intense enemy 

fire tore huge gaps in the XVIII Corps’ line, stopping its progress 

well short of the Confederate works.

To the north, the V and IX Corps’ futile assault further 

inflated the Federals’ already prodigious losses. Although the 

Union attack had clearly sputtered out within a half hour of its 

start, a frazzled Meade hesitated to declare it over, leaving Grant to 

do so at 1330. The myth that the Union army had lost 7,000 men 
66 

within a half hour on 3 June overstates the case, but the actual 

casualties were frightful enough: 5,000 to 6,000 killed, wounded, 

and missing—most within the first hour—compared to fewer than 

1,500 Confederates.

The debacle at Cold Harbor resulted in the first extended 

pause of the campaign. After some tense negotiations, on 7 

June the two sides finally agreed to a truce to bury the dead and 

bring in the wounded, but by then most of the latter had either 

died under the blazing Virginia sun or had made their way back 

to friendly lines. The two armies skirmished, maneuvered, and 

built earthworks, advancing and countering by regular siege 

parallels in a manner reminiscent of earlier wars. But the miles 

of barren landscape presaged the vast wasteland that would 

stretch across the Western Front during the First World War. 

The back-breaking work; hot and humid weather; lack of sleep; 

poor sanitation, food, and water; piles of human corpses and 

animal carcasses; deadly snipers; and artillery fire all conspired 

to make life hellish for both sides.

View of the Cold Harbor battlefield

(Library of Congress)
67

In the Army of the Potomac, officers and enlisted men 

expressed frustration with their leaders, and Grant himself 

wondered at the Army of the Potomac’s apparent inability to 

execute even the simplest plans. At times, he might have engaged 

in some soul-searching. He later admitted in his memoirs that 

he regretted only two attacks during his career: the 22 May 1863 

assault at Vicksburg and the 3 June 1864 strike at Cold Harbor. But 

within two days of the disaster, he was planning his next move—

thereby inaugurating a new campaign.

In deciding to cross the James River and strike Petersburg, 

Grant was shifting the focus of his operations. He had run out of 

room to maneuver the Army of Northern Virginia into the open, 

where the Union army could destroy it. Instead, he would attack 

Lee’s sources of supply. On 6 June, he sent two staff officers to find 

a good crossing site on the James. The next day, he sent Sheridan 

with two cavalry divisions toward Charlottesville to link up with 

Hunter. Sheridan and Hunter would attack Lee’s breadbasket in 

the Shenandoah Valley and his communications with it; their 

raid would also draw off the enemy’s cavalry, leaving Lee blind. 

This, Grant hoped, would enable Meade’s army to cross the James 

River unopposed, link up with Butler, and seize Petersburg, thus 

cutting Lee’s supply lines with the rest of the South. Grant also 

took steps to change his base from White House to City Point at 

the confluence of the Appomattox and the James Rivers opposite 

Bermuda Hundred.

On 12 June the final act of the Overland Campaign opened. 

The XVIII Corps moved first, marching back to White House and 

boarding transports for the return trip to Bermuda Hundred. In the 

evening, after Wilson’s cavalry division had secured Long Bridge 

on the Chickahominy, Warren’s V Corps crossed and took up a 

screening position at a crossroads hamlet called Riddell’s Shop, an 

act designed to trick Lee into thinking that Grant planned to make 

only a short detour into the area between the Chickahominy and 

the James. After dark, the II and VI Corps fell back to a prepared 

position to cover the move, and the IX Corps, shielded by the V 

Corps, traversed the Chickahominy at Jones’ Bridge.

On 13 June, the carefully choreographed maneuver 

continued. The II Corps crossed the Chickahominy at Long Bridge 

and, by evening, had marched to Wilcox’s Landing on the James, 

about ten miles east of City Point, where it was joined by the VI 

and IX Corps on 14 June. Lee soon discovered Grant’s departure 
68 

from Cold Harbor but, unable to penetrate the Union screen, he 

merely moved his army south of the Chickahominy to the Malvern 

Hill area. On 14–16 June, meanwhile, Grant’s army crossed 

the 2,100-foot-wide James by ferry at Wilcox’s Landing and by 

pontoon bridge at Weyanoke Point, three miles downstream. On 

reaching the south bank of the James, the II and XVIII Corps began 

their drive on Petersburg, raising the curtain on a new campaign.

Analysis

The confrontation of Lee and Grant has dominated evaluations of the Overland Campaign. Based largely on Lost Cause 

mythology, traditional assessments have denounced Grant as a 

butcher and portrayed Lee as overwhelmed by superior numbers 

and resources. Other studies have taken a much more even-handed 

view. Grant, J. F. C. Fuller noted, “was a man of thought. Lee was 

a man of impulse.” According to T. Harry Williams, “Lee was the 

last of the great old-fashioned generals, Grant the first of the great 

moderns.” Yet, as other scholars have remarked, the two were more 

alike than different. Both were Napoleonic generals who sought 

to concentrate against the enemy’s weak point, whether flanks or 

front, and destroy his army, achieving great moral results in doing 

so. Both were supremely aggressive, self-controlled, rugged characters who tended toward optimism and simply refused to quit. 

Neither fully realized the impact that rifled weapons technology 

had on the war’s tactics; consequently, each tended to exaggerate 

the enemy’s weaknesses, which sometimes led them into launching 

costly, fruitless attacks. 

In the brutal contest of maneuver that was the Overland 

Campaign, Grant finished with the advantage. Lee’s tactical gifts 

indeed were on full display, as he skillfully countered Grant’s 

thrusts and made masterful use of terrain for the defensive, all the 

while seeking an opportunity to take the offensive. Nevertheless, 

although he made some isolated assaults at Grant’s flanks, Lee was 

unable to hold the initiative for long because the Union leader 

never wavered from his single-minded focus on destroying the 

Southern armies. After each setback, Grant adjusted and moved 

on, instinctively practicing the operational art by making a series of 

battles serve the ends of the campaign. At the tactical level, rather 

than simply bludgeon Lee, he often used maneuver to threaten the 
69

Confederate chieftain at different points, compelling him to shift 

troops from one sector to another until those rapid movements 

exposed a weak point that Grant could strike.

Grant’s greatest tactical problem lay in his inability to goad the 

Army of the Potomac into keeping pace with his conceptions—in 

a word, to “dance” with the Army of Northern Virginia. In 1864, 

Meade’s army was arguably the most professional force in the 

history of the republic. Nevertheless, though experienced in the 

details of large-scale administration and logistics, the army’s high 

command all too often proved overly methodical, cautious, and 

slow-footed, leaving it incapable of responding to a tactical opportunity with the necessary speed and agility. Its efficiency lagged all 

the more as the casualties mounted, as more and more veterans 

departed due to expiring enlistments, and as fatigue set in over the 

course of the grueling campaign. Although Lee’s overworked staff 

made its share of miscues, his army nevertheless beat its adversary 

to the punch time after time. Small wonder that Grant, by the end 

of the campaign, mulled over what was wrong with his army.

When it came to the use—or misuse—of cavalry, however, 

both Grant and Meade deserved considerable criticism. Unlike 

European cavalry, which traditionally performed as shock troops 

in massed charges, American mounted soldiers mostly functioned 

as light cavalry, using their horses for mobility, but dismounting 

to fight like infantry. This remained the case during the Civil War, 

with cavalry carrying out raids as well as reconnaissance and 

screening missions. While Lee and Stuart both understood the 

importance of these functions, the Union commanders often did 

not. Meade, for one, sometimes wasted his cavalry on train guard 

duty, and even Sheridan, the former infantryman, was slow to 

grasp the cavalry’s strengths. As a result, the Union army entered 

the Wilderness in a virtual state of blindness and remained so while 

Sheridan conducted his raid on Richmond during the operations 

around Spotsylvania and the North Anna. 

Still, the Union cavalry did have an impact, particularly in 

the latter stage of the campaign. The instincts of the hard-hitting 

Sheridan led him to develop his cavalry into a highly mobile, 

well-armed strike force that could defeat a comparable force of 

Confederates and secure key points ahead of the Union infantry, as 

it had demonstrated at Cold Harbor. It is ironic that when Sheridan 

took two cavalry divisions on a raid toward Charlottesville in 

mid-June, Lee sent most of his cavalry in pursuit, thereby blinding 
70 

himself at the very moment when Grant began his move to the 

James.

For both sides, the issue of cavalry use and misuse paled 

beside the matter of achieving decisive results while on the tactical 

offensive. Generals sought to accomplish this by striking the 

enemy’s flanks or rear, but they invariably encountered problems 

in moving their forces into position, coordinating with friendly 

units, and maintaining command and control—difficulties exacerbated by dense woods, poor roads, and intervening water courses. 

As the primary units of maneuver, brigades often saw their attacks 

break down into disjointed lunges by individual regiments over 

broken terrain.

To maintain unit cohesion, both sides attempted easier, but 

more costly, frontal assaults. Union forces sometimes employed 

dense, columnar formations that endeavored to move swiftly 

across the intervening ground, an approach that worked twice 

at Spotsylvania. But even when such attacks achieved a breakthrough, they often became disorganized and, without quick and 

massive support, became vulnerable to the inevitable Confederate 

counterattack. Likewise, as early war battles had already demonstrated, artillery proved much more effective on the defensive than 

in close support of the offensive.

The advantages of the defensive were further enhanced by one 

of the salient features of the Overland Campaign—the extensive 

use of field fortifications. Within an hour of halting, a unit could 

construct a formidable system of earthworks; within twenty-four 

hours, it could make them almost impregnable. Protected by such 

fortifications, the Confederates—who were usually on the defensive—could employ a thinner, more extended line with minimal 

reserves, thus making maximum use of their manpower. The 

Federals responded by attempting to maneuver the Southerners 

out of their works, but, in almost every case, Lee’s army was able to 

beat them to the decisive point.

The Overland Campaign, writes historian Mark Grimsley, “saw 

the most savage, sustained fighting of the entire war.” In forty days, 

the Army of the Potomac lost over 55,000 men killed, wounded, or 

missing. A recent study shows that Lee lost perhaps 33,600 men. 

But mere statistics can only begin to convey the damage sustained 

by the two armies. The Army of Northern Virginia had lost over 

a third of its senior leadership and most, if not all, of its offensive 

capability. Meade’s army had lost almost as severely in its officer 
71

corps and even more heavily in the number of veteran troops who 

returned home after their enlistments had expired. Officers noted 

that the remaining veterans no longer seemed as eager as before 

and that both they and the new arrivals attacked without zeal—

and sometimes not at all. After an initial gush of enthusiasm over 

Grant’s steady progress, the Northern press became increasingly 

critical over the mounting butcher’s bill. 

What had been accomplished? By the end of June, Grant 

was not much closer to Richmond than he would have been had 

he sailed his army up the James in transports at the start of May. 

Although he still held the initiative, his shift down to Petersburg 

amounted to an admission that he could not destroy Lee’s army 

in the field. Still, the Overland Campaign had done irreparable 

damage to the Confederates—after all, Grant could replace his 

losses, whereas Lee could not—placing the Federals firmly on the 

road to final victory at Appomattox Court House.
72 

The Author

A native of Michigan, David W. Hogan Jr. is chief of the 

General Histories Branch, which writes the Army’s official Cold 

War histories, at the U.S. Army Center of Military History. He 

received his bachelor’s degree from Dartmouth College in 1980 

and his Ph.D. from Duke University in 1986. After teaching at Elon 

College, he joined the Center in 1987. He is the author of Raiders or 

Elite Infantry?: The Changing Role of the U.S. Army’s Rangers from 

Dieppe to Grenada (1992); U.S. Army Special Operations in World 

War II (1992); A Command Post at War: First Army Headquarters 

in Europe, 1943–1945 (2000); and Centuries of Service: The U.S. 

Army, 1775–2005 (2005). He is preparing a history of the U.S. 

Army in Europe, 1945–1950, for the Army’s Cold War series. 

During the summers of 1984–1986, he was a seasonal historian at 

Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park. 
73

Further Readings

Bartholomees, J. Boone, Jr. Buff Facings and Gilt Buttons: Staff and 

Headquarters Operations in the Army of Northern Virginia, 

1861–1865. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 

1998.

Catton, Bruce. A Stillness at Appomattox. Garden City, N.Y.: 

Doubleday, 1953.

Fuller, J. F. C. Grant and Lee: A Study in Personality and Generalship.

2d ed. 1932. Repr., Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1957.

Gallagher, Gary W., ed. The Wilderness Campaign. Chapel Hill: 

University of North Carolina Press, 1997.

Grimsley, Mark. And Keep Moving On: The Virginia Campaign, 

May–June 1864. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2002.

Hess, Earl J. Trench Warfare under Grant and Lee: Field Fortifications 

in the Overland Campaign. Chapel Hill: University of North 

Carolina Press, 2007.

Humphreys, Andrew A. The Virginia Campaign of 1864 and 1865. 

New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1883.

King, Curtis S., William G. Robertson, and Steven E. Clay. Staff 

Ride Handbook for the Overland Campaign, Virginia, 4 May 

to 15 June 1864: A Study in Operational-Level Command. Fort 

Leavenworth, Kans.: Combat Studies Institute Press, 2006.

Matter, William D. If It Takes All Summer: The Battle of Spotsylvania. 

Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988.

Reardon, Carol A. With a Sword in One Hand and Jomini in the 

Other: The Problem of Military Thought in the Civil War 

North. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012.

Rhea, Gordon C. The Battle of the Wilderness, May 5–6, 1864. 

Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1994.

———. The Battles for Spotsylvania Courthouse and the Road to 

Yellow Tavern, May 7–12, 1864. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State 

University Press, 1997.
74

———. Cold Harbor: Grant and Lee, May 26–June 3, 1864. Baton 

Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2002.

———. To the North Anna River: Grant and Lee, May 13–25, 1864. 

Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2000.

Simpson, Brooks D. Ulysses S. Grant: Triumph over Adversity, 

1822–1865. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000.

Trudeau, Noah Andre. Bloody Roads South: The Wilderness to Cold 

Harbor, May–June 1864. Boston: Little, Brown, 1989.

Young, Alfred C., III. Lee’s Army During the Overland Campaign: 

A Numerical Study. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University 

Press, 2013. 

For more information on the U.S. Army in the Civil War, please 

read other titles in the U.S. Army Campaigns of the Civil War 

series published by the U.S. Army Center of Military History. 

(www.history.army.mil)

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The

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War Sesquicentennial