From Chesterfield I was sent with a part of the train to supply rations to the division at Mount Carmel Church, which the Fifth Army Corps was to pass during the night of the twenty-sixth. It had rained most of the day; the roads were bad, but I reached the place and waited for hours before the division arrived near midnight and halted until rations were issued, when they resumed their night march. The mules were fed but not unhitched, for at daylight I started on the return march. When I arrived at Chesterfield, where I had left the supply trains, I found that they had been ordered away, and I had to make a march of thirty miles that day over bad roads to catch up with them that evening near New Town.
I was kept exceedingly busy during this campaign; every three or four days the troops had to be supplied and six days' rations had to be kept in the wagons. This kept me on the go all the time, to the front or to the depots, which were often far apart. Much of the marching was done in the night-time, and often the only sleep I got was dozing in the saddle or snatching a few hours in an empty wagon when almost exhausted from fatigue.
We had much rain during the month of May and the early part of June. The roads—some of them bad enough in dry weather—were in a horrible state. At Spottsylvania I lost two loads of hard bread—the wagons upset in a deep puddle and one of them we were unable to extricate and had to abandon. The horses and mules, ill-fed, hard-worked night and day, and often suffering for water, sometimes succumbed. There were times when we did not dare to lose time to let them drink while fording a stream, no matter how they suffered. Often they were hitched up for forty-eight hours at a time and my horse did not have his saddle removed.
When the army reached Cold Harbor, the base of supplies was changed to the White House Landing on the Pamunkey river, a locality familiar to us in McClellan's time. On our march we passed through Dunkirk, Aylets, Newcastle and Old Church, a fertile region with many plantations. In passing through this section many contrabands abandoned the plantations and joined our train. A few times we took down fences and parked the train in a great clover-field, which was a rare treat for our hungry animals.
On our route we encountered General W. F. Smith's four divisions of sixteen thousand men, of the Eighteenth Army Corps, from General Butler's Army of the James, whence they had come to the White House in transports and were marching to reinforce Grant's army at Cold Harbor. We also met strong regiments of heavy artillery, withdrawn from the defenses of Washington, marching to the front. The authorities at Washington had given General Grant a free hand, which no former commander had had, to recruit his great losses in this campaign.
While the opposing armies faced each other at Cold Harbor for a period of twelve days, I made frequent trips with supplies from the White House depot to the front, and on my return journeys, which generally took place at night, we drove to the field hospitals and filled the empty wagons with the less seriously wounded and took them to the White House depot. This was also done at the Wilderness and at Spottsylvania, the supply of ambulances being inadequate to remove the great numbers of wounded men. The roads being bad during rainy weather, and the army wagons having no springs to lessen the hard jolts, the poor fellows suffered intense pain and I often heard them cry out in agony as I rode past the wagons. It was pitiful to hear them. When I was in charge of the train I made frequent halts to rest them, but this was all that could be done. Sometimes one or two of the unfortunates died during the night, the body remaining in the wagon among the living until we reached our destination. Upon arriving at the White House, the wounded were delivered at the general hospital, where thousands of wounded soldiers were cared for and rested for a few days in large hospital tents, before being shipped in especially adapted transport vessels to Northern hospitals or convalescent camps.
The great depot at the White House was a busy place. The narrow river was congested with vessels of all kinds, including some gun-boats. Great quantities of stores for the army were discharged and newly arrived troops came ashore. Departing vessels carried away wounded soldiers and Rebel prisoners, many of whom seemed pleased at the prospect of getting enough to eat; for they had been ill-supplied all through this campaign, as they informed us.
On June ninth we learned that a change of base to the James river was to take place. On the following day we loaded the wagons with all the supplies they would carry and by way of Tunstall's Station proceeded to the vicinity of Cold Harbor, over ground familiar to us. Some of the conflict at Cold Harbor took place on the battlefield of Gaines's Mill, only the position of the two armies was now reversed. After supplying the division the train left camp at three P.M. June twelfth, an exceedingly hot day, for the James river.
After dark on the same day the Army of the Potomac was withdrawn from the trenches at Cold Harbor, where they had such a deplorable experience that General Grant himself in his Memoirs says: "I have always regretted that the last assault at Cold Harbor was ever made; no advantage whatever was gained to compensate for the heavy loss we sustained."
On the fifteenth of June the Army of the Potomac crossed the James on a pontoon bridge at Wilcox's Landing, just six weeks after crossing the Rapidan. It had failed to capture Richmond or to destroy Lee's army, and the campaign ended at the James, as in 1862, but with an immensely greater sacrifice. Conservative historians compute our losses at 7,289 killed, 37,406 wounded and 9,856 missing; a total of 54,551. Others claim that these figures do not include the losses in Burnside's Ninth Army Corps and make the grand total upwards of sixty thousand,—a loss on our side nearly as great as General Lee's entire army at the opening of the campaign. None of the authorities place the Confederate losses over twenty thousand, or about one to three. This sanguine campaign, its awful sacrifices without any advantages, caused mutterings of discontent and had a gloomy and depressing effect, not only in the army but throughout the North. The army had lost thousands of its most capable officers and veteran soldiers, who could not be replaced, and it no longer seemed to be the same army.