Confederate wizards of the saddle /

by Bennett H. Young

Sigel disposed of, Breckinridge came to join in the conflict at Cold Harbor. By the 26th of May General Grant had withdrawn from Lee’s front, and pressing eastward and southwardly, attempted to find another road to Richmond. He telegraphed to Washington: “I may be mistaken, but I feel that our success over Lee’s army is already insured,” but yet he directed that his supplies be brought up the Pamunky River to the White House. He was looking for a base and he was going to find the path that McClellan followed when he met defeat from General Lee two years before.

By May 30th General Grant had again changed his views about General Lee and so he despatched to General Halleck: “I wish you would bring all the pontoon bridging you can to City Point to have it ready in case it is wanted.” He found out that Lee might fight outside of Richmond—and anywhere else in its defense.

The two armies were swinging around now to Cold Harbor. This place was already known in history. The armies now facing each other had met there before, in June, 1862. The results then to the Federals were not encouraging. This time they were to prove far more disastrous and exceedingly horrible.

On the morning of June 3d, 1864, at half past four o’clock, General Grant opened a great battle—Cold Harbor—the greatest battle of this campaign and the only battle he afterwards said that he ever regretted having fought. Persisting in his policy of forcing his way south to Richmond, he was unwilling to confess failure. Confident of the power of the “hammering process,” committed by his boast to fight it out on this line if it took all summer, he was too proud to admit that he was mistaken. He hoped and believed that fate, hitherto so propitious, would now come to his rescue and relief in the extremity of the situation into which war’s surprises had brought him. Between four and nine o’clock in the morning, assault after assault was made and the whole front of Grant’s line was so decimated that his men drew back from the scenes of conflict. At nine o’clock it became so dreadful that even as brave men as Hancock refused to transmit General Grant’s peremptory orders to his subordinates to renew the attack. Each time it was transmitted, each time the men on the line refused to obey the order, and officers who had never before quailed, and who were strangers to fear, stood still and allowed their men to stand still in the face of peremptory orders to advance. Ten thousand men on the 1st and 3d of June were wounded and killed, and then General Grant moved away from Lee’s front. It was impregnable, and General Grant realized that the Army of Northern Virginia, although only half as numerous as his own, would not be driven away from their places. It cost thousands of dead and wounded, but it was demonstrated to be a verity, and General Grant, with all his hitherto indomitable will and with his tremendous pride of opinion, yielded to the inevitable—that General Lee’s genius and the courage of his followers had forced into his mind and set up in his path.

Seventeen thousand killed, wounded or sent away by reason of sickness, were the tidings that came from this ensanguined field to Washington, where thirty days before every heart was so full of hope. General Grant had permitted his dead and wounded between the lines to lie uncared for until the 5th of June, and then humanity with fearful protest forced him at least officially to admit that he was vanquished. He at last sought the right to succor the wounded and bury the dead.

With the Army of Northern Virginia behind the breastworks, with their courage and dogged determination to defend their capital, there was no force of men and no legion however brave or intrepid that could move these men in gray. The men under the Stars and Bars had sufficient ammunition to keep their guns in use, and so long as it was possible to fire these guns, no earthly foeman could break their lines. True, for an instant, at one angle the line had been forced, but quickly it was retaken and the Confederate front restored.

Grant had lost approximately seventy thousand men, killed or wounded. General Lee had suffered a loss of twenty thousand, making a total on both sides of ninety thousand, and from Culpepper to Cold Harbor, covering a period of thirty days, the world had never seen such a trail of blood. The life currents of valiant soldiers flowed almost in a stream. These armies had traveled fifty miles. They had been battling and killing all the way. This road was two hundred and sixty-four thousand feet in length. Every three feet had witnessed the sacrifice of a life or the infliction of a wound. Men looked aghast at this loss of life and limb.

On the 11th of May, General Stuart had fallen at Yellow Tavern. He died on the 12th. Universal sorrow filled every heart. A year before Stonewall Jackson had died, and now came the death of Stuart, as a sort of final stroke to the Confederate hopes. When Stuart died, on May 12th, General Wade Hampton, as senior major general of cavalry in the Army of Northern Virginia, took his place. Sheridan had gone down to the west of Richmond and made the attack which resulted in Stuart’s death, and after a repulse rode back to the shelter of General Grant’s infantry.

Sheridan had reached the gates of Richmond, but there his course was stayed and his raid ended and he turned about and came to the west of Grant’s army and resumed his place with it on the 25th of May. He had not suffered a very great loss, six hundred and twenty-five men, but the Confederates had lost Stuart, and now Hampton was to come to the front. He was forty-six years of age; he had passed through three years of vigorous warfare and a wide experience. Under him now were some of the best cavalry leaders the country had known. He had M. C. Butler, with his South Carolinians; he had P. M. B. Young, with his Georgians; he had Rosser, with his Virginians; he had Wickham and Lomax, with their Virginians, under Fitzhugh Lee. He had James B. Gordon, with the North Carolinians, and Chambliss, with his Virginians, under W. H. F. Lee, son of Robert E. Lee. Dismounts, wounds and casualties had reduced his forces to the point where they could only do the necessary cavalry work for General Lee’s army.

The Federal cavalry, at this time, was commanded by General Sheridan. He had three divisions under Torbert, Gregg and Wilson, and these had between them fifteen thousand eight hundred and twenty-five serviceable horses and men. For every horseman of Hampton, Sheridan had two. A little while before there had come into use among the Federals the Spencer & Hall magazine rifles. Each man not only had one of these magazine rifles, but he had a revolver and a sabre. The horses were always fed and they could be changed whenever the exigencies of war demanded. After the experiences at Fleetwood Hill, General Hampton realized that the methods of fighting must be altered. He had read of what Morgan and Forrest and Wheeler had done with dismounted men. He did not yield his mounted drill, but he expanded and developed his dismounted drill.