The house was built of logs, chinked with mud, contained two rooms about fifteen feet square, and was occupied by a colored family.
Others had fled for shelter to the hospitable roof. I found congregated there for the night nine surgeons, three hospital nurses, a delegate of the Christian Commission, two soldiers, two colored women, a colored man, three children. The colored people had taken their only pig into the house, to save the animal from being killed by the soldiers, and had tied it to the bed-post. Their poultry—half a dozen fowls—was imprisoned under a basket. The rain fell in torrents throughout the night. Finding a place under the table for my head, with my overcoat for a pillow, and thrusting my legs under the bed which was occupied by three surgeons, I passed the night, and thought myself much more highly favored than the forty or fifty who came to the door, but only to find a full hotel.
Instead of trying to walk over the obstacle in his path, Grant decided to go round it. Stealing a march upon Lee, he moved suddenly southeast, crossed the Pamunkey at Hanover Town, opened a new base of supplies at White House, forcing Lee to fall back on the Chickahominy.
On Sunday, the 29th, a great cavalry engagement took place at Hawes's shop, west of Hanover Town, in which Sheridan drove the Rebels back upon Bethesda Church. The army came into position on the 30th, its right towards Hanover Court-House. Lee was already in position, and during the day there was firing all along the line. All the corps were engaged. The Second Corps by the Shelton House, by a bayonet-charge pushed the enemy from the outer line of works which he had thrown up, while the Fifth Corps rolled back, with terrible slaughter, the mass of men which came upon its flank and front at Bethesda Church. At Cold Harbor, the Sixth, joined by the Eighteenth Army Corps, under Major-General W. F. Smith, from Bermuda Hundred, met Longstreet and Breckenridge, and troops from Beauregard. Sheridan had seized this important point,—important because of the junction of roads,—and held it against cavalry and infantry till the arrival of the Fifth and Eighteenth. The point secured, a new line of battle was formed on the 1st of June. The Ninth held the right of Bethesda Church; the Fifth was south of the church, joining the Eighteenth; the Sixth held the road from Cold Harbor to Gaines's Mills; while the Second was thrown out on the left, on the road leading to Despatch Station and the Chickahominy.
June, 1864.
In the campaign of 1862, Cold Harbor was General McClellan's head-quarters while he was on the north bank of the Chickahominy, and Jackson, when he advanced to attack Fitz John Porter, marched down the road over which Grant moved, to that locality. It is a place of one house,—an old tavern standing at a crossing of roads, twelve miles from Richmond. The most direct route to the city runs past Gaines's Mills, where the first of the series of battles was fought before Richmond, in the seven days' contest. Jackson's head-quarters were at Cold Harbor during that engagement.
The general position of the two armies in Grant's battles at Cold Harbor is indicated by the accompanying diagram.
Cold Harbor.