GRANT and Lee met at Cold Harbor in a desperate struggle on the first day of June in 1864. The following day was occupied by a general massing for the deadly encounter. Meade's army moved silently on the enemy at daylight on the third and the result was the fiercest battle of the entire war. There was a drizzling rain. The armies could hardly see the faces of their antagonists. Not a shot was fired until they were upon each other. One hundred thousand muskets simultaneously began their murderous work at a range of sixty to seventy yards. Two hundred pieces of artillery added to the deafening roar. It was the tragedy of Fredericksburg and Gettysburg re-enacted. The Union soldiers pressed toward the solid mass of lead and flame from the Confederate entrenchments only to be forced back. At times they swept to the breastworks against the torrents of musketry and mounted the parapets. The assault lasted but twenty minutes and the Union Army lost in killed, wounded and missing over 14,000 men; the Confederate loss has been estimated at 1,700. The two armies stayed at Cold Harbor for ten days, working on their field entrenchments, and fighting whenever either side grew bold. Lee remained immovable in his entrenchments before Richmond and on the afternoon of the sixteenth of June, Grant's army, horse, foot and artillery, had crossed the James River. On the seventh of June the dead were buried and the wounded gathered during an armistice of two hours. This is a ghastly view, showing the process of collecting the remains of Union soldiers who were hastily interred at the time of the battle. This photograph was taken on the battlefield months after the battle, when the Government ordered the remains gathered for permanent burial. The grinning skulls, the boots still hanging on the bones, the old canteen, all testify to the tragedy.
SHERMAN, in his campaign in Georgia in 1864, was much interested in the cameras that followed his army and urged the photographer to take negatives of every movement as his forces pushed the Confederates toward Atlanta. On the morning of July 3, 1864, the Stars and Stripes fluttered on the crest of old Kenesaw Mountain. All the Federal corps were in rapid motion, and on Independence Day Sherman could distinguish the houses of Atlanta only nine miles away. General Johnston withdrew into the city and a storm of indignation swept the Confederacy. Johnston resigned his command and was succeeded by General J. B. Hood. Sherman set his troops in motion for the city on the seventeenth of July. On the nineteenth, the troops were so near Atlanta, and were meeting such feeble resistance that it was supposed the Confederates were evacuating, until they poured out of their entrenchments and opened furious fire on the north side of Peach Tree Creek. The war cameras were busily engaged and one of the negatives is an abandoned Confederate fortification on the road leading to Atlanta. A camera was taken into this fort shortly after its capture by Sherman. It shows the extent to which the Confederates had protected themselves. It is one of the rare pictures in which chevaux-de-frise construction is shown. It is here seen that the defense is a temporary obstruction by placing rails in a row with their pointed ends directed against the enemy. They impeded the advance of the foe and afforded cover for the defenders. During the conquest of Georgia the Confederates were much awed by the Brady "what is it?" wagons. It is the first time that field photography was witnessed in the far South.
PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN AT A CONFEDERATE FORT ON MARIETTA ROAD, NEAR ATLANTA, GEORGIA, AFTER CAPTURE BY SHERMAN, SEPTEMBER 2, 1864
PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN ON THE LINES BEFORE ATLANTA, GEORGIA, IN 1864—GENERAL WILLIAM TECUMSEH SHERMAN AND STAFF