At one point the Federal general very nearly succeeded. There was a bridge across the stream near Hanover Court House. If that could be seized, the Federal forces might cross and assail Lee’s left flank with effect. A strong column of Federals was thrown forward to possess the bridge, and for a time it looked as if they would succeed and bring the war to an end right there.
But two Confederate batteries—utterly unsupported—were thrown forward. One was Captain Pollard’s; the other was a battery from the battalion of Major Baillie Pegram. Advancing at a full run, the two batteries planted their guns at the head of the bridge, just as the Federal columns were beginning to cross it, and within five minutes the bridge had ceased to be.
Has the reader ever seen Shepard’s spirited painting called “Virginia, 1864”? The sketch from which that painting was made was drawn on this hotly contested field, the artist having three pencils carried away from his grasp by rifle bullets and half a dozen rents made in his drawing-paper while he worked.
Thus, for the third time baffled in his effort to place his army between Lee and Richmond, Grant moved again by his left flank to the neighbourhood of Cold Harbour, where one of the severest battles of the seven days’ fight between Lee and McClellan had been waged.
Again Lee discovered his purpose, and again he got there first. He seized upon a line of hills and hastily fortified them. He was now in front of Richmond and only a few miles in advance of that city’s defences. He thought it not imprudent, therefore, to call to his assistance such troops as were engaged in garrisoning the works about Richmond; thus for the first time in all that strenuous campaign having an opportunity in some small degree to make good the waste of war, by way of preparing himself to meet an enemy who had been reinforced almost daily since the beginning of the campaign, and whose army at that time outnumbered the Confederate force by more than three to one.
At Lee’s back lay the now bridgeless Chickahominy—an erratic stream which might at any moment cut him off from all possibility of retreat. If Grant could defeat him where he lay, or even seriously cripple him, the pathway of the Army of the Potomac into Richmond would be scarcely at all obstructed.
In hope of this result, Grant determined upon an assault in force. In the gray of the morning of June 3, he assailed Lee with all of impetuosity and all of force that an army of one hundred and fifty thousand men could bring to bear against an army of less than fifty thousand.
The result was disastrous in the extreme to the Federals. They marched into a very slaughter pen, where they lost about ten thousand men within twenty minutes, for the reason that Lee had previously discovered their purpose and had prepared himself to receive their onslaught with all the enginery of slaughter.
In effect, this disaster to the Federal arms ended the field campaign of 1864. It had been four times demonstrated that in strategy Lee was more than a match for his adversary. It had been four times demonstrated that in field fighting the little Army of Northern Virginia could not be overcome by the force, three times as great, which Grant had so often and so determinedly hurled against it.