Game On!

Memorial for  soldier at Cold Harbor

Lee vs. Grant.  We were off to see the battlefields of the 1864 Overland Campaign in Virginia--the first time that these two central figures of the Civil War actually fought against each other. Lee, the consummate military leader, vs. Grant, whose military career had been sporadic and questionable. So far  Lee had been able to overcome a larger, better equipped foe by using daring tactics and bold maneuvers. Union generals up to now had managed to "snatch defeat from the jaws of victory" time and again by failing to act at crucial moments or by pulling back instead of pursuing. Would Grant be different? With that background in mind, we went to learn more about how the Campaign, which was one of the most punishing of the war, unfolded.

  

Growth like this covered the Wilderness

Our initial stop was at the very first place the armies of Lee and Grant clashed--the Wilderness. The Wilderness was called "poisoned land" because earlier tobacco farming had leached all the nutrients for food crops out of the soil. Lee was familiar with the area and liked his odds since he knew that its tangle of dense underbrush would give his woefully outnumbered troops an advantage. Grant, whose goal was to draw Lee's army out into open battle, had no choice but to engage. The fighting went back and forth, with neither side able to gain a decisive advantage. At the battlefield we saw the  spot where  General Lee moved to lead reinforcing Texas troops directly into the battle. The Texans refused to allow this, stalling in their attack and crying "Lee to the Rear!" until Lee moved aside. At the end, the Battle of the Wilderness was considered to be a tactical draw. 

During our trip we've somewhat morbidly  joked that every battleground claims to have seen the "bloodiest fighting of the War". Each does indeed have its own heartbreaking stories and statistics about the dead and wounded but in my opinion, that title could go to Spotsylvania, the next battlefield in the Overland Campaign.  We were stunned as we stood at the top of a trench where  17,000 men died during the 20 hour fight in a pouring rain at an area known as the Bloody Angle. That ferocity is impossible for me to imagine but the story of the tree stump there helped me to at least get some sense of it. So many bullets struck a 22" diameter oak tree during the battle that it was reduced to a stump, literally shot to pieces. (The stump is on display at the Smithsonian.) Again, there was no clear "winner" of the two week battle but despite the high casualty rates Grant, unlike the generals before him, kept moving forward and pressing Lee as the cat and mouse game continued onto the North Anna River.

The area at the right is a section of the Bloody Angle

This sign was about all there was to photograph

What happened at North Anna? Well, we could read about it but we really couldn't see it or walk through its events. Unlike the other battlefields we've visited, it was mostly on private ground so our visit was only a series of stops by the side of the road. Armed with my iPad we followed directions like "pull over to the right at a blue gate". I didn't really get much insight into the battle but it really made me appreciate even more the value of the National Park Service and other organizations that preserve and maintain historical sites.  At the end it felt like Russ and I had been on a wild goose chase that day, winding along miles of totally unremarkable backroads. On the bright side, we had worked our way  through a whole list of confusing directions without getting lost--an achievement any couple that spends time on the road will appreciate.

Civil War entrenchment below housing addition fence

Our final stop at battlefields from the Overland Campaign was at Cold Harbor--which ironically isn't on the water and was plenty warm while we were there. This battle resulted in a clear victory for Lee's Confederates and a disastrous loss for Grant, who went into his tent and wept for the massive amount of casualties his troops suffered--at one point he lost over 5,000 men in an hour. Grant's  casualty rates for this battle alone were so high that some Northerners started calling him "the Butcher". It's still a jolt for me to see present-day housing additions and development on such historical ground. At Cold Harbor I wondered how it feels to have a trench that was dug by soldiers during that battle running into your back yard. Or to look out your front window on cannons across the street, knowing that your yard was part of a battlefield involving about 170,000 men. 

Houses built on Cold Harbor battlefield ground right outside the park boundaries

 

Grant later called Cold Harbor his greatest mistake of the war but again, he refused to retreat and pushed on, focused on his goal of defeating Lee. And we pushed on too--following Grant's next move as both armies moved south to Petersburg.