The Overland Campaign and the Slaughter at Cold Harbor
Grant grinds south through the Wilderness and Spotsylvania, then loses 7,000 men in under an hour
Quick facts
- Location
- The Wilderness, Spotsylvania, and Cold Harbor, Virginia
- Union commander
- Ulysses S. Grant
- Confederate commander
- Robert E. Lee
- June 3 casualties
- About 7,000 Union in under an hour
What happened
As general-in-chief, Grant accompanied the Army of the Potomac south in May 1864, aiming not to capture Richmond directly but to destroy Lee's army through relentless contact, a strategy that produced brutal battles at the Wilderness, Spotsylvania Court House, and North Anna. Unlike previous Union commanders, Grant refused to retreat after each bloody engagement, instead sliding his army around Lee's flank and continuing south. By early June the two armies met at Cold Harbor, Virginia, where Confederate troops had built strong entrenchments. On the morning of June 3, Grant ordered a frontal assault by roughly 50,000 Union soldiers against the fortified Confederate line. The attack collapsed within an hour, costing about 7,000 Union casualties against roughly 1,500 Confederate losses. Grant later called the assault a mistake he regretted, and after further fighting brought Union losses in the campaign past 12,000 more, he abandoned the direct approach to Richmond and moved to besiege Petersburg instead.
Why it matters
Cold Harbor became a byword for the human cost of Grant's attrition strategy, but the broader campaign worked as intended: it kept Lee's army pinned and bleeding, unable to detach forces to help other Confederate fronts, even as Northern newspapers called Grant a butcher.
How we know
The National Park Service's Richmond National Battlefield Park account of Cold Harbor documents the June 3 assault and its casualties from Union and Confederate official reports.
Sources
- Richmond National Battlefield Park, National Park Service. Cold Harbor · Reputable sourcenps.gov · The domain "nps.gov" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- American Battlefield Trust. The Overland Campaign of 1864 · Reputable sourcebattlefields.org · The domain "battlefields.org" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
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