Battle of Cold Harbor

Grant slides southeast one more time and both armies race for a crossroads on the doorstep of Richmond, the capital of a slaveholding republic Lee was sworn to shield.

A late II Corps postpones the attack a full day. Lee uses it to finish seven miles of fieldworks, dug in part by enslaved hands, while every hour the Federals wait makes June 3 deadlier.

Three corps step off into the fog and the trench. Hancock (North) breaks through and is thrown out, Smith (North) is cut down in a fire-swept ravine, and the famous “7,000 in twenty minutes” turns out to be myth.

A week of head-down trench stalemate foreshadows World War I. Out in no-man’s-land, the June 3 wounded die for days while Grant and Lee deadlock over a truce.

Grant regrets the assault and the press calls him a butcher, yet the failure forces the James crossing and the Petersburg siege that United States Colored Troops would spearhead, ending the slave republic the trench was dug to defend.