and in some instances where regiments whose term of service had expired were ordered home, they had to leave the field crawling on hands and knees through the trenches to the rear At 9 o’clock every night the enemy opened fire with artillery and musketry along his whole line. This was undoubtedly done under suspicion that the Army of the Potomac had seen the hopelessness of the task before it and would withdraw in the night-time for another movement by the flank, and, if engaged in such a movement, would be thrown into confusion by this threat of a night attack. However, no advance was made by the enemy.
Another strange order came about this time. It opened with a preamble that inasmuch as the enemy had without provocation repeatedly opened fire during the night upon our lines, therefore, at midnight of that day, the corps commanders were directed to open fire from all their batteries generally upon the enemy’s position and continue it until daylight. This was coupled with the proviso that if in the opinion of a corps commander the fire would provoke a return from the enemy which would infliet severe damage upon his troops, then he was exempted from the operation of the order. The commanders of the three corps holding the front communicated with one another by telegraph with this result:	Smith was satisfied
that the fire which he would provoke would inflict upon him disproportionate damage. Hancock for the same reason did not intend to open fire unless the fire provoked by the other corps reached his lines. Wright adopted the same rule of action. Twelve o’clock came, and the summer night continued undisturbed.
Thus things went on until the 15th of June. Preparations had been made in the mean time for the abandonment of the position and the withdrawal of the army to another line of operations. Yet the summer had scarcely begun. The army was withdrawn successfully and skilfully, and, crossing to the south bank of the James, entered upon the new campaign before Petersburg. . . .
“ Cold Harbor,” said General Grant, “ is, I think, the only battle I ever fought that I would not fight over again under the circumstances” (“Around the World with General Grant,” by John Eussell Young, Yol. II., ch. xxxiv., p. 304); and again, in his “ Memoirs,” Yol. II., p. 276, “ I have always regretted that the last assault at Cold Harbor was ever made.”
COLD HARBOR.—THE CONFEDERATE SIDE.
BY GEORGE CABY EGGLESTON.
Sergeant-Major, Lamkin’s Virginia Battery.
. . . When we reached Cold Harbor the com-mand to which I belonged had been marching almost continuously day and night for more than fifty hours without food, and for the first time we knew what actual starvation was. It was during that march that I heard a man wish himself a woman,—the only case of the kind I ever heard of,—and he uttered the wish half in grim jest and made haste to qualify it by adding, “ or a baby.” Yet we recovered our cheerfulness at once after taking the first nibble at the crackers issued to us
3DA CHURCH, NORTH OF COLD HARBOR, smaller tree. (From a ־war-time photograph.)
sends a flag of truce asking permission to bury his dead and bring in his wounded has lost the field of battle. Hence the reluctance upon our part to ask a flag of truce. In effect it was done at last on the evening of the third day after the battle, when, for the most part, the wounded needed no further care, and our dead had to be buried almost where they fell.
The work of intrenching could only be done at night. The fire of sharp-shooters was incessant, and no man upon all that line could stand erect and live an instant. This condition of things continued for twelve days and nights:	Sharp-
shooters’ fire from both sides went on all day; all night the zigzags and parallels nearer to the enemy’s works were being constructed. In none of its marches by day or night did that army suffer more than during those twelve days. Rations and ammunition were brought forward from parallel to parallel through the zigzag trenches,
GENERAL GRANT AND STAFF AT BETHEf General Grant is sitting with liis back to the
tillery, a new regiment eighteen hundred strong, had joined us but a few days before the battle. Its uniform was bright and fresh, therefore its dead were easily distinguished where they lay. They marked in a dotted line an obtuse angle, covering a wide front, with its apex toward the enemy, and there upon his face, still in death, with his head to the works, lay the colonel, the brave and genial Colonel Elisha S. Kellogg.
When night came on, the groans and moaning of the wounded, all our own, who were lying between the lines, were heartrending. Some were brought in by volunteers from our intrenchments, but many remained for three days uncared for beneath the hot summer suns and the unrefreshing dews of the sultry summer nights. The men in the works grew impatient, yet it was against orders and was almost certain death to go beyond our earthworks. An impression prevails in the popular mind, and with some reason perhaps, that a commander who
summer.” The general attack was fixed for the afternoon of the 2d, and all preparations had been made when the order was countermanded and the attack postponed until half-past four the following morning. Promptly at the hour named on the 3d of June the men moved from the slight cover of the rifle-pits, thrown up during the night, with steady, determined advance, and there rang out suddenly on the summer air such a crash of artillery and musketry as is seldom heard in war. No great portion of the advance could be seen from any particular point, but those of the three corps that passed through the clearings were feeling the fire terribly. Not much return was made at first from our infantry, although the fire of our batteries was incessant. The time of actual advance was not over eight minutes. In that little period more men fell bleeding as they advanced than in any other like period of time throughout the war. A strange and terrible feature of this battle was that as the three gallant corps moved on, each was enfiladed while receiving the full force of the enemy’s direct fire in front. The enemy’s shell and shot were plunging through Hancock’s battalions from his right. From the left a similarly destructive fire was poured in upon Smith, and from both flanks on the Sixth Corps in the center. At some points the slashings and obstructions in the enemy’s front were reached. Barlow, of Hancock’s corps, drove the enemy from an advanced position, but was himself driven out by the fire of their second line. R. O. Tyler’s brigade (the Corcoran Legion) of the same corps swept over an advance work, capturing several hundred prisoners. One officer alone, the colonel of the 164th New York [James P. McMahon], seizing the colors of his regiment from the dying color-bearer as he fell, succeeded in reaching the parapet of the enemy’s main works, where he planted his colors and fell dead near the ditch, bleeding from many wounds. Seven other colonels of Hancock’s command died within those few minutes. No troops could stand against such a fire, and the order to lie down was given all along the line. At points where no shelter was afforded, the men were withdrawn to such cover as could be found, and the battle of Cold Harbor, as to its result at least, was over. Each corps commander reported and complained to General Meade that the other corps commanders, right or left, as the case might be, failed to protect him from enfilading fire by silencing batteries in their respective fronts: Smith, that he could go no farther until Wright advanced upon his left; Hancock, that it was useless for him to attempt a further advance until Wright advanced upon his right; Wright, that it was impossible for him to move until Smith and Hancock advanced to his support on the right and left to shield him from the enemy’s enfilade. . . . Shortly after midday came the order to suspend for the present all further operations, and directing corps commanders to intrench, “including their advance positions,” and directing also that reconnoissanees be made, “with a view to moving against the enemy’s works by regular approaches.”
The field in front of us, after the repulse of the main attack, was indeed a sad sight. I remember at one point a mute and pathetic evidence of sterling valor. The 2d Connecticut Heavy Ar-