Grant's Grand Assault - Mechanicsville VA
Posted by: 
Don.Morfe
N 37° 35.530 W 077° 17.201
18S E 298114 N 4163025
Cold Harbor is best known today for high losses among the attacking Union formations on June 3. The Sixth Corps made a small advance here, but most of the famous carnage occurred elsewhere.
Waymark Code: WM134KD
Location: Virginia, United States
Date Posted: 09/14/2020
Views: 1
Grant's Grand Assault-Cold Harbor Battlefield Unit-Richmond National Battlefield Park--“We did not go far, only for six rods [100 feet]…soon…by the lively use of bayonets, frying-pans, tin plates, and cups, we had a temporary protection, and the satisfaction of holding practically all the ground we had been over.”
Oscar Waite, 10th Vermont Infantry
Cold Harbor is best known today for high losses among the attacking Union formations on June 3. The Sixth Corps made a small advance here, but most of the famous carnage occurred elsewhere. A few hundred yards to the north (your right), strongly entrenched Confederates easily smashed an isolated attack by the Eighteenth Corps. A mile to the south (your left) the Second Corps had nothing to show for its heavy losses.
If Grant’s attack had proceeded exactly as planned, it would have been one of the most spectacular and complicated assaults of the war in Virginia. Instead, only three of the Union army’s five infantry corps advanced across a three-mile front. Unconnected with each other, they fought individual battles and suffered separate failures. Lack of coordination among the attackers is considered one of the primary causes of Grant’s defeat on June 3. Union soldiers occupied this line through June 12.
LOCATION: Marker is near Mechanicsville, Virginia, in Hanover County. Marker is on Anderson-Wright Drive near Cold Harbor Road (Virginia Route 156). Postal address: 5515 Anderson-Wright Drive, Mechanicsville VA 23111
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