Overland Campaign

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  The Overland Campaign of 1864 began with a crossing and ended with a siege, and in between it changed what Americans understood war to be. On the 4th of May, 1864, Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant led the Army of the Potomac across the Rapidan River into Virginia. His orders to Maj. Gen. George G. Meade were blunt: "Wherever Lee goes, there you will go also." In just over eight weeks, that pursuit would push Gen. Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia into the trenches around Richmond and Petersburg, trapping the South's most celebrated commander in a siege he could not survive. But getting there cost both sides staggering losses. Grant suffered casualties that stunned the Northern public. His army bled through the Wilderness, Spotsylvania Court House, the North Anna River, and Cold Harbor, and still it did not stop. Why did Grant keep moving south when every battle seemed to end in a stalemate? What made this campaign different from every Union offensive that had come before? And how did a series of tactical near-disasters add up to a strategic victory that cracked the Confederacy open?

• 2. A New Kind of Strategy

  ›

  In March 1864, Grant arrived from the Western Theater carrying a plan unlike anything previously attempted by Union forces in Virginia. President Abraham Lincoln had long pressed his generals to target the destruction of Lee's army rather than the city of Richmond itself. Lincoln understood that Richmond would fall once its defenders were gone. Grant agreed and took that logic further, embedding it in a continental strategy. Sherman would drive into Georgia. Franz Sigel would operate in the Shenandoah Valley. Benjamin Butler would press toward Richmond from the south. George Crook and William Averell would strike Confederate railroad supply lines in West Virginia. Nathaniel Banks was assigned to capture Mobile, Alabama. Every Confederate army would face pressure at the same time, for the first time. Grant knew the Union had something Lee did not: the industrial depth to absorb punishment. He spelled out his arithmetic plainly, pledging to "hammer continuously against the armed force of the enemy and his resources until by mere attrition, if in no other way, there should be nothing left to him but an equal submission." The math was cold but honest. Union casualties could be high; Union replacements were available. Confederate casualties, proportionately, would be fatal. Grant also faced practical constraints that shaped every decision he made. Because many soldiers were nearing the end of their three-year enlistments, they were reluctant to take dangerous risks. The I Corps and III Corps had been disbanded after Gettysburg, scattering their veterans across other units and damaging cohesion. Grant compensated partly by converting heavy artillery crews from Washington's defenses into infantry regiments, sending those men into the field rather than leaving them on garrison duty. And because he was advancing through enemy territory, defending overland supply lines was nearly impossible; he pivoted instead to waterborne logistics, which tied his flanking maneuvers to rivers running southeast toward the coast.

• 3. Fire in the Wilderness

  ›

  Grant's plan called for moving fast enough to catch Lee outside his prepared earthworks at Mine Run and force a fight in open ground. Lee answered by attacking first. He moved his three corps into the Wilderness, a dense tangle of scrub brush where the Battle of Chancellorsville had been fought the year before, and where thick undergrowth would neutralize Union artillery. It was a deliberate choice: by forcing combat in the thickets, Lee erased the advantage in cannon that Grant's larger army held. The fighting that erupted on the 5th of May in Saunders Field illustrated how quickly the terrain broke armies into fragments. Union Brig. Gen. Joseph J. Bartlett overran the position of Confederate Brig. Gen. John M. Jones, who was killed, but because the adjacent brigade under Brig. Gen. Romeyn B. Ayres could not advance, Bartlett's flank became exposed and his men were driven back across the clearing. The Iron Brigade, commanded by Brig. Gen. Lysander Cutler, struck Alabamians under Brig. Gen. Cullen A. Battle; when the Confederates counterattacked with the brigade of Brig. Gen. John B. Gordon, the Iron Brigade fled. A Union artillery section sent into Saunders Field to stabilize the fight was captured by Confederate soldiers, who were then themselves pinned down by rifle fire. In the midst of the hand-to-hand fighting around those guns, the field caught fire. Men from both sides watched helplessly as their wounded comrades burned to death. May 6 brought a crisis of another kind. Hancock's II Corps crashed into A.P. Hill's Corps at 5 a.m., overwhelming it with three divisions. Lee had promised Hill that Longstreet would arrive before dawn. Longstreet's men were moving cross-country in darkness and had lost their way. The 800-man Texas Brigade under Brig. Gen. John Gregg arrived at 6 a.m. as the vanguard of Longstreet's column, buying time. Lee himself rode forward with the Texans, caught up in the moment. The Texans refused to advance until their commander pulled back. Longstreet's subsequent counterattack drove Hancock back to the Brock Road, but the momentum ended abruptly when Longstreet was shot by his own men, putting him out of action until October. Grant's response to two days of inconclusive bloodshed was something his predecessors in the Eastern Theater had never done: he ordered a night march south rather than a withdrawal north.

• 4. The Mule Shoe and the Bloody Angle

  ›

  Spotsylvania Court House lay 10 miles to the southeast of the Wilderness, and whoever reached it first could block the road to Richmond. Inadequate cavalry screening let Lee's infantry win that race. By dawn on the 8th of May, Fitzhugh Lee's cavalrymen had staked out a ridge they called Laurel Hill, and Confederate infantry reinforcements were streaming in behind them. Warren's V Corps attacked repeatedly and was repulsed with heavy casualties. Meade's temper, which witnesses described as notorious, boiled over in a quarrel with Sheridan about the cavalry's failures. Sheridan told Meade he could "whip Stuart" if freed to operate independently. Meade took the remark to Grant, who replied, "Well, he generally knows what he is talking about. Let him start right out and do it." Sheridan's 10,000 troopers departed the next day, leaving Grant and Meade without cavalry support during the most intense fighting of the campaign. The Confederates built a salient called the "Mule Shoe" during the night of the 8th to the 9th of May, an earthwork bulge extending more than a mile in front of their main trench line and stretching more than 4 miles overall. On the morning of the 9th, Maj. Gen. John Sedgwick was inspecting his corps line when a Confederate sharpshooter's bullet struck him through the head. He died instantly and was replaced by Maj. Gen. Horatio G. Wright. On the 10th of May, Col. Emory Upton led 12 hand-picked regiments, roughly 5,000 men, in four battle lines against a weak point on the western face of the Mule Shoe. His tactic was to rush across the open ground without pausing to fire, reaching the earthworks before defenders could reload. The assault broke through initially, but no supporting units arrived, and Lee and Ewell organized a counterattack from all sectors of the salient. Upton's men were driven out. Grant absorbed the lesson and scaled it up. He planned to use the same technique with Hancock's entire corps on the 12th of May. What neither Grant nor Hancock knew was that Lee had ordered the artillery withdrawn from the Mule Shoe on the mistaken belief that Grant was retreating toward Fredericksburg. The order restoring those guns was not received by the artillery units until 3:30 a.m., just 30 minutes before Hancock's attack was scheduled to begin. Hancock's assault crashed through the Confederate works at 4:35 a.m. The breakthrough was real, but 15,000 infantrymen crowded into a front barely half a mile wide and lost all unit cohesion. The fighting shifted to the western leg of the salient at what came to be called the Bloody Angle. Rain fell and turned the earthworks slick with water and blood. Both sides' gunpowder became wet, forcing close-quarters combat that witnesses compared to ancient battles. The fighting continued for nearly 24 hours. Confederate casualties that day reached roughly 8,000, including about 3,000 prisoners taken in the Mule Shoe; Union losses were around 9,000. At 4 a.m. on May 13, Confederate engineers finished a new defensive line 500 yards further south, and the exhausted infantrymen slipped away unit by unit, leaving behind a landscape in which every tree had been flattened and every leaf destroyed.

• 5. Stuart Falls, Sheridan Rides

  ›

  While the infantry bled at Spotsylvania, Sheridan's 10,000 troopers were riding southeast in a column that at times stretched for more than 13 miles. On the first evening of the raid, they reached Beaver Dam Station, a Confederate supply base, where they destroyed numerous railroad cars, six locomotives of the Virginia Central Railroad, and telegraph wires, and freed almost 400 Union prisoners taken in the Wilderness. Confederate cavalry commander Maj. Gen. J.E.B. Stuart moved his 4,500 troopers to place himself between Sheridan and Richmond. The two forces met at noon on the 11th of May at Yellow Tavern, an abandoned inn 6 miles north of Richmond. Sheridan's men held the numbers advantage, three divisions against two brigades, and carried rapid-firing Spencer carbines. The Confederate troopers held the low ridgeline for more than three hours. A countercharge by the 1st Virginia Cavalry pushed Union riders back from the hilltop as Stuart rode among his men shouting encouragement. As the 5th Michigan Cavalry streamed past Stuart in retreat, he was shot. He died in Richmond the following day. Sheridan then found himself nearly trapped against the swollen Chickahominy River, only two and a half miles from Richmond but surrounded on multiple sides. He assigned Brig. Gen. George A. Custer's Michigan brigade to force a crossing at Meadow Bridge, where the Virginia Central Railroad crossed the river. Dismounted troopers of the 5th Michigan hopped from railroad tie to tie across the damaged bridge while Confederate artillery fired on them. The 6th Michigan followed. By early afternoon they had cleared the north bank and established a foothold. By 4 p.m. the rest of Sheridan's command had crossed. Sheridan destroyed the Virginia Central Bridge behind him. His column reached Haxall's Landing on the James River on the 14th of May, linking up with Maj. Gen. Benjamin Butler's force. The entire raid cost roughly 625 Union troopers, against about 800 Confederate. Sheridan had killed Stuart and beaten Fitzhugh Lee at Meadow Bridge. The strategic price was real, however: Grant was deprived of cavalry intelligence during the critical days at Spotsylvania and the advance to the North Anna River.

• 6. Lee's Trap at the North Anna

  ›

  By the time the armies moved south from Spotsylvania, Grant's force had shrunk to approximately 68,000 men from battle losses, illness, and expired enlistments. Lee commanded roughly 53,000 but had finally received meaningful reinforcements: three brigades from Maj. Gen. George Pickett's division, about 6,000 men, and two brigades from Maj. Gen. John C. Breckinridge's command, about 2,500 men, from the Shenandoah Valley. On the morning of the 23rd of May, Grant's leading corps reached the North Anna River and found little opposition. Lee had misjudged the approach, and most of the river crossings stood undefended. At Jericho Mills, Warren established a beachhead south of the water. Lee convinced A.P. Hill it was a feint; Hill sent only a single division to deal with it. The next morning Lee snapped at Hill: "General Hill, why did you let those people cross here? Why didn't you throw your whole force on them and drive them back as Jackson would have done?" By the evening of the 23rd, Lee had recognized his error and devised a remarkable defensive solution with his chief engineer. They constructed a five-mile line shaped like an inverted V, with its point resting on the river at Ox Ford, the only defensible crossing in the area. A.P. Hill held the western arm of the V; Anderson and Ewell held the east. The design was a potential trap: if Grant pushed troops south of the river on both sides of the V, the pointed wedge would split his army, forcing each wing to fight independently. The wing not under attack would have to cross the North Anna twice to come to the other's aid. Grant walked straight into it. On the 24th of May he wired Washington: "The enemy have fallen back from North Anna. We are in pursuit." He had misread Lee's defensive geometry as a retreat. Then the trap failed to close. That same morning, Lee was struck by a debilitating attack of diarrhea that left him bedridden in his tent. He had not designated a subordinate to act in his place. From his tent he could only lament: "We must strike them a blow. We must never let them pass again. We must strike them a blow." Grant, realizing his army was divided, halted the advance and had his men dig their own earthworks. The deadlock held for several days. One Union officer who made things worse during the standoff was Brig. Gen. James H. Ledlie, whose drunken solo charge at Ox Ford cost his men dearly and earned him a promotion he had not merited; his inability to command later became catastrophic at the Battle of the Crater in July, after which he was relieved and never given another assignment. On the 25th of May, Union soldiers occupied themselves tearing up 5 miles of the Virginia Central Railroad, severing a key Confederate supply line from the Shenandoah Valley.

• 7. Wilson's Wharf and Black Soldiers

  ›

  While the two armies maneuvered around the North Anna, a smaller but historically charged engagement unfolded along the James River. A fort at Wilson's Wharf, positioned at a bend in the river in eastern Charles City, was garrisoned primarily by United States Colored Troops under Brig. Gen. Edward A. Wild. Wild's soldiers had freed and recruited enslaved people in the surrounding area; in one recorded case they whipped a plantation owner known for cruelty to his enslaved workers. Richmond newspapers called for Confederate action and pressured President Jefferson Davis to act. Fitzhugh Lee's cavalry division was ordered to destroy the fort. Lee marched 2,500 men and one cannon 40 miles from Atlee's Station to reach it. At 1:30 p.m. on the 24th of May, Lee demanded the garrison's surrender, promising that the Black soldiers would be treated as prisoners of war, but warning he would not be "answerable for the consequences" if they refused. Wild and his men understood that refusal meant some would be returned to their former enslavers and others tried for inciting insurrection. Wild's written reply was two words: "We will try it." He told Lee's officers directly: "Take the fort if you can." Confederate Brig. Gen. Williams C. Wickham's brigade rushed across an open field and was met by interlocking musket fire, canister rounds from two 10-pound Parrott rifles, and naval gunfire from the gunboat USS Dawn. Lee ordered a withdrawal. It was the first significant combat encounter between the Army of Northern Virginia and Black Union soldiers, who held a fortified position against a force twice their size. Southerners afterward claimed that six gunboats and large numbers of white Union troops had been present, a claim that the actual record did not support.

• 8. Cold Harbor and the Road to Petersburg

  ›

  Grant's final push in the campaign came at Cold Harbor, a crossroads only about 9 miles from Richmond that both armies raced to control in late May and early June. After a chaotic cavalry contest on the 31st of May, Confederate and Union infantry poured into the area. Grant assembled three corps, totaling 31,000 men, for an assault on Lee's right: Hancock's II Corps, Wright's VI Corps, and Maj. Gen. William F. "Baldy" Smith's XVIII Corps. Grant and Meade postponed the main attack twice: first to 5 p.m. on June 2, then to 4:30 a.m. on June 3. Critically, they issued no specific orders for how the corps commanders should direct their attacks, leaving each to decide independently. The assault on June 3 struck Confederate earthworks that Lee's men had spent the night improving. The attackers moved across open ground into concentrated fire and were repulsed at nearly every point with disproportionately heavy Union casualties. Grant later wrote that Cold Harbor was the one attack he regretted ordering. After Cold Harbor, Grant abandoned frontal assaults and executed what may have been his most daring maneuver of the entire campaign. He disengaged from Lee and marched his army southeast to the James River, crossing it by pontoon bridge in a move so quiet and quick that Lee did not realize what had happened until Grant's forces were already threatening Petersburg. Petersburg was the railroad hub that fed Richmond. Its loss would doom the Confederate capital. Lee rushed forces south to hold it, and the two armies settled into the siege that would last from June 1864 until April 1865. When Lee's army finally surrendered that April, the Overland Campaign's grinding logic had been fulfilled: the Union's ability to absorb punishment and keep moving south had maneuvered the Confederacy's finest army into a trap from which it could not escape.