"We did not go far, only for six rods [100 feet]oon?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.
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