Hurricane from the Heavens: The Battle of Cold Harbor, May 26 - June 5, 1864

by Daniel Davis, Phillip S. Greenwalt

Overview

“Lee’s army is really whipped,” Federal commander Ulysses S. Grant believed.


May 1864 had witnessed near-constant combat between his Army of the Potomac and the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia. Grant, unlike his predecessors, had not relented in his pounding of the Confederates. The armies clashed in the Wilderness and at Spotsylvania Courthouse and along the North Anna River. Whenever combat failed to break the Confederates, Grant resorted to maneuver. “I propose to fight it out along this line if it takes all summer,” Grant vowed—and it had.



Casualties mounted on both sides—but Grant kept coming. Although the great, decisive assault had eluded him, he continued to punish Lee’s army. The blows his army landed were nothing like the Confederates had experienced before. The constant marching and fighting had reduced Robert E. Lee’s once-vaunted army into a bedraggled husk of its former glory.


In Grant’s mind, he had worn his foes down and now prepared to deliver the deathblow.



Turning Lee’s flank once more, he hoped to fight the final, decisive battle of the war in the area bordering the Pamunkey and Chickahominy rivers, less than fifteen miles from the outskirts of the Confederate capital of Richmond. “I may be mistaken, but I feel that our success over Lee’s army is already assured,” Grant confided to Washington.



The stakes had grown enormous. Grant’s staggering casualty lists had driven Northern morale to his lowest point of the war. Would Lee’s men hold on to defend their besieged capital—and, in doing so, prolong the war until the North will collapsed entirely? Or would another round of hard fighting finally be enough to crush Lee’s army? Could Grant push through and end the war?


Grant would find his answers around a small Virginia crossroads called Cold Harbor—and he would always regret the results.



Historians Daniel T. Davis and Phillip S. Greenwalt have studied the 1864 Overland Campaign since their early days working at Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park, where Grant first started on his bloody road south—a road that eventually led straight into the eye of a proverbial “Hurricane from the Heavens.

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Hurricane from the Heavens can be read in the comfort of one’s favorite armchair or as a battlefield guide. It is part of the popular Emerging Civil War Series, which offers compelling, easy-to-read overviews of some of the Civil War’s most important stories. The masterful storytelling is richly enhanced with more than one hundred photos, illustrations, and maps.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781611211887
Publisher:	Savas Beatie
Publication date:	05/19/2014
Series:	Emerging Civil War Series
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	168
File size:	36 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Historians Daniel T. Davis and Phillip S. Greenwalt have studied the 1864 Overland Campaign since their early days working at Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments viii

Touring the Battlefields x

Foreword Kristopher D. White xiii

Prologue xxi

Chapter 1 Grant and Lee 1

Chapter 2 March to the Pamunkey 13

Chapter 3 The Battle of Haw's Shop 21

Chapter 4 The Battle of Totopolomoy Creek 31

Chapter 5 The Battle of Bethesda Church 43

Chapter 6 Another Crossroads 53

Chapter 7 "A Hurricane from the Heavens" 63

Chapter 8 Eye of the Storm 73

Chapter 9 "The Last Assault"-Part I 33

Chapter 10 "The Last Assault"-Part II 93

Chapter 11 Flag of Truce 99

Chapter 12 South to the James 107

Appendix A The Road to Cold Harbor: The Overland Campaign in Context by Shawn Woodford 115

Appendix B The Battles of the Cold Harbors Christian E. Fearer 115

Appendix C The Battle at North Anna River Donald C. Fearer 125

Appendix D Cold Harbor in Memory Chris Mackowski Phillip S. Greenwalt 143

Appendix E "On to Richmond!" Phillip S. Greenwalt Chris Mackowski 147

Order of Battle 152

Suggested Reading 166

About the Authors 168