The Virginia Battles That Decided the Civil War

One hundred sixty years ago, a series of battles and engagements in Virginia between the Rapidan and James Rivers determined the outcome of America’s Civil War. It is known as the Overland Campaign, and it was fought between the Union Army of the Potomac and the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia. Those two armies had met on the well-known battlefields of Bull Run, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, and Gettysburg, and each time after grueling fighting and heavy casualties the armies separated for months until engaging in the next battle. The battles of the Overland Campaign would be different because, in 1864, Union forces in Virginia were under the overall command of Gen. Ulysses S. Grant.

Grant had won victories in the western theater, including at Forts Henry and Donelson, Shiloh, Stones River, Chattanooga and, most important, Vicksburg. But the battles in the eastern theater of the war did not go as well, and President Abraham Lincoln was disappointed in the generalship of Gens. Pope, McClellan, Burnside, Hooker, and Meade. Lincoln ordered Grant to come east to finish off Gen. Robert E. Lee’s army. Lincoln’s instructions to Grant were simple: “Lee’s army will be your objective point. Wherever Lee goes, there you will go also.” Grant responded that he would undertake “active and continuous operations of all the troops that could be brought into the field, regardless of season and weather” and would “concentrate all the force possible against the Confederate armies in the field.” It was to be a battle of attrition — a struggle in which the more numerous and better supplied Union Army had the advantage. Grant would emerge victorious, but the cost in casualties was massive, and he would later be labeled a “butcher.”

The best history of this most important Civil War campaign is the five-volume work of Gordon Rhea. Rhea is a lawyer, former federal prosecutor, and historian who frequently writes and lectures on Civil War topics, but the Overland Campaign is his historical masterpiece. Rhea’s first volume is The Battle of the Wilderness (1994), a battle fought in a densely wooded area, which Rhea described as “a broad stretch of impenetrable thickets and dense second growth” situated in the direction in which Grant’s forces were moving. Lee wanted to fight in that strong defensive terrain. In some respects, it was like fighting in a jungle. The Wilderness was also located near Chancellorsville, the site of Lee’s perhaps most impressive victory in the war in May 1863. Rhea notes that in passing by that battlefield, troops on both sides saw skulls, leg bones, and other skeletal remains that protruded from shallow graves dug in haste after the battle.

Rhea estimates that total Union forces numbered some 99,000, while Lee’s army stood at about 65,000. On May 5, 1864, troops emerged from the Orange Turnpike and Orange Plank Road and fought savagely in places like Saunder’s Field — which Rhea notes was the scene of “some of the Civil War’s most brutal fighting” — Parker’s Store, and Chewning farm. During some of the fighting, the underbrush caught fire, and some soldiers burned and roasted to death. There was hand-to-hand fighting, and visibility was limited due to the dense, forest-like environment. The result of the fighting along the Orange Plank Road on May 5 was stalemate, and skirmishing continued into the evening hours. But, Rhea writes, “a distinctive mode of combat was emerging. The grinding, relentless waves of attack … hour after hour had no precedent, unless it lay in the same single-minded determination that had starved Vicksburg into submission.” Grant had brought this mode of combat to the eastern theater in the spring of 1864. The casualties would mount, but eventually Lee’s army would wither under this relentless attack.

Grant resumed the attack the next day. Union forces were met by Confederates led by Gen. James Longstreet, who successfully counterattacked and “dramatically reversed the battle’s momentum.” “Longstreet,” Rhea writes, “had brought nearly five … Union divisions to a standstill, mauling several so badly that they had ceased to function as combat units.” In the end, both sides fought to exhaustion and formed defensive works that Rhea describes as “a no-man’s-land of snipers and death.” The Battle of the Wilderness resulted in more than 17,500 Union casualties (dead, wounded, missing, captured) to Confederate losses of about 11,000. But this was just the beginning. Longstreet had warned Lee that Grant “will fight us every day and every hour till the end of the war.”

The town of Spotsylvania Court House was just 10 miles away from the edge of the Wilderness. It would be the scene of the next battle and perhaps the most ferocious combat of the war. Rhea’s second volume, The Battle for Spotsylvania Court House and the Road to Yellow Tavern (1997), covers the time period May 7–12, 1864. It was the very definition of a slugfest, as Lee constructed formidable defensive works which Grant attacked beginning on May 10. Much of the attack centered on a Confederate salient in the shape of a mule shoe. Over the next three days, Grant launched repeated assaults on this position. The May 12 assault was especially bloody and deadly. One Confederate soldier described it as “blood and death, and indescribable pandemonium.” One Union officer characterized it as the “fiercest hand-to-hand fighting of the war.” One location of the mule shoe salient earned the moniker the “Bloody Angle,” where, according to one combatant, “the ground seemed covered with dead, dying, and wounded.” It was, one Union soldier remarked, “a literal saturnalia of blood.” The Bloody Angle, Rhea writes, “had become a killing ground.” By dawn on May 13, the Bloody Angle was one large gravesite — a cemetery of piled-up bodies with torn and mangled flesh. The butcher’s bill for the Overland Campaign had increased to approximately 33,000 Union casualties and about 23,000 Confederate losses since May 5. Previous Union generals in the east would likely have retreated north, licked their wounds, rested for several months, then go back on the attack. Not Grant. Spotsylvania Court House tested Grant’s mettle as never before, but after that slaughter he remarked, “I propose to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer.”

Rhea’s next book, To the North Anna River (2000), covers the movement of the two armies between May 13 and May 25, ending at the Battle of the North Anna River. Grant’s army moved south and attacked Lee’s entrenched lines with little success on May 17 and 18. Union losses were about 1500; Confederate losses were much fewer. Grant’s plan was to force Lee to leave his entrenched positions and fight out in the open by threatening Richmond, the Confederate capital. This resulted in a series of small battles or skirmishes that Rhea describes in meticulous detail and with great skill. Grant’s army looped southward toward the North Anna River followed by Lee’s army in a sort of combat minuet to see who could reach the North Anna first. Lee’s army got there first. On May 22, Grant’s armies reached the North Anna and attacked the next day. In the fighting at the North Anna, Lee emerged victorious by stopping Grant’s advance. Each side suffered about 2,000 casualties. But, as Rhea notes, while thus far in the campaign Lee won most of the battles, “Grant was winning the campaign.” On May 26, Grant wrote Washington that “Lee’s army is really whipped.” He would learn otherwise at a place named Cold Harbor.

Rhea’s fourth volume, Cold Harbor (2002), covers the fighting between May 26 and June 3, 1864. Grant crossed the North Anna and continued to move south, while Lee’s army positioned itself along Totopotomy Creek. The fighting there was followed by a cavalry skirmish at Haw’s Shop, fighting at Bethesda Church and Matadequin Creek, and by June 1 both armies were at Cold Harbor, a crossroads located near some of the sites of the Seven Days Battles where Lee had bested McClellan and saved Richmond from capture in 1862. Grant attacked at Cold Harbor that afternoon with some success. He renewed attacks the next two days, and it was on June 3 that he ordered repeated assaults against entrenched Confederate positions that he later judged to be his greatest mistake of the war. Even today, you can walk the ground where Union forces attacked and see the trenches from where Lee’s army mauled the attacking troops. It was a massacre, where thousands of Union soldiers fell within a few hours’ time. Lee had defeated Grant again. Total Union losses between May 26 and June 3 were about 12,000, while Lee’s army suffered about 4,000 casualties.

Undeterred by those losses, Grant chose Petersburg as his next objective. Rhea’s fifth volume, On to Petersburg, describes the fighting by the armies between June 4 and 15 — fighting that was indecisive and that set the stage for the lengthy siege of Petersburg. Rhea describes the crossing of the Chickahominy River, battles and skirmishes at Riddell’s Shop, White Oak Bridge, Matedequin Creek, Baylor’s Farm, and the Dimmock Line, noting that Union forces were poorly coordinated when they crossed the James River and reached the outskirts of Petersburg which for a time was lightly defended.

Grant’s failure to immediately take Petersburg ended the Overland Campaign. Since May 5, Union forces had suffered some 55,000 casualties (dead, wounded, missing, captured) to the Confederates’ approximately 33,000 casualties. Those were forces, however, that the Union could readily replace. Lee’s army was in different circumstances. The Overland Campaign followed by the siege of Petersburg bled Lee’s army to the point where ultimately it could not defend Richmond and spent its last days moving west towards its final destination Appomattox Court House. The Overland Campaign combined with Gen. William Sherman’s seizure of Atlanta and march to the sea, Gen. George Thomas’ victory at Nashville, Gen. Philip Sheridan’s Shenandoah Valley campaign, and the Union blockade brought the Confederacy to its knees.

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