that but they are more powerful if you don't know. thanks for the question. have you seen them? they are sprinkled around at the naval academy and the smithsonian. obviously the national archives has some stuff and there is in san francisco as well. thank you so much for coming tonight. going to sign some books. [applause] >> please form a line to the right of first put up your chairs and clean them up against something solid. thank you.

>> daniel davis and philip greenwalt talk about the 1864 battle of the harbor that took place in the civil war. this program is next on booktv the place harkens a sense of doom. a child visiting for the first time with my dad making our way through and around the

entrenchments found a certain sense of foreboding. the perception persists today 150 years later we see the images after the war from the battlefield which is that on the cover of the hurricane from the heavens and we read words such as the six core of the potomac. it's very interesting to visit the battlefields of the war but i never heard anyone as engaged that expressed an interest in the harbor. it's a peoples of earth and the rifle pit and traversed covert way they've now yielded to the sun and the plow but it remains in american history. it would become the final battle that took place in the spring of 1864 virginia between the u.s. assist grant and robert e. lee. beginning in the wilderness wilderness the fighting would move on to the courthouse and into the north river and then finally to the area northeast of richmond in the rivers you ...

this grant will come in and robert e. lee will counter and there will be fighting on may 28 a place in the shop. they will face each other across the creek for several days and clash at the church and the creek. finally through fighting on the outskirts of the army between the calgary they would've turned their attention to the crossroads of the cold harbor and three may 31 and june 1 both sides will rush to get to this vital crossroads. however there's nothing impressive about the cold harbor itself. one union officer said it sarcastically with some seriousness of all of the waste i've seen the first was the most eerie. the house and open plain deep into the fine white dust on the sides and in the distance it was

intensified and called a cool arbor but strategically it was very important for one road led to the white house landing to the east. the union army's main supply depot and the other to the west ran towards the confederate capital of richmond. probably because it was the last battle of the campaign is why it encapsulates the all offensive and defense of characteristics of the campaign to see the emergence of the massive trench warfare by the confederate army in northern virginia. the trench warfare will begin now in the past the confederates had been able to take advantage of natural defensive terrain at manassas they would utilize the deep cut above the sunken road that would become the lead in

the nt government and in the stone wall heights at fredericksburg but in spotsylvania he's caught out in the open and is outnumbered and he must improvise. so he is building the massive field of fortifications and and the runners of the entrenchments that we would see later on in europe in world war ii. the plan is very simple. the execution is simple. the confederates stand shoulder to shoulder and face things in a certain direction and begin to dig throwing a person front of them. all of the trees are chopped down to bring forward to reinforce the end they commend and about 6 inches above the earth the end they commend has placed to protect the soldier when they are standard at the earthwork so they can fire out between the earth and the headboard with activities and protection.

the sharpened stakes are pointing towards the enemy has further protection. every ten to 15 feet along the line. there is fire coming in from the side and as impressive as they are to the confederates they are even more impressive to the union soldiers. the union soldiers had not yet encountered anything like this during the warfare in virginia and so as the confederates improvise so must the federal's there's a kernel named emory upton who recognizes the attacking of the earthworks head-on into traditional tactics of the day would be literally suicidal for he says on a daring

plan he decides rather than sending his men across the open field to stop and fire at the confederates and then close on the confederate lines he decides he's going to send his men across the field in a very tight and compact formation. they will cross the open field and a breach the confederate line without stopping to fire. in essence it is a bayonet charge and it works. on may 10 they execute the assault but unfortunately the the federal's are unable to exploit the breakthrough and he is driven back. but the tactic gives hope. he tried again today's later and instead of using the 5,000 men that upton used he decides to use 20,000 become j. hole in the confederate lines but again it is not supported and the federal's are driven back. this assault becomes sort of the unofficial tactic in the

attacking the offense of tactics during the campaign for the army of the potomac. on june 1 when the first -- he has implemented he decides to form his men into two lines the first one will go forward and attack and hit the confederates position and if the first line is successful the second will move up and exploit the bridge created by the first end of and the first is stymied in front of the earthworks the second line will push men up one at a time when regimen at a time to push an athlete into the gap to allow the federal's to move up and over the confederate works. so june 1, the federalist attack and there is so much success. it's successful and the

federal's overrun the first line of the confederates were but it wouldn't be the same. it wouldn't be the same result two days later. the doom i spoke about earlier in cold harbor has tied itself to the failure of the unit of salt takes place on june 11864. grand plan for an army wide us all to take place at 4:30 that evening and therefore:30 on june 30, the army winds will move forward and in effort to break the confederate line and opened the way to the confederate capital of richmond. one soldier recalled they engaged in the artillery works and commenced in earnest in the deafening valleys of the musketry the founders of the artillery and the battles they press rapidly across the space between the hostile lines of works and the whole union forces from almost simultaneously. but the works for two strong

into the rebel forces to numerous. the line couldn't be taken, that's the grand assault in which the general grant hoped to force his enemy across anfield. the rebels turned back the attack in about an hour's time. and by the early afternoon they had decided to suspend all were any further offenses operations. but this failure has tied itself to the man who boarded the attack. it's through the lens of cold harbor we tend to view grant in cold harbor cast a long shadow over ulysses s. grant. perhaps what makes the day all the more devastating is that there was so much hope in the union high command for success for the assault. even today we can approach

situations with the utmost optimism to see our expectations to really -- to end this is what happened to grant at cold harbor. it would succeed based upon the rationalization and a thorough analysis of the events swirling around him. over the course of the last week grant had become convinced return to their superiors in washington that his army was left. the federals scored resounding victories at the creek. it added to his optimism. and that optimism the initial success on june 1 is probably what led grant to launch the assault today's later. he would he was famously writing his memoir i've always regret it if the last assault at cold

harbor was ever made. at cold harbor no advantage was gained to calm the date the heavy loss that we sustained. the statement along with the casual estimates on june 3 continued to cast a pall over grant and many placed a number of union casualties on around 7,000 many even go one step further and say the 7,000 men fell in the first ten to 20 minutes of fighting. in reality however, we will probably never know how many federal infantrymen fell with morning. they suffered during both the june 1 into june 3 attacks. this number is much lower than some of the other more famous assaults of the war. they lost about 8,000 soldiers informed a stone wall on fredericksburg. robert e. lee would lose around

6,000 men respectively during the charge at gettysburg during the battle of franklin in november of 1864. but still the image of grant the picture has endured. although this can be argued to the decision to attack was a mistake the federals were exhausted and they were well entrenched. grand as i mentioned has come to be viewed through the lens of cold harbor and why do we view him through that lens, we forget about the triumphs early in 62 it kept up the western door in northwestern tennessee. also gone is the execution of the strategy during the vicksburg campaign and at the defense of chattanooga in the fall of 1863. viewing grant it should be the entire specter not just a few hours of june 301864. nor at the same time should we grant on the pedestal but see

him as a man human flesh and blood with flaws. one thing however that is undeniable that he possessed an uncommon tenacity and will to see go to see the task to the end. for him the cold harbor may have been a disappointment for a few hours or a few days. he saw it as a stepping stone. very soon he would turn his sights to the southwest to the junctions of petersburg, the confederate capital of richmond. instead of attacking his army in the open field he would've decided to attack the logistics. cold harbor is a tactical victory and northern virginia sustained over the course into the first week of 64 we have been able to hold his army together.

this was for the endurance of the men that he went into the hammering grant administered was nothing like the confederates had ever seen before. but the army of northern virginia had been worn down. and their ability had been reduced. the capability of the reduced to withstand the prolonged attack on the logistics which would be coming within the next two weeks after the fight ended fiscal harbor. >> let's delve into what is. one of the images we get into great quotes now that has come under scrutiny by historians as one by forest porter said the tenant colonel in the camp to the lieutenant general on the night of june 2 he remembers they were making preparations

for the next morning's assault and i've noticed many of the soldiers had taken off their coats with a coupon for close examination was found that the men were commonly writing their names and addresses on the steps of paper and pinning them on the backs of their coats so that the bodies bodies might be recognized on the field of battle. this fact is pinning their names on the jackets was not that it's come to add to the luster that has been pretended every time. on june 31864 the one simple fact could be ignored that it would break loose and that was the battle of the harbor. it circulated on the night of june 2 and 3rd 1 soldier remembered going to try to take a few minutes of fitful sleep that hearing the chipping all night of the confederate soldiers some of the comrades

apparently the backwoodsman themselves in pennsylvania after the constant sound of axes. they didn't help but think that the rebels repairing took down the man in the men in the morning, not 10,000 more trees. that was the battle of the soldier. they did make some headway against the confederate lines. it's now or never. the assaults like this have proven characteristics for the campaign that had begun in fredericksburg over 70 miles away in 30 days of hard fighting for old harbor. though this was the battle at the harbor. today when one visits this battlefield you can walk between the lines, sometimes you can remove yourself to the settings among the trees and the gentle slopes to provide an opportunity for a minute hopefully your

imagination. imagine the hot weather, the smell of gunpowder come as no of gunpowder if if you've ever snowed a rotten egg it is pretty similar mixed with the smell of flesh and maybe mentioning that food and death in a sentence i'd be a bit much for the senses but the sounds of bees into the thickening sounds of bones breaking to get across the field. this is the difference 150 years ago this year between what the men in blue and gray experienced and what you can experience yourself. then imagine walking with the intensity that they had to face the storm akin to walking into a rainstorm but instead of storm. it would reach the trends lines and succeeded in breaking those offenses but behind the

confederate defenses were every state represented in the confederacy even the states that had not seceded the troops so the army pushed back at some of them were under age implement famous here in breckenridge the divorcees pushed the union soldiers back and in this cooking confusion there was thousands of men from maryland and florida and new york and pennsylvania. one officer said simply that it was the enemy and they had to charge. in the second quarter they wouldn't be easily pushed back out of the breach and and as one has one yankee soldier did remember after the confederate they might have been green soldiers but our experience had have taught us when to run and run the data i assure you. until june 3 ed and flow along the confederate lines one soldier also remembered the bullets coming in along the

fields. they didn't whistle like so many other battles. it came like a rush of lightning that four through and they laid low. one of the units was in massachusetts. the commander was killed in the assault. he had survived numerous bloody assaults including the one in the heights. he was the idol of the men and the admiration of the superiors according to the second source stock officer. most had been talking about the men that data. on the storm to obey the orders and need a shower of bullets. the confederate artillery veteran of many of the campaigns and peace settled june 3 along the harbor. they lay so ghastly in the wound they were so throw over the

field. they paid to the ground and that they estimated there were more than 5 acres of ground as sickly as they could be laid out. another wrote home i've often heard about the yankees around richmond but didn't leave until last week when i saw it with my own eyes. june 3 didn't stop them around cold harbor. four days to wounded soldiers called no man's land and pleaded for mercy, pleaded for water or the simple end to the agony in no man's land. granted in the adversary they had the terms of the truths that was the battle of cold harbor. as they burrowed into the eastern soil.

they tried to gain a quick look at it was greeted with a quick shock and it became intermittently. death came without warning. 15,000 added to the rolls through the battle of cold harbor. 15,000 more lives were shattered into thousands racked before they could come into existence. but also as we fell in 1864 software soldiers remarked that that there were skeletal remains poking out of the ground seemingly reaching for the next to join them. they were on the campaign two years previous. one soldier simply put we had ceased any pleasure in the excitement of battle. they experienced the brigade commander at gettysburg and southwest and road secondly about the battle but they had seen the carnage in front of the

hill in fredericksburg and they had fought through the railroad the health of the second manassas could have seen nothing to exceed this referencing the sites of the harbor. one of the cores of the army was a second-quarter. they had been stonewall jackson's former command. throughout the campaign in the 64th harbor 18,919 men were present on may 5 when the campaign started. a little under a year later, a little less than a year later on april 9 ninth 1965 by 5,036 men are rendered as part of this famous unit. being a historian, my math isn't always that great, but that equal 13,883 casualties. if you put it down it is simply

41 men every day. as they fall into the second quarter the men that served as the brigade commanders in the army they fifth to june 3 after the assault were no longer with the army. 35,000 of approximately 70,000 confederate soldiers had been killed or wounded in 30 days and in the harbor it was the end of the campaign and the beginning of something new. he had been remarked and said that ulysses s. grant reached the james river in a matter of time. he does reach the james river but he does reach petersburg and richmond and as sad it is just a matter of time. it's a short year later they would need less at a place in maddux.

so why talk about the subject of coal harbour? well, when i was with a great friend to gentle man to my right when we approached to write the book we thought there were great big studies by greed historians but there is nothing to emerge you emerge due onto the battlefield. there's nothing to get you to get out and see what was there to delve into it because we want you to experience and take the tour and block the sites. what they believed in and fought for and and what ultimately would ultimately over 620,000 of them died for. we can never bring back the same thinking but to connect in the same visuals sometimes you have

to block out the modern impediments that are in the area but the harbor and the attacks on june 3 are preserved to experience and learn what the strife was on the american civil war. [applause] my great-grandfather was in the infantry and i am wondering what if any role the 27th of north carolina played at the back of harbor where he may have saw some action. the rest of the army shifts

south towards the crossroads. the assaults are off on the property but one of the goals was to try to figure out where they came through. we tracked down you have to traverse the subdivision and a few farm fields but there you can get to the area they came across or defended the line and the second core assaults that we didn't try to locate the best of our knowledge where the decision would have been located along the line. >> i can't imagine i have been too many battlefields but the amount of acres covered by the trench where it's laid out it sounds like it was michael's

miles. >> it is at least 3 miles i think from june 3 it's at least 3 miles from the southern end of the confederate line. if you look at the map and start just above i think for 60 or 360 comes a modern 360 and trace it all the way down in the trenches that they dug through in the first year or two of the war is considered an honorable to dig up the trench. by 64 four it is a union soldier that remarks if you give them an hour they will dig the trench and if you give them half a