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11 “Each One a Hero” Sacrifice at Cold Harbor The new troops from Florida received their baptism of fire in Virginia almost immediately. Lee’s army entrenched along the south bank of Totopotomoy Creek (between Atlee’s Station and Pole Green Church), and Ulysses Grant spent much of May 29 probing the Confederate lines for a weakness.1 In a foreshadowing of future events, Maj. Gen. John C. Breckinridge’s Virginians crumbled under Federal pressure, and A. P. Hill ordered his Florida infantry and skirmishers from Col. David Weisiger’s brigade to plug the breach. They easily drove the bluecoats back across the Totopotomoy, and a member of Col. Hopkins’s First Special Battalion bragged: “For new troops (at least new to Virginia soil) our skirmishers were conceded to have acted exceedingly well, but they owed much to the experience of the Virginia Sharpshooters, and a small detail of the old 2nd Florida [Regiment]. . . . the 6th Battalion [now officially designated as the Ninth Florida Regiment] did fine service and won credit by charging, with the 8th [Florida] Regiment, the enemy line which had driven back the advance in front of Breckinridge’s line, and reestablishing the line.”2 The Floridians suffered only a few casualties, but Lt. Col. John W. Pearson received a mortal wound in the firefight. The pugnacious old guerilla was formed from the same mold as Nathan Bedford Forrest and William T. Sherman . Pearson viewed war not as an effete Marquis of Queensbury boxing match but as a harsh, bitter brawl with only two possible outcomes—victory or death. While conducting a partisan campaign east of the St. Johns River, he hanged two slaves he believed had disclosed his position to the enemy. On another occasion Pearson had defied the Union navy on Tampa Bay, informing Sacrifice at Cold Harbor / 127 the Federal squadron commander that he did not “understand the meaning of the word surrender,” Pearson died on September 30, 1864, at Augusta, Georgia, while trying to return to his Marion County home. A business associate and friend claimed the old guerilla’s body and had him interred in Savannah’s Laurel Grove Cemetery.3 Unable to crack the Confederate line, Grant shifted the Army of the Potomac south toward Cold Harbor. Five roads converged at Cold Harbor, and its location—almost exactly ten miles from Richmond—greatly inflated the strategic importance of the dusty crossroads.4 Lee knew the terrain around the tiny village well. Two years previously a major battle of the Seven Days engagements (sometimes called First Cold Harbor, but more commonly referred to as Gaines’s Mill) had been contested over the same ground. As with the Wilderness, an eerie, haunted aura seemed to hover over this blood-soaked locale, and both the Federal and Confederate soldiers approached this terrain with a feeling of trepidation.5 The new Florida troops literally stumbled over a reminder of the region’s gory past. Pvt. George Dorman of Co. A, First Florida (Special) Battalion, recalled : “We stopped in an old field to rest and eat some hardtack and a mouthful of raw bacon. A beautiful spring of cold water was boiling up just down the hill. Of course, that was something appreciated by the Florida boys especially, and we were enjoying the cold water, together with our little rest. Just up the hill . . . some of the boys got to kicking what they thought were gourds about. Upon examination it was discovered that the supposed gourds were the skulls of men, and behold we were drinking from a spring just below a graveyard— where a battle had been fought two years before.”6 While Joseph Finegan’s Florida troops were becoming acclimated to their new surroundings and comrades, the second battle of Cold Harbor had already begun. Realizing the strategic importance of the crossroads village from his earlier experience at Gaines’s Mill, Gen. Lee ordered his nephew, Maj. Gen. Fitzhugh Lee, to take and hold Cold Harbor. Occupying the tiny hamlet proved no problem, but holding it was not as easy. By 3:00 p.m., Maj. Gen. Phillip H. Sheridan’s Union cavalry, armed with repeating rifles and fighting dismounted, drove off Fitz Lee’s troopers. The Confederate cavalry chief called for infantry support, but a late-afternoon assault by Maj. Gen. Robert F. Hoke’s infantry failed to dislodge the Federal horsemen.7 Robert E. Lee concluded that Grant would concentrate his forces at Cold Harbor before striking west toward Richmond. This offered...

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