Cold Harbor: Grant and Lee, May 26-June 3, 1864 (review)

Gordon Rhea's Cold Harbor is an almost minute-by-minute look at the U.S. Civil War campaign conducted in Northern Virginia between 26 May and 3 June 1864. Rhea seeks to prove that historians have thoroughly misunderstood the commanders in this campaign. He takes issue with those who would call Ulysses S. Grant a "butcher," and sees Robert E. Lee as a general with an overblown reputation and more deserving of Grant's title. Rhea, a practicing attorney with a master's degree in history from Harvard, has also written books on the battles of the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, and North Anna. A vast number of sources were employed in this study, including an array of memoirs, unit histories, and letters.

While attempting to make his case, Rhea excels at tracking the movements of the individual regiments, the thinking of the leaders, and the impressions of some individual soldiers. He weaves these together in an entertaining and instructive narrative which is supported by detailed maps showing movement and topography, something sorely lacking in many studies of this kind. One gets the feeling that one is learning how to command a regiment over broken terrain in battle conditions; it provides a rough military education that many novice commanders would have envied at the beginning of the war.

The problem is that the facts so well presented seem to disprove the author's thesis and give rise to a number of contradictions. For instance, early on, Rhea states that Grant was "not an unthinking automaton shoveling bodies into the maw of Lee's earthworks," but then proceeds to show us that Grant did not seem to have a good handle on his army and spearheaded what many of his commanders considered suicidal attacks with green troops and continued to order veteran units into attacks against positions proven to be deathtraps (pp. 234, 287, 306, 313, 316, 317). Concerning Lee, Rhea writes that he "fell considerably short of the infallible icon" depicted by some (pp. xii-xiii). One might ask what man or general doesn't? For Rhea, one of Lee's failings was that he misjudged Grant's intentions throughout the campaign, but Rhea then proves that both generals often misjudged their opponent's intentions. This is what happens in campaigns—guessing, movement, and adjustment—probably more so in the nineteenth century than now. The facts presented here show that when Grant attacked, Lee was always there waiting and conducted a masterful defense in spite of his illness, being outnumbered two to one, and facing Southern exhaustion in 1864 (pp. 44-45, 283, 286, 307) Yet to Rhea, Lee and Grant "were about as evenly matched in military talent as any two opposing generals have ever been" (pp. xii-xiii). The distilling of the facts presented here, however, gives the impression that had Grant and Lee traded armies, Richmond would have fallen during the early summer of 1864 at the latest.

Rhea tries to mitigate the impact of the Union losses suffered at Cold Harbor by crunching numbers and comparing them to casualties suffered in other Civil War battles and points out that it was only Grant's fifth bloodiest day since crossing the Rapidan. He points to Lee's losses at Gettysburg as proof that he was a butcher, too, but then states that it was excusable for Grant to take so many casualties at Cold Harbor because there was a chance to end the war there (p. xiv). One could counter this charge by pointing out that Lee thought Pickett's charge might end the war and that though Lee lost 28,000 at Gettysburg, he inflicted 23,000 losses. Grant lost 12,500 during the Cold Harbor campaign to 5,000 for Lee and...