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Bethesda Church, six miles north of Cold Harbor, two squadrons doing picket duty on the road leading from the former place to the latter. About noon on the 30th, these pickets were driven in, when a spirited engagement followed, the brigades of Devins, Merritt and Custer coming into action before the enemy was finally driven back toward Cold Harbor, averting his intended raid around our left. The loss hardly reached one hundred men on the Union side.

The Fifth corps, also, while moving to the left by the Mechanicsville road, was attacked by Ewell, about five o'clock on the same day, Rhodes' division being supported in this assault by two brigades of cavalry. Crawford's division, holding the advance, was forced back, and this success of the enemy was so vigorously followed up, that the corps of Warren was in danger of being flanked. Reënforcements averted this disaster, and the enemy was compelled, after a brisk contest, to fall back in the direction of Cold Harbor, on a road nearly parallel with that down which Torbert had driven his assailants. While the engagement of Warren with Ewell was going on, General Meade ordered an attack along the entire line. Only Hancock received the order in time to execute it before dark. Dashing upon the skirmish line of his adversary, he captured the Rebel rifle pits, and kept them through the night, despite a midnight attempt to dislodge him. Warren meanwhile held his ground near Mechanicsville, seven or eight miles from Richmond, while the enemy was hurrying troops in that direction to save his right. Burnside, at the same time, moved forward to the support of Warren.

On Tuesday afternoon, the 31st, at five o'clock, Sheridan attacked a force of Rebel cavalry, under Fitzhugh Lee, near Cold Harbor, and, after a sharp battle, routed Lee, together with a brigade of infantry that had come to his support, and carried the position assailed. Sheridan was directed to hold his ground, and Wright's corps withdrawn from the extreme right, was sent to occupy the place. Wilson, the same evening, encountered and routed a brigade of Rebel cavalry near Hanover Court House.

Cold Harbor, as the place of junction of several roads, and

from its proximity to the Chickahominy, was a place of great military importance, in the movements now going on. The attempt to make this a sallying point for the interruption of our communication with the White House, or for cutting off reënforcements from the army of the James, had thus far been foiled. Meanwhile it was not actually in our possession, and the enemy was moving large forces in that direction, on the 1st of June, as if determined to prevent its permanent occupation by our troops. A corresponding movement on our side showed that an important battle was soon to be fought in that neighborhood..

In obedience to an order of the Lieutenant-General, a force of seventeen thousand men, under command of Gen. W. F. Smith, was withdrawn from Butler's command at Bermuda Hundred, to reënforce the army of the Potomac. Setting out on the 29th of May, Smith effected a junction with Wright's corps, now moving to the left, on the 1st of June, in good season to take part in the impending engagement. The aid thus brought was most opportune.

The Sixth Corps, instead of finding Cold Harbor merely awaiting occupation, as appears to have been first anticipated by the commanding general, from the report he had received, soon learned that the position was to be contended for with desperation by the enemy. Wright attacked the enemy's works there, as ordered, at five o'clock in the afternoon of June 1st, while the forces under Smith, Hancock, Burnside and Warren, were prepared to advance on their respective fronts at the word of command. The enemy's works on the right of the Sixth Corps, were carried, and the first line in front of Smith's, after severe fighting, which lasted until dark. Smith, however, found the position he had gained untenable. While these operations were going on, the enemy repeatedly attacked each corps not engaged in the assault at the left, but was constantly repulsed with loss. Several hundred prisoners were taken from the Rebels, and their loss in killed and wounded must have been very considerable. During the night, they lost still further by several ineffectual attempts to regain what the Sixth Corps had taken from them.

On the 2d, in the afternoon, there was a spirited action near Bethesda Church, in which the Ninth Corps was engaged, and some skirmishing took place at other points during the day, the two armies now concentrating for a more determined strug gle, for the possession of Cold Harbor. The Rebel movements threatened, as we have seen, the maintenance of unobstructed communication with White House, and opposed the advance of our forces on the left to the Chickahominy, the hither side of which Lee was endeavoring to defend. To Gen. Grant it seemed essential to hold this ground, and the struggle in this vicinity was one of the most desperate of the campaign. Destructive as had been the engagements in the Wilderness and at Spottsylvania, the mortality of the four days, from the 31st of May to the close of the 3d of June, was, perhaps, unsurpassed by that of any like period during the war. Nor were the ten days immediately following unattended with serious losses.

Between the Fifth Corps, on the Mechanicsville road, and the Sixth, which had carried a portion of the enemy's work's before Cold Harbor, the Eighteenth Corps, under Smith, had intrenched itself, closing up the line. Part of the corps was deployed along the road, on the night of the 2d, to patrol the transportation trains of the Fifth.

At five o'clock on the morning of the 3d of June, the 10th Massachusetts Light Battery fired the signal gun, which notified the waiting lines that the moment had come for a simultaneous advance to the general attack which had been ordered. Every corps in the front, promptly and cheerily responded to the call. The works in front of the Second Corps were too formidable to be carried, though bravely assailed, and our forces retired at length with serious loss. Some of the troops, coming within fifty or a hundred yards of the enemy's position, halted, and intrenched, commencing a "siege," instead of returning under a destructive fire. Even here, the Rebel sharpshooters picked off many men. Griffin's division of the Fifth Corps, charged across an open field, in spite of a deadly artillery fire, driving the enemy from the woods, and occupying his first line of works. This position was persistently held by our forces,

under a galling fire, until dark. The remainder of the corps was chiefly engaged with similar results. The Ninth Corps charged bravely up to the enemy's works, intrenching, in portions of its line, within less than a hundred yards of the Rebel works, which were found too formidable to be successfully assaulted. The infantry and artillery of this corps were warmly engaged during the entire day. The Eighteenth Corps again made a courageous and persistent attack on the Rebel lines in its front, under a terrible fire of musketry and artillery but only gained an advanced line of rifle pits, after severe losses. The Sixth Corps continued to hold the works it had taken on the 1st, and was to-day less actively engaged.

During the night, the enemy violently assaulted different portions of our lines, but was unable to dislodge any portion of the Union army from its position, and paid dearly for the attempt. Under cover of this attack, it is probable that a withdrawal had already been commenced by those parts of the Rebel forces in front of the Fifth, Ninth and Eighteenth Corps. In the morning, at least, they were found to have retired to new ground. Lee was not yet prepared to fall back beyond the Chickahominy, but still showed a determined purpose to cover Mechanicsville and the railroads and canal, running northward and westward. Both parties might naturally claim a victory. Each had prevented his adversary from accomplishing his main purpose, and each had inflicted serious loss on the other. The prestige, however, was clearly with the Union army, which had compelled its opponent to take up a new position, and had evinced that unconquerable determination which actuated its great leader, showing conclusively that the purpose in hand would never be abandoned.

On the following evening an attack was made on the Second Corps, and on a portion of the Sixth, but was repulsed; and though again and again renewed, each assault was attended with severe slaughter to the enemy. These conflicts were renewed, more or less, during several days following, with similar results, the Union losses being comparatively slight. Our forces were engaged in mining approaches to the Rebel lines, while neither side abandoned any part of its works.

After the succession of desperate conflicts, ending with the 3d of June, however, Gen. Grant had decided on another movement by the left flank, more startling than any that had preceded. This purpose was so well concealed from the Rebel commander, that he knew nothing of it until the entire army of Grant was found, one morning, to be gone. Nor was this tardy information accompanied by any clue to the place toward which the new movement was tending. It appears, in fact, that Lee at first surmised an approach to Richmond by Malvern Hill as the design of his opponent, and lost no time in a transfer of his army to meet that false expectation, to which countenance was given by a covering advance in that direction, on the part of a small Union force.

On the evening of the 12th of June, every thing having been prepared for this change during the preceding days, a general movement to the south side of the James was commenced. The Eighteenth Corps marched directly to the White House, embarking thence on transports for Bermuda Landing, where they arrived on Tuesday, the 14th. Gen. Grant in person reached the headquarters of Gen. Butler on the same day. The Second and Fifth Corps advanced by the way of Long Bridge, below the White Oak Swamp, across the Chickahominy, to Wilcox's Landing, on the James river. The Sixth and Ninth Corps crossed the Chickahominy at Jones' Bridge, two miles farther down the river, and moved directly south by Charles City Court House to the James. The entire movement was executed with celerity and in excellent order, no casualty of any kind having occurred during the march. The wounded had been previously removed, and the government property on the Pamunkey secured. On the 14th the troops commenced crossing the James, and arrived promptly on the south bank, while the enemy, apparently preparing for an attack on Richmond from the north side, by way of Malvern Hill, immediately moved in that direction, without dispatching any troops southward from the city toward Petersburg, now actually threatened in heavy force.

While these operations were going on near the Rebel capital, Hunter was advancing up the Shenandoah Valley, sweeping

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