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richmond national battlefield park. i d like to take just a moment to introduce to you all tonight, our participants in this even s program. dr. james i. robertson, paul levengood, david adams, a close personal friend and steward of a large portion of the cold harbor battlefield. our readers, ashley and michael, and i want to send a special thanks to our chorus from the lee davis high school. thank you all very much for being with us in this program tonight. [ applause ] for the last week and a half, many of you have followed in the foot steps of union and confederate armies across the north anna and the pom onky rivers, to potmy creek, bethesda church and near here at the cold harbor across roads. tonight, we will pause to ponder the significance of these stories and what they meant to the veterans of both armies and generations of americans who came after. as we do that, we need to acknowledge the hard work of so many who joined with us in remembering and commemorat ....
stop grant from besieging lee and his men at petersburg. the richmond battle park organized this hour-long event. well, good evening. my name is rick raines and i m the pastor here at the fair mount christian church, and we are really sad that you re here tonight. [ laughter ] we know you are much anticipating being over at the battlefield, but we re glad you re with us tonight. i ve been asked to begin the evening with a word of invocation. please bow with me. father in heaven, we come to this place tonight, not to celebrate war, but to celebrate sacrifice, loyalty, bravery, and the things that have happened in our history to make us the great nation we are today. may we learn from the lessons of history. may we not repeat the lessons that divide us, but may we repeat those lessons that make us, indeed, strong. tonight, dear lord, i thank you for the national park service and their very hard work in bringing this event to our community, to our state, and to our natio ....
can take petersburg, cut the supply line to the army in northern virginia, and finally defeat lee. the union plan works like clock work. sheridan heads off on his raid. it will end disastrously at the battle of torrian station, but it serves its purpose for the time. and on the morning of the 13th of june, lee and his men look across and discover that the union earth works are empty. grant once again has managed to pull his army away without lee figuring out what had happened. the union army swings south, down to the james river. grant intends to cross. but lee does not understand what grant means to do. lee thinks that what grant might be preparing to do is to swing back toward richmond north of the james river. so lee stays here at cold harbor, sends some of his soldiers to the south, but doesn t do a major shift, because, again, he s uncertain as to what grant will do. well, as you civil war historians know, by june 15th, union forces are attacking at petersburg. lee ....
another. lee basically takes a waiting game. what is grant going to do. grant is going to move one way or the other. lee is uncertain. so he for fits the initiative to his opponent. this is unlike the lee that we usually see. but in this instance he has no choice. he sends his cavalry out past each ends of his lines sort of to act as a trip wire to let him know where the federals are coming from and then waits. the army was commanded by general george gordon lee, the hero of gettysburg, mead at this point was in a hot seat. he failed to destroy lee s army at gettysburg. he was being investigated by congress. we all know how bad that can be. and so mead was in a bad situation. grant visited him and was impressed by mead, because what mead told grant was that he would step down willingly and let grant bring some of his own people from the west to run the army of the potomac. grant decided to keep mead on. he needed somebody with mead s knowledge of that army in order to r ....
years after the war, that is filled with literary inventions. i suspect that is one of his many literary inventions. it s true that soldiers of the army of the potomac had done that before in earlier battles. this would be in november of 1863. but there s no evidence that it actually happened here at cold harbor. but everybody knew it was going to be a fierce and terrible day. 4:30 a.m., the signal gun goes off, and this huge union monolith heaves forward. or parts of it do. that s the sad thing about the battle of cold harbor. down on the lower end of the battlefield, general hancock s second corps punches forward. across from them at one spot, they make a breakthrough in a salient in the federal line where general breckenridge is positioned. but lee has a lot of reserves. one myth is that lee did not have reserves, that his line was thin. that s not true. some parts of the confederate line this entire divisions behind them and that was the position on the lower end of ....