The Battle of Cold Harbor was one of the battles with the most deaths

The Battle of Cold Harbor that occurred in Virginia was considered a sprawling, two-week engagement that left more than 18,000 soldiers killed, wounded, or captured. In the summer of 1864, the Union Army of the Potomac was fighting its way south toward Richmond, Virginia. In a series of battles collectively known as the Overland Campaign, the Union army had suffered more than 50,000 casualties but had also forced Robert E. Lee’s hard-bitten Confederate veterans to abandon much of northern Virginia.

The small crossroads of Cold Harbor, just ten miles north of Richmond, became the focal point of the action in late May. From May 31-June 3, Ulysses S. Grant ordered repeated attacks against entrenched Confederate positions, culminating in an enormously bloody repulse on June 3. Both armies held their ground and kept up a withering fire between the lines until June 12, at which point Grant withdrew but continued to move east and south. The Army of the Potomac crossed the James River and, by June 16, was in the position to directly threaten the manufacturing and rail center of Petersburg—the back door to Richmond. Because of the great casualties, the Battle of Cold Harbor gained the name of one of the deadliest battles in the American Revolutionary War.