General Francis Channing Barlow

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The Federal attack tore a huge gap in Lee’s line that threatened to break the Confederate position at Spotsylvania. Barlow’s alleged Gettysburg acquaintance, John Gordon, rushed to organize a counterattack, and Lee himself was so shaken by the Federal success that he personally directed reinforcements into the breach. On the Federal side, the very success of the massed columns became a weakness. After the initial breakthrough, the concentrated troops became increasingly confused, undirected and impossible to re-form. The situation was made worse by the continual arrival of Federal reinforcements, who soon lost their own cohesion and became part of a swirling, unfocused mass. Unable to reorganize his men in the confusion, Barlow rode back to Hancock’s headquarters and, in a departure from military etiquette, shouted, ‘For Gods sake, Hancock, do not throw any more troops in here!’

The warning came too late. By 6 a.m., the momentum of the Federal attack was spent. Disaster staring them in the face, the Confederates counterattacked frantically, slowly forcing the Federals back to the first line of the Mule Shoe’s entrenchments. The II Corps refused to be dislodged, and Lee ordered a second line of defense quickly prepared in the rear. In the meantime, the fighting along the old interior line of the Mule Shoe degenerated into perhaps the most ferocious and sustained hand-to-hand combat of the war.

The next few days brought a partial respite after the unrelenting combat of the Wilderness and Spotsylvania. By June 1, the two armies were facing each other at Cold Harbor, near the old Seven Days’ battlefields. There, Grant made his greatest and most avoidable tactical blunder. With even less reconnoitering than before the Mule Shoe attack, Grant ordered an attack — a move he later admitted he regretted.

Once again, Barlow was given the dubious honor of forming the first wave. If Grant was ignorant of the nature of the Confederate position, his soldiers were not. The assault troops began to write their names on slips of paper that they pinned to their uniforms or stuffed in pockets so they could be identified after they were killed.

When the attack on Cold Harbor commenced on the morning of June 3, Barlow’s lead brigades scored a quick and deceptive success. His men overran a sunken road in front of the main Southern line and took 200 prisoners and three guns. The second wave moved up too slowly, however, and Barlow’s men were driven from the position. Confederate fire became absolutely withering; blue-clad troops dropped everywhere. Barlow’s men clung to a slight crest 75 yards from the Confederate works and hunkered down.

Cold Harbor cost the II Corps 3,510 men, most of whore died in the assault on June 3. In comparison, the corps lost a total of 4,194 men during the three days at Gettysburg. Six colonels and 46 lower-ranking officers died at Cold Harbor. The losses of veteran soldiers and officers would be keenly felt in the coming months. Nevertheless, the corps moved south of the James River with the rest of the Army of the Potomac in Grant’s attempt to seize the strategic rail center of Petersburg. Barlow’s division was the last of the corps to cross the James.

The Army of the Potomac soon settled into a quasi-siege of Petersburg. The investment was only partial, since Lee could supply his army from the west and south. As a result, Grant planned to extend his lines against the Confederate railroads, cut Lee’s supplies and force him from the city. This, in turn, would uncover Richmond.

The heat, tedium and periodic terror that characterized the fighting at Petersburg in the summer of 1864 led Barlow to write home that ‘nothing can be worse than life here.’ He soon learned otherwise. On July 28, he made a sad journey to Washington because his wife, the redoubtable Arabella, who had resumed nursing in a military hospital in the capital, had contracted typhus and died. Under increasing mental strain, Barlow resumed command of his division on August 13, just in time for the Deep Bottom operation.

Tags: 19th Century, America's Civil War, American Civil War, Historical Conflicts, Historical Figures

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