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the north bank, and moved to turn the Confederate position by its right.
Jericho Ford of the North Anna is above the crossing of the Fredericksburg Railroad, and perhaps ten miles above the confluence of this river with the Pamunkey.
Down the left bank of this river, at rapid pace, the Sixth Corps marched, on the 27th of May, now in advance, and moving to the support of the cavalry,—which, during the battles of Spottsylvania, had passed in the rear of the Confederate position, and destroyed miles of railroad,—recaptured hundreds of prisoners who were en route to the pens at Libby or Salisbury, and captured the outer defences of Richmond.
Gen. Sheridan in command had reached the vicinity of Cold Harbor on his return.
We crossed the Pamunkey at Hanovertown, and moved across the peninsula, the old campaign ground of 1862, toward the Chickahominy.
As we remarked in an early chapter, we struck camp on the 29th on the road from White House to Cold Harbor, on the same ground where we bivouacked in the summer of 1862 when marching up the peninsula under Gen. Franklin.
We moved forward on the 30th, preceded by two divisions of cavalry under Gen. Sheridan; such portion of the enemy as had gathered in this region was pushed steadily back, after more or less resistance, as upon the previous day.
On the 31st of May the cavalry divisions entered Cold Harbor.
On the morrow, as we lay east of Cold Harbor, where we had come to a halt, upon an open tract of very irregular surface,— hummocks and knolls abounding, interspersed with ravines, bare, save a straggling mulberry tree,—an occasional shot came shrieking overhead, and elicited the proposition from a comrade, that ‘the man who said he was not afraid of one of those, lied.’
Attention was drawn to a corps which was apparently arriving from White House; its corps flag was unfamiliar, but the leader's form and features seemed not strange to us, nor were they.
It was Gen. ‘Baldy’ Smith, with the Eighteenth Army Corps.
Both corps (Sixth and Eighteenth) moved forward to take the position gained and held by the cavalry, which they now relieved.
At five o'clock, both corps, under Gens. Wright and Smith, opened fire with all their infantry and artillery in an attack upon Lee. Such was the vim of this onset, that they succeeded in
Boston. Press of Deland and Barta, 1886.
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