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| View on Cool Arbor battle-ground.2 |
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thousand Union men lay dead or wounded on the field, while the Confederates, sheltered by their works, had not lost more than one thousand.
A consciousness now pervaded the mind of every soldier that further attempts to force the Confederate lines would be useless; and upon this impression they acted with marvelous unanimity, when, some hours later, General Meade sent orders to each corps commander to again attack, without regard to the doings of other corps.
The whole army, as if controlled by a single will, refused to stir! And so, at one o'clock in the afternoon, the battle of Cool Arbor was ended in a dreadful loss of life to the Nationals, but of nothing else, for they held their position firmly, with all their munitions of war.1
Grant now resolved to transfer his army to the south side of the James River, and by this grand flank movement, to cut off the chief sources of supplies of men
and provisions for Lee's army from the south and southwest, and compel its surrender.
His prime object, as we have observed, had been the destruction of that army, by capture or dispersion.
He had hoped to accomplish that
1 The National loss in this engagement, and in the immediate vicinity of Cool Arbor, was reported at 18,158, of whom 1,705 were killed, 9,042 wounded, and 2,406 were missing. Among the killed were Acting Brigadier-Generals Peter A. Porter, Lewis O. Morris, and F. F. Weed, of the New York troops. Other prominent officers were severely wounded, among them General O. P. Tyler. The Confederates lost General Doles. Lawrence M. Keit, one of the most active of the South Carolina conspirators in Congress in 1861, had been killed the day, before.
2 this view is from the ground occupied by the troops from the Army of the James, under General W. F. Smith, at the ruins of a mansion destroyed at the time of the battle, about a quarter of a mile northeast of the; road from Gaines's Mill. See map on page 423, and narrative on pages 486 and 437, volume II. the woods seen in the distance were those in which the Confederates were partially concealed, and along the edge of which they had cast up a line of intrenchments. Their rifle trenches were in the open field, between the chimney and the woods. When the writer visited the spot, in May, 1866, the thin strip of woods mentioned in the text had disappeared.
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