Includes bibliographical references (p. [295]-311) and index.

"On the morning of friday, June 3, 1864, Generals Ulysses S. Grant and George G. Meade brought their overland campaign against Richmond to its climax in an all-out assault on Robert E. Lee's entrenched rebels at Cold Harbor, less than ten miles outside the Confederate capital. The result was out-right slaughter -- Grant's worst defeat, and Lee's last great victory. Though Grant tried afterward to forget the battle, and historians have often misunderstood its importance, Cold Harbor remains what Bruce Catton called 'one of the hard and terrible names of the Civil War, perhaps the most terrible of all'". -- from fly leaf.