A picture taken by me from the Cold Harbor National Battlefield. One of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War, in which over 13,000 Union and 2,500 Confederate soldiers died. Thousands of Union soldiers were slaughtered in a hopeless assault against the fortified troops of Confederate General Robert E. Lee. Grant said of the battle in his memoirs "I have always regretted that the last assault at Cold Harbor was ever made." At Cold Harbor no advantage whatever was gained to compensate for the heavy loss sustained among Union troops, about 12,000 of them died in the first 20 minutes, while hoplessly charging heavily entrenched Confederate positions.