Battle of Cold Harbor - Civil War

Battle of Cold Harbor - Civil War Battle of Cold Harbor - Conflict Dates: The Battle of Cold Harbor was fought May 31-June 12, 1864, and was part of the American Civil War (1861-1865). Armies Commanders: Union Lieutenant General Ulysses S. GrantMajor General George G. Meade108,000 men Confederate General Robert E. Lee62,000 men Battle of Cold Harbor - Background: Pressing on with his Overland Campaign after confrontations at the Wilderness, Spotsylvania Court House, and North Anna, Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant again moved around Confederate General Robert E. Lees right in an effort to capture Richmond. Crossing the Pamunkey River, Grants men fought skirmishes at Haws Shop, Totopotomoy Creek, and Old Church. Pushing his cavalry forward towards the crossroads at Old Cold Harbor, Grant also ordered Major General William Baldy Smiths XVIII Corps to move from Bermuda Hundred to join the main army. Recently reinforced, Lee anticipated Grants designs on Old Cold Harbor and dispatched cavalry under Brigadier Generals Matthew Butler and Fitzhugh Lee to the scene. Arriving they encountered elements of Major General Philip H. Sheridans cavalry corps. As the two forces skirmished on May 31, Lee sent Major General Robert Hokes division as well as Major General Richard Andersons First Corps to Old Cold Harbor. Around 4:00 PM, Union cavalry under Brigadier General Alfred Torbert and David Gregg succeeded in driving the Confederates from the crossroads. Battle of Cold Harbor - Early Fighting: As the Confederate infantry began arrive late in the day, Sheridan, concerned about his advanced position, withdrew back towards Old Church. Wishing to exploit the advantage gained at Old Cold Harbor, Grant ordered Major General Horatio Wrights VI Corps to the area from Totopotomoy Creek and ordered Sheridan to hold the crossroads at all costs. Moving back to Old Cold Harbor around 1:00 AM on June 1, Sheridans horsemen were able to reoccupy their old position as the Confederates had failed to notice their early withdrawal. In an effort to re-take the crossroads, Lee ordered Anderson and Hoke to attack the Union lines early on June 1. Anderson failed to relay this order to Hoke and the resulting attack consisted only of First Corps troops. Moving forward, troops from Kershaws Brigade led the assault and were met with savage fire from Brigadier General Wesley Merritts entrenched cavalry. Using seven-shot Spencer carbines, Merritts men quickly beat back the Confederates. Around 9:00 AM, the lead elements of Wrights corps began arriving on the field and moved into the cavalrys lines. Battle of Cold Harbor - Union Movements: Though Grant had wished IV Corps to attack immediately, it was exhausted from marching most of the night and Wright elected to delay until Smiths men arrived. Reaching Old Cold Harbor in early afternoon, XVIII Corps began entrenching on Wrights right as the cavalry retired east. Around 6:30 PM, with minimal scouting of the Confederate lines, both corps moved to the attack. Storming forward over unfamiliar ground they were met by heavy fire from Anderson and Hokes men. Though a gap in the Confederate line was found, it was quickly closed by Anderson and the Union troops were forced to retire to their lines. While the assault had failed, Grants chief subordinate, Major General George G. Meade, commander of the Army of the Potomac, believed an attack the next day could be successful if enough force was brought against the Confederate line. To achieve this, Major General Winfield S. Hancocks II Corps was shifted from Totopotomoy and placed on Wrights left. Once Hancock was in position, Meade intended to move forward with three corps before Lee could prepare substancial defenses. Arriving early on June 2, II Corp was tired from their march and Grant agreed to delay the attack until 5:00 PM to allow them to rest. Battle of Cold Harobr - Regrettable Assaults: The assault was again delayed that afternoon until 4:30 AM on June 3. In planning for the attack, both Grant and Meade failed to issue specific instructions for the assaults target and trusted their corps commanders to reconnoiter the ground on their own. Though unhappy at the lack of direction from above, the Union corps commanders failed to take the initiative by scouting their lines of advance. For those in the ranks who had survived frontal assaults at Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania, a degree of fatalism took hold and many pinned paper containing their name to their uniforms to aid in identifying their body. While Union forces delayed on June 2, Lees engineers and troops were busy constructing an elaborate system of fortifications containing pre-ranged artillery, converging fields of fire, and various obstacles. To support the assault, Major General Ambrose Burnsides IX Corps and Major General Gouverneur K. Warrens V Corps were formed at the north end of the field with orders to attack Lieutenant General Jubal Earlys corps on Lees left. Moving forward through the early morning fog, XVIII, VI, and II Corps quickly encountered heavy fire from the Confederate lines. Attacking, Smiths men were channeled into two ravines where they were cut down in large numbers halting their advance. In the center, Wrights men, still bloodied from June 1, were quickly pinned down and made little effort to renew the attack. The only success came on Hancocks front where troops from Major General Francis Barlows division succeeded in breaking through the Confederate lines. Recognizing the danger, the breach was quickly sealed by the Confederates who then proceeded to throw back the Union attackers. In the north, Burnside launched a sizable attack on Early, but halted to regroup after mistakenly thinking he had shattered the enemy lines. As the assault was failing, Grant and Meade pressed their commanders to push forward with little success. By 12:30 PM, Grant conceded that the assault had failed and Union troops began digging in until they could withdraw under the cover of darkness. Battle of Cold Harbor - Aftermath: In the fighting, Grants army had sustained 1,844 killed, 9,077 wounded, and 1,816 captured/missing. For Lee, the losses were a relatively light 83 killed, 3,380 wounded, and 1,132 captured/missing. Lees final major victory, Cold Harbor led to an increase in anti-war sentiment in the North and criticisms of Grants leadership. With the failure of the assault, Grant remained in place at Cold Harbor until June 12 when he moved the army away and succeeded in crossing the James River. Of the battle, Grant stated in his memoirs: I have always regretted that the last assault at Cold Harbor was ever made. I might say the same thing of the assault of the 22d of May, 1863, at Vicksburg. At Cold Harbor no advantage whatever was gained to compensate for the heavy loss we sustained.

Crusades Effects on the Middle East

Crusades Effects on the Middle East Between 1095 and 1291, Christians from western Europe launched a series of eight major invasions against the Middle East. These attacks, called the Crusades, were aimed at liberating the Holy Land and Jerusalem from Muslim rule. The Crusades were sparked by religious fervor in Europe, by exhortations from various Popes, and by the need to rid Europe of excess warriors left over from regional wars. What effect did these attacks, which came from out of the blue from the perspective of Muslims and Jews in the Holy Land, have on the Middle East? Short-Term Effects In an immediate sense, the Crusades had a terrible effect on some of the Muslim and Jewish inhabitants of the Middle East. During the First Crusade, for example, adherents of the two religions joined together to defend the cities of Antioch (1097 CE) and Jerusalem (1099) from European Crusaders who laid siege to them. In both cases, the Christians sacked the cities and massacred the Muslim and Jewish defenders alike. It must have been horrifying to see armed bands of religious zealots approaching to attack a city or castle. However, as bloody as the battles could be, on the whole, the people of the Middle East considered the Crusades more of an irritant than an existential threat. A Global Trade Power During the Middle Ages, the Islamic world was a global center of trade, culture, and learning. Arab Muslim traders dominated the rich trade in spices, silk, porcelain, and jewels that flowed between China, the area that is now Indonesia, India,​ and points west. Muslim scholars had preserved and translated the great works of science and medicine from classical Greece and Rome, combined that with insights from the ancient thinkers of India and China, and went on to invent or improve subjects like algebra and astronomy, and medical innovations such as the hypodermic needle. Europe, on the other hand, was a war-torn region of small, feuding principalities, mired in superstition and illiteracy. One of the primary reasons that Pope Urban II initiated the First Crusade (1096–1099), in fact, was to distract the Christian rulers and nobles of Europe from fighting one another by creating a common enemy for them- the Muslims who controlled the Holy Land. Europes Christians would launch seven additional crusades over the next two hundred years, but none was as successful as the First Crusade. One effect of the Crusades was the creation of a new hero for the Islamic world: Saladin, the Kurdish sultan of Syria and Egypt, who in 1187 freed Jerusalem from the Christians but refused to massacre them as they had done to the citys Muslim and Jewish citizens ninety years previously. On the whole, the Crusades had little immediate effect on the Middle East, in terms of territorial losses or psychological impact. By the 1200s, people in the region were much more concerned about a new threat: the quickly-expanding Mongol Empire, which would bring down the Umayyad Caliphate, sack Baghdad, and push toward Egypt. Had the Mamluks not defeated the Mongols in the Battle of Ayn Jalut (1260), the entire Muslim world might have fallen. Effects on Europe In the centuries that followed, it was actually Europe that was most changed by the Crusades. The Crusaders brought back exotic new spices and fabrics, fueling European demand for products from Asia. They also brought back new ideas- medical knowledge, scientific ideas, and more enlightened attitudes about people of other religious backgrounds. These changes among the nobility and soldiers of the Christian world helped to spark the Renaissance and eventually set Europe, the backwater of the Old World, on a course toward global conquest. Long-Term Effects of the Crusades on the Middle East Eventually, it was Europes rebirth and expansion that finally created a Crusader effect in the Middle East. As Europe asserted itself during the fifteenth through nineteenth centuries, it forced the Islamic world into a secondary position, sparking envy and reactionary conservatism in some sectors of the formerly more progressive Middle East. Today, the Crusades constitute a major grievance for some people in the Middle East, when they consider relations with Europe and the West. That attitude is not unreasonable- after all, European Christians launched two hundred years-worth of unprovoked attacks on the Middle East out of religious zealotry and blood-lust. 21st Century Crusade In 2001, United States President George W. Bush reopened the almost thousand-year-old wound in the days following the 9/11 Attacks. On Sunday, September 16, 2001, President Bush said, this crusade, this war on terrorism, is going to take a while. The reaction in the Middle East and, interestingly, also in Europe was sharp and immediate: Commentators in both regions decried Bushs use of that term  and vowed that the terrorist attacks and the USs reaction could not turn into a new clash of civilizations like the medieval Crusades. In an odd way, however, the American reaction to 9/11 did echo the Crusades. The Bush administration decided to launch the Iraq War, despite the fact that Iraq had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks. Just as the first several crusades had done, this unprovoked attack killed thousands of innocents in the Middle East  and perpetuated the cycle of mistrust that had developed between the Muslim and Christian worlds since Pope Urban urged the European knights to liberate the Holy Land from the Saracens. Sources and Further Reading Claster, Jill N. Sacred Violence: The European Crusades to the Middle East, 1095-1396. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009.Kà ¶hler, Michael. Alliances and Treaties between Frankish and Muslim Rulers in the Middle East: Cross-Cultural Diplomacy in the Period of the Crusades. Trans. Holt, Peter M. Leiden: Brill, 2013.  Holt, Peter M. The Age of the Crusades: The Near East from the Eleventh Century to 1517. London: Routledge, 2014.