Civil War Ghost Trails

by Mark Nesbitt

  Cold Harbor

  After the horror of Spotsylvania, where, in the pouring rain at the Bloody Angle, the wounded were trampled into the mud beneath the feet of those still fighting, only to be plucked out alive after the twenty hours of fighting ended, there were yet more horrors to come on the Virginia Peninsula.

  After battling Grant as he swung eastward and southward in an attempt to get around his Army of Northern Virginia, Lee opposed him again at Cold Harbor, near the field of the Battle of Gaines’ Mill, fought two years before. Grant was understandably in a hurry to get across the Peninsula, which had bogged down McClellan in its swamps. But after the nearly two weeks of fighting in the Wilderness and Spotsylvania, and the campaigning from there to the Peninsula, his men and officers were utterly exhausted. Still there was no time to be lost.

  Cold Harbor, a vital crossroads northeast of Richmond, was captured on May 31, 1864, by Union cavalry under Philip Sheridan and held against Confederate infantry attacks the next day. Overnight, by June 2, the armies had entrenched along a sevenmile line; approximately 59,000 Confederates faced 109,000 Union troops. Grant, observing Confederate prisoners, was convinced the rebels were at least as exhausted as his own men and felt that his Federal soldiers could punch through the enemy entrenchments. He was wrong.

  By this late in the war, entrenchments had become sophisticated zigzags with breastworks dug to enable enfilade fire into the flanks of attacking troops. No more would the soldiers stand shoulder-to-shoulder in their dress-parade lines and trade volleys, like old-fashioned duelists, as they had at First Manassas, the Brawner Farm, or Antietam. Nor would they simply use existing terrain features like the sunken road below Marye’s Heights at Fredericksburg or the stone wall on Cemetery Ridge at Gettysburg. The armies had learned their deadly lessons with tuition paid in corpses. And yet, there would be, for any attacking forces, more corpses to come.

  The Federals, who were about to assault the entrenched Confederates, knew their odds. This was an era before governmentissued dog tags. As the follow-on troops watched the slaughter in the killing fields before the rebel trenches at Cold Harbor, they began to write their names and hometowns on slips of paper and pin them to their indigo sack coats. They wanted to make sure of two things: that when they died their families would be notified and not wonder for years whether their relative was coming home, and that their bodies would not lie in some unmarked, unknown grave.

  In the dawn attacks on June 3, 1864, some 7,000 Northern men and boys became casualties in less than an hour. Total casualties for the Federals in the battle amounted to nearly 13,000; for the Confederates, about 4,600. The “battle” of Cold Harbor went on until June 12, with mortar shells and snipers taking lives for no good tactical reason. Grant himself wrote that of all the attacks he ordered during the war, the last one at Cold Harbor was the one he regretted most.

  Cold Harbor Ghosts

  In his book Civil War Ghosts of Virginia, L. B. Taylor Jr. writes of several types of hauntings on the Cold Harbor battlefield and reminds us that many spirits cling to the earthly site of their deaths because their bodies were never properly interred. Recalling the Union troops writing their names and hometowns on paper as makeshift I.D. tags, specifically so that their mortal remains would be found, leads paranormalists to speculate on the several eerie stories that have emerged from Cold Harbor.

  It seems that the burial crews at Cold Harbor were not as efficient as the soldiers would have wished. A famous historic photograph of exhumations at Cold Harbor shows still-clothed skeletons thrown haphazardly onto a flat stretcher, four skulls visible, and a foot with an intact shoe and pants-leg still attached. The carelessness with which the remains were loaded onto the stretcher seems to imply that no one searched the corpses for those tiny scraps of paper bearing the honored soldiers’ identities.

  As well, Taylor writes that hundreds of bodies remained scattered in the area for years after the war. In 1869, “tourists” to the battlefield were treated to an exhibit no longer found on our neat National Park Service-administered battlefields: partially exposed skeletons, macabre clawed hands, and grinning skulls emerging from the earth all over the battlefield. As late as 1994, a prestigious Civil War magazine speculated that there may still be undiscovered remains at Cold Harbor.

  Civil War reenactors are prone to encounters with the dead they so accurately mimic. It only makes sense: If we, the living, can occasionally see the dead, why can’t they, upon occasion, see us? And if what they see closely resembles what they recall of their life— soldiers and women dressed in nineteenth-century garb milling around a campfire and tented streets, or fighting with convincing but mock ferocity—why wouldn’t they be drawn to such a familiar scene? Reenactors have reported chills in certain spots on the Cold Harbor battlefield, even during the heat of summer. Hazy, indistinct forms of soldiers in the distance ducking and running for sanctuary behind some long-gone terrain feature; the cries, groans, and pleadings so familiar to Civil War-era soldiers as the firing died away and the musketry was replaced by the calls of the wounded for succor.

  One female reenactor, according to Taylor, was awakened while camping on the battlefield by a pair of clammy, but unseen, hands running up her leg. She sat upright, only to be confronted by a phantom Union soldier’s bearded face, which disappeared. She and her husband’s visit to the battlefield was augmented later by the sounds of drums, musketry in the distance, and something heavy, like a human body, being dragged, perhaps to its temporary grave.

  Others have experienced what felt like “wounds” to parts of their bodies, but the pain dissipates as they exit the battlefield. Marching sounds have been heard and one man saw a vision of a Federal soldier running at him—and then passing through him—leaving a “wave of emotions.” It left him with the certainty that he must have fought at Cold Harbor in another life.

  But perhaps most disturbing are the odd mists that suddenly appear and disappear on the battlefield. As quoted by Taylor, visitors to the field talk about a haze, sometimes blue, sometimes gray, that is perhaps not fog but a kind of energy that for some as yet unexplained reason manifests itself at Cold Harbor. One man thought it might even be a portal to the past, or a warp in time. A couple, William and Crystal Sykes, who have been lifelong residents of the area, may have confirmed this sighting as recently as a few years ago, according to an Internet comment post they made to an article in the Mechanicsville Local on March 28, 2011.

  They had just exited their car and were walking down one of the pathways through the battleground when they heard what sounded like a cannon discharge very near to where they were walking. Both heard it; both were perplexed. There was no reenactment on the park grounds that day and no smoke or cannon to produce the sound.

  Later, William found a trench where he wanted his picture taken. Acting like a sniper, he aimed an imaginary rifle and immediately felt a presence behind him, looking over his shoulder. He urged his wife to hurry with the photo. Suddenly the camera was “smacked” out of her hand and broke on a rock. More confused than irritated at the damage to the camera, they moved on, deeper into the park toward the Confederate positions.

  As soon as they got to the Southern lines, William was overwhelmed by emotions of “anguish and pain.” That’s when they saw what he described as a “bubble” of fog. It wasn’t like anything they’d seen on the highway at night. It started toward them, and then stopped, hovering menacingly in the killing fields. That was the final straw. They left the battlefield immediately.

  I have my own weird personal story about the battlefield of Cold Harbor. Everyone who is associated with me in the paranormal field knows that I describe myself as a “psychic brick,” meaning I have virtually no extrasensory powers, no ability to remote-view, no sensitivity to ghosts, none of the “clairs” (-voyent, -audient, or any other), and certainly no precognition. I test myself constantly: Every time I try to insert a grounded plug, I have to turn it over so that it goes in correctly. Very frustrating!r />
  When I have had a personal paranormal experience, I consider it truly amazing and can remember every detail. So I remember the day I visited the Cold Harbor battlefield. It wasn’t my first visit, although I don’t remember seeing this particular part of the battlefield before. Perhaps the National Park Service had changed their walking tour route and it was the first time I’d taken it. I remember I was alone on this trip, which is a little unusual, because typically fellow rangers from Gettysburg and I took day trips together to see how other rangers in other parks did their talks. So I’m assuming that perhaps it was after my days as a ranger and before I’d written any of the ghost books, probably the early 1980s.

  I was following a walking tour that meandered between the opposing lines. I was aware of the history of the area as a killing ground for Union soldiers. Wave after wave of Federals swept across those fields toward the well-entrenched Confederates. Revealing a fatalism only soldiers can understand, I recalled that they wrote their names on scraps of paper and pinned them inside their blue sack coats so their dead bodies could be identified.

  I was crossing a wooden bridge built over what remained of the Confederate breastworks. The bridges were in place so that visitors could get close to them and peer down, but not destroy what was left by walking over them. It was a hot but clear day. That part of the battlefield, to the best of my recollection, was a broad, open plain canopied by tall, loblolly pines, typical of that area of Virginia. I got to the highest point of the arched bridge and suddenly was stopped. I didn’t stop; I was stopped and looked to my left down into the remnant of the Confederate trench. I heard myself say, “Something awful happened to me right here.” I didn’t think it, I said it out loud.

  I had to shake my head. “What did I just say?” I asked, again out loud. I even looked about to see if anyone else was around. I felt a little embarrassed, hoping no one had heard me. But no one was there.

  Did this have some to do with reincarnation? To unconsciously blurt out that something terrible happened to me right at a specific spot where I had never been before—at least in this life—is incomprehensible to me. It was visceral, something I couldn’t help myself from saying, perhaps because it was true about my other self, the one who may have lived in a period so bloody as to leave behind psychic imprints that affect me to this day.

  Kennesaw Mountain

  After securing Chattanooga and much of Tennessee, Grant was ordered to the Eastern Theater of the war to take on the seemingly unstoppable Lee. His strategy in Virginia was the opposite of previous Union generals who seemed fixated for much of the war to go “on to Richmond,” and when that failed, return to the safety of Washington. Grant stated specific cities or areas of the country were not his army’s objective; Lee’s army was, and they would run it to the ground like a hound chasing a rabbit. Appointed generalin-chief, he was to orchestrate virtually the entire war from his headquarters in the field with the Army of the Potomac. He left the western armies to William T. Sherman, whose temperament and opponent dictated a different kind of war.

  Despite his reputation as a pitiless warrior, Sherman was always reluctant to waste his soldiers’ lives on the battlefield. His Confederate counterpart, Joseph E. Johnston, fought the same kind of war. Thus, much of the action in the West after Chattanooga involved strategic maneuvering.

  It was obvious that Atlanta was a major hub for the war effort of the Confederacy. Its population had grown to 20,000 mainly because of manufacturing for the war. Ammunition, guns, rations, and men all flowed through to other parts of the Confederacy via the railroads that ran through Atlanta. Should the city be captured by the Yankees, they could disrupt the route from the Gulf of Mexico to the Atlantic, which would have a disastrous effect on supplying the armies and civilians of the South. And, as historian James M. McPherson wrote in Battle Cry of Freedom, “Because the South invested so much effort in defending the city, Atlanta also became a symbol of resistance and nationality second only to Richmond.”

  So, beginning on May 6, 1864, three Union armies under Sherman began their march toward Atlanta. The Army of the Cumberland, with about 60,000 men, was commanded by George H. Thomas, made famous by his stand at Chickamauga; James B. McPherson took over the Army of the Tennessee with some 25,000 veterans, once commanded by Grant himself; the Army of the Ohio, with 13,000 men, was under John M. Schofield.

  Johnston’s army of some 50,000 Confederates began maneuvering to gain an advantage in any coming battle. He established a defense on Rocky Face Ridge. From May 8 to June 19, 1864, the opposing armies maneuvered and fought several skirmishes and battles as Union forces masterfully flanked the Confederates, and the rebels successfully retreated before any real damage could be done. Battles were fought at Resaca (May 14–15); Cassville (May 18–19); New Hope Church, called the “Hell Hole” by the participants (May 25); Pickett’s Mill (May 27); and Dallas (May 28). On June 14, Confederate general Leonidas Polk was killed during the fighting at Pine Mountain, but fighting continued on June 15 and 16 at Gilgal Church and Lost Mountain. The Confederates finally found an excellent defensive position, on June 19, along an eminence near Marietta, Georgia, called Kennesaw Mountain.

  Confederates cleared the summits of Kennesaw for artillery and signalmen to work. At its highest, Big Kennesaw Mountain rises 700 feet above the surrounding countryside. Confederate lines covered the approaches to Marietta and the Western & Atlantic Railroad. Sherman began another of his flanking marches around the south end of Johnston’s line.

  Recent rains had turned Noyes’ Creek into a swamp. What few bridges that existed had the flooring removed by Confederates, leaving just stringers for the Federals to cross on. Schofield’s men made it across and established a bridgehead. The bridges were repaired and the rest of the Army of the Ohio crossed and prepared to advance.

  Johnston rushed General John B. Hood’s men from his right flank to his left to defend the routes to Atlanta. Instead of defending, Hood and his 11,000 men attacked on June 22 near the farm of Peter Kolb. The Battle of Kolb’s Farm ended with Hood being repulsed but convinced Sherman that another end-around might not be possible.

  But the fact that he had established his flanking maneuver tactic could work to his advantage. On the morning of June 27 he would make feint attacks on both ends of the Confederate line, faking his flank maneuver, and then have Thomas drive through the Confederate center toward the Western & Atlantic Railroad.

  The Union feint on the Confederate right flank began with an artillery bombardment precisely at 8:00 A.M. While McPherson’s attack was only to be a diversion, apparently some of the men from Illinois did not get the word: The 66th Illinois leaped into the trenches with the 1st Alabama and fought it out hand-to-hand; some Union troops nearly made it to the summit before they were stopped.

  Already the temperature on this late June day was growing unbearable. The main attacks were launched around 8:15, after the artillery bombardment ceased. Burnt Hickory Road was a natural pathway to the center of the Confederate line at Pigeon Hill, and so the Federal attacking forces straddled the road. On the south side of the road some 5,500 men under Brig. Gen. A. J. Lightburn advanced over swampy, broken terrain. They scattered the Confederate skirmish line, but were stopped by heavy artillery fire from Little Kennesaw Mountain and rifle fire ahead of them. Lightburn called off the attack and began to withdraw his men. This left the Confederates to focus on the Union attack to the north of Burnt Hickory Road.

  Again the terrain was ill-suited for an attack. The Confederates had strewn natural impediments among the rocks, boulders, fallen timber, and logs before their position. The slope before the attackers was steep, in some places nearly vertical. All semblance of a large, organized attack dissolved and men fought as small units. The heat, as well, was stifling. Yet some Federals managed to get within yards of the rebels. Their success was short-lived, and they had to retreat, leaving some of their comrades pinned down under a murderous, close-range fire.

  Still farther nort
h, Federals were again slowed by the unyielding terrain and withering fire from Confederates. They ran into a virtual wall of natural stone outcropping; Confederates above them threw huge rocks among the packed attackers. Only the fire of an Ohio regiments’ repeating rifles allowed them, after two hours of fighting, to retreat.

  The main attack was to take place against Confederate earthworks on a rise that would soon be named after its defender: Cheatham Hill. Unfortunately for the assaulting Federals, they were to attack the troops of two of the South’s finest commanders. Benjamin F. Cheatham and Patrick Cleburne had their troops dug in behind earthworks protected by cannons. One spot seemed vulnerable: the Confederate line jutted out into an angle that could be attacked frontally as well as from either side. Though it appeared to be the weak part of the Southern defenses, it was protected on both sides by artillery. It would soon earn the name “The Dead Angle.”

  Union assaults would take the form of narrow but deep, sort of a battering ram made up of human bodies. The terrain they had to cross, however, was open—a huge field, sloping upward to the angle—and their assaulting column would be visible and under fire the entire time. As they approached the enemy entrenchments, they would spread out into line and continue the advance.

  The Dead Angle at Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park.

  Unfortunately for the Northerners—mostly Midwesterners from Illinois, Missouri, Wisconsin, Indiana, Kentucky, and Ohio—the Confederates had placed obstructions in the form of downed trees and brush in front of their lines, which made deployment difficult. In their confusion, the Yankees were subjected to infantry and artillery fire at a mere forty yards. As well, the heat was stifling. The first units were driven back, allowing the Confederates a free-fire zone on the flanks of other Union regiments. The attack north of the angle dissolved.