Building Momentum Near Richmond

Robert James

This square mile of land—over which two Civil War battles (Gaines’ Mill and Cold Harbor) were fought—has topped the Trust’s “must save” list for more than two decades.

Twenty-one years ago, when I joined American Battlefield Trust as director of membership, I asked then-president Jim Lighthizer: Which was the most important unprotected battlefield land in the country?

Without hesitating, he cited a property outside Richmond, Virginia, that covered nearly a square mile of twice-hallowed ground—a site of bloody combat in 1862 and again in 1864. Light-hizer was not alone in his assessment: the eminent Civil War scholar Gary Gallagher has said this property, essentially unchanged since the war, was among the “single most desirable tracts on any battlefield,” while fellow historian Robert K. Krick called it “incomparable.”

It was at the center of the Union line in the Battle of Gaines’ Mill, on June 27, 1862, when the Army of the Potomac was hammered by a daylong Confederate assault five times larger than Pickett’s Charge. More than 90,000 soldiers fought in that bloodiest clash of the Seven Days’ Battles, and the two armies suffered a combined 15,000 casualties.

Two years later, in the June 3, 1864, Battle of Cold Harbor, a Confederate defensive line that stretched along the eastern border of this property was attacked by thousands of Union troops, costing about 7,000 casualties in the Army of the Potomac in less than an hour. It was Ulysses S. Grant’s greatest regret of the war.

This battlefield is the intersection of two of the largest and most historic frontal assaults of the Civil War—both involving tens of thousands of men. Gaines’ Mill was Robert E. Lee’s climactic victory in the Peninsula Campaign, when he took command of the Army of Northern Virginia, and Cold Harbor was Lee’s last great victory.

Since my first days at the Trust, we have kept our sights on this invaluable piece of land. Like other privately owned, rural battlefield properties in the area, it has been periodically threatened by development as Greater Richmond has grown. But after more than two decades of quiet persistence, good will, and, finally, active negotiations, the Trust last year arrived at a preservation agreement.

It is a massive undertaking that, thankfully, we are able to spread out over some years. We are now in Phase II, which will protect a total of 150 acres around Richmond—99 acres at Gaines’ Mill and Cold Harbor, and 51 acres at nearby Second Deep Bottom. The land’s value is nearly $1.7 million, a substantial sum especially in the time of covid. But thanks to pledges and gifts by dedicated preservationists, we now need to raise just the final $529,429—and every dollar donated today will be multiplied 3.25-to-1.

Time and time again over the years, the Trust’s own “army” of members and supporters has answered the call. I am confident that it will be no different with this effort more than 20 years in the making. Learn more about this exceptional property and make your contribution to the campaign at battlefields.org/GMCH2021.

David Duncan is president of the nonprofit, nonpartisan American Battlefield Trust, which is dedicated to preserving America’s hallowed battlegrounds—Revolutionary War, War of 1812, and Civil War—and educating the public about their significance.