Ed Sanders speaking before a packed house at the Charlottesville Senior Center. Part one of six.
Regular listeners of our podcasts might know Rick Britton. He’s an award-winning historian and cartographer and a frequent guest on WINA’s Charlottesville Right Now with Coy Barefoot. Rick also organizes a Civil War lecture and day-trip series in conjunction with the Charlottesville Senior Center.
On Wednesday, April 20th—to a packed crowd—NPS Historian Ed Sanders delivered a fantastic talk on one of the war’s most vicious battles. Fought between May 31st & June 12th, 1864—and featuring hopeless Federal assaults on June 3rd—the Battle of Cold Harbor was the last combat of U. S. Grant’s aggressive Overland Campaign. At Cold Harbor R. E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia, dug in along a line stretching six miles, inflicted 6,000 casualties while suffering very few. It was a bloodletting that future President U. S. Grant lived to regret.
On Wednesday, April 27nd, Rick Britton will conduct an afternoon tour of the Cold Harbor Battlefield (just outside of Richmond). We’ll start off the day by taking in the new Civil War exhibit at the Virginia Historical Society. Then we’ll enjoy lunch at the Tobacco Company. Bus tour departs at 9:00 am and returns at about 5:00 pm. There is a fee for the tour. Call 974-6538 for more info!
This is the first of a six part series for 2011. You can listen to all six parts of this series here.