The Overland Campaign (4 May to 12 June 1864) was a major Union offensive into Virginia, launched during the final year of the American Civil War (1861 to 1865). It saw the Union Army of the Potomac fight the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia in five important engagements:

It resulted in over 80,000 casualties and led to the Siege of Petersburg (June 1864 to April 1865), one of the last military operations of the war.

In March 1864, Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant was named general-in-chief of all Union armies. His appointment came at a critical point in the war – it was an election year, and throughout much of the North, people were growing war-weary, tired of learning of battlefield defeats. There was a real chance that US President Abraham Lincoln would fail to be re-elected come November and that a potential successor would strike a disadvantageous peace with the South, just to appease the growing anti-war faction. To stave off this eventuality, Grant knew he had to win a series of victories dazzling enough to restore confidence in Lincoln and his pro-Union administration.

To do this, Grant needed to be aggressive. Indeed, he spent his first weeks in command planning a multi-pronged offensive designed to squeeze the Southern Confederacy into submission. In the Western theater, Maj. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman would lead his 100,000-man army into Georgia, beginning the decisive Atlanta Campaign (May-September 1864). Simultaneously, the 118,000-man Army of the Potomac, under Maj. Gen. George Gordon Meade, would cross the Rapidan River and launch an offensive into Virginia.

Unlike previous offensives, however, Meade's objective would not be the Confederate capital of Richmond. Rather, his goal would be to seek out and destroy the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia under Gen. Robert E. Lee. Only after the destruction of Lee's army, Grant believed, could Richmond be taken. His exact instructions to Meade were "wherever Lee's army shall go, you shall also go" (quoted in McPherson, 722). As Meade dealt with Lee, another army under Maj. Gen. Benjamin Butler would move up the James River to threaten Richmond from the southeast, while yet another force under Maj. Gen. Franz Sigel was to disrupt Confederate supply lines in the Shenandoah Valley.

Grant was no armchair general, and before the end of March, he had joined the Army of the Potomac at its camp north of the Rapidan River. He immediately set to work, helping Meade reorganize the army – condensing five infantry corps into three – and conducted regular troops inspections. His reputation as a fighter preceded him, and the soldiers found themselves looking on him with awe; here, at last, was a man they felt could lead them to victory. "We finally felt like the boss had arrived", one soldier remarked (quoted in Catton, 46). Grant's plan was to cross the Rapidan in early May, quickly moving the army into a dense section of woodlands known as the Wilderness. Though the Wilderness offered few roads and little room to maneuver, Grant hoped to swiftly make his way through before Lee had a chance to stop him. Once he was out of the trees, he could fight Lee on open ground of his own choosing.

Meanwhile, Lee was bracing for the attack he knew was coming. He had two infantry corps at hand, the Second and Third Corps; the First Corps, under Lt. Gen. James Longstreet, had just returned from a stint in Tennessee and was still nine miles (14.5 km) away at Gordonsville. Lee's plan was to use the Second and Third Corps to contain the Army of the Potomac as it marched through the Wilderness, a move that would negate Grant's numerical superiority. These corps would keep Grant's army bottled up for as long as it took for Longstreet to come up and hammer the Army of the Potomac into submission. It was a long shot, to be sure, but Lee had won his most impressive victories after taking similar gambles.

The Army of the Potomac – some 118,000 men, under the command of Maj. Gen. George Gordon Meade. It consisted of three infantry and one cavalry corps:

The IX Corps under Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside and the XVIII Corps under Maj. Gen. William 'Baldy' Smith fought with the army at various points in the campaign, though they were not technically part of it.

The Army of Northern Virginia – around 65,000 men, under the command of Gen. Robert E. Lee. It consisted of three infantry and one cavalry corps:

On 4 May, the Army of the Potomac launched its campaign, crossing over the Rapidan and entering the dark tree line of the Wilderness. It spent the night camped out beneath the trees – Warren's corps and Sedgwick's corps camped out near Wilderness Tavern while Hancock's corps hunkered down near Chancellorsville, the site of one of the army's worst defeats a year before. Recent rainstorms had washed some of the corpses from their shallow graves, forcing the men to gaze upon the skulls of their fallen comrades, wondering if they would share a similar fate come morning.

When that morning came – 5 May – the Union army was up and moving again, Warren's corps along the Orange Turnpike, Hancock's men along the Orange Plank Road. Little did they know that the two Confederate corps were fast approaching from the opposite direction. Around midmorning, Warren's corps clashed with Ewell's men at Saunders Field, a clearing just off the turnpike; both sides continually rushed in reinforcements, turning the small skirmish into a general engagement.

A blanket of smoke became trapped beneath the trees, obscuring vision on the battlefield. Men fired blindly into the trees ahead of them, regiments groped directionless through the murk, entire companies blundered straight into enemy lines and were captured wholesale. It was, as one soldier would recall, "a battle of invisibles with invisibles" (quoted in Foote, 155).

At the same time, Hill's corps was rapidly approaching the intersection of Plank and Brock roads – if Hill seized this crossroads, he could interpose himself between the two wings of the Army of the Potomac, splitting it in half. Thinking quickly, Grant rushed over a single division under Brig. Gen. George Getty to hold the crossroads until the rest of Hancock's corps arrived.

For a while, Getty's division held back Hill's Corps on its own. The air became so thick with bullets that men were forced to crouch or lie down, lest they almost certainly be shot. Eventually, Hancock's men came up to relieve Getty's beleaguered troops, and fierce fighting at the crossroads continued until dark. Only then did the soldiers on both battlefields stop firing, many of them so exhausted that they fell asleep where they had just been fighting.

At dawn on 6 May, Grant renewed the attack. Warren and Sedgwick assaulted Ewell's corps at Saunders Field, although this was only a holding action to keep Ewell pinned down. The main event took place at the crossroads, where Hancock launched a fierce charge, hoping to break through Hill's line and turn the Confederate flank. For a while, this worked, and Hill's tired troops were forced to give ground inch by inch.

But then, at this critical hour, Longstreet arrived at the head of his corps. His troops slammed into Hancock's exposed flank, rolling the Yankees up "like a wet blanket" (quoted in Foote, 177). But as Longstreet was preparing another assault to finish the job, he was shot through the neck in an incident of friendly fire. Though he would survive, he would be out of action for the rest of the campaign. Fighting continued until darkness, once again, put an end to it. As the battle petered out, one last horror remained in store: the dry underbrush caught fire, leading to massive forest fires that devoured the dead and burned the wounded alive, leaving only charred corpses behind.

On the morning of 7 May, the Army of the Potomac packed up and marched off down the Brock Road. The rebels believed they had won the battle, that the Yankees were withdrawing back to Washington to lick their wounds. But Grant was not about to give up so easily – instead of falling back across the Rapidan, he continued pushing south, hoping to get in between Lee's army and Richmond.

Anticipating his opponent's move, Lee hurried the First Corps – now under Maj. Gen. Richard Anderson, after Longstreet's wounding – to Spotsylvania Court House, a sleepy little town in Grant's path. Anderson, eager to prove his merits as a corps commander, marched through the night and got to Spotsylvania early on the morning of 8 May, ahead of the Union army.

When the first elements of the Army of the Potomac arrived later that morning, they found Anderson's corps firmly entrenched behind makeshift breastworks. Throughout the day, the Yankees made several assaults but were repulsed each time, with heavy losses. That evening, the rest of Lee's army arrived and worked throughout the night, deepening and expanding the trenches.

By the morning of 9 May, they had dug a formidable network of entrenchments that stretched four miles (6.4 km). The Union troops started digging trenches of their own, but they came under fire from Confederate marksmen. Sedgwick, frustrated at seeing his men ducking and dodging bullets he believed to be out of range, rode out to show them they had nothing to fear. "They couldn't hit an elephant at this distance," he said – moments before a rebel bullet struck him beneath the eye, killing him. Command of his VI Corps fell to Maj. Gen. Horatio Wright.

At 5 p.m. on 10 May, Warren and Hancock led their men in an assault on the rebel trenches but were once again repulsed with heavy losses. It was at this point that Col. Emory Upton, a wiry young West Point graduate, presented a plan – he would lead twelve regiments in an attack on the 'Muleshoe', an exposed saliant jutting out more than a mile ahead of the main Confederate trenches.

Once his commanding officers approved the plan, Upton led his charge at 6 p.m. It was very nearly successful; though his men broke through the rebel lines, their attack fizzled out due to a lack of support. Grant was pleased with this development, though, promoting Upton to brigadier general on the spot. He decided to repeat the attack, but this time with an entire corps rather than just a brigade.

This assault began just before dawn on 12 May. As torrential rains fell from the sky, the Union soldiers attacked the Muleshoe – throughout the day, both sides poured in reinforcements, and bitter hand-to-hand combat occurred here for a grueling 20 hours. The heaviest fighting took place at the west edge of the saliant, which would become immortalized as the 'Bloody Angle'. Men clubbed and stabbed one another to death, bodies were shot so many times that they resembled lumps of flesh, corpses piled so high that they had to be removed so the men could keep fighting.

The rain turned the trenches to slime, and the wounded were trampled into the mud. By the time the attack broke off around midnight, thousands had been killed or wounded around the Bloody Angle, which had seen some of the most intense fighting of the entire war. The next week saw scattered fighting up and down the line and a few more assaults – on the 19th, Ewell's Second Corps clashed with Hancock's men at Harris Farm, leading to hundreds more casualties on each side.

On 8 May, Sheridan approached Meade with a plan – he would take his cavalry corps behind enemy lines to harry the Virginian countryside, with the goal of drawing Stuart's Confederate cavalry into an open battle where they could be 'whipped'. Though Meade was reluctant, Grant approved the plan, and, on the morning of 9 May, Sheridan rode out of the camp at the head of 10,000 cavalrymen and 32 artillery pieces.

The next day, the Yankee horsemen occupied Beaver Dam Station, Lee's main supply depot along the Virginia Central Railroad, and threatened to advance on Richmond itself. Stuart took the bait and hurried to oppose them, though he had only 4,500 cavalry troopers of his own. The two cavalries clashed at the crossroads near Yellow Tavern on 11 May, about 6 miles (9.6 km) north of Richmond. Stuart was mortally wounded in the battle – he would die the next day – and his men were routed after a full day of fighting. Satisfied that he had deprived the enemy of their valiant cavalry commander, Sheridan rejoined the Army of the Potomac twelve days later.

Early in the battle for Spotsylvania, Grant had written to Washington that he intended to "fight it out on this line, if it takes all summer" (quoted in McPherson, 731). While this had made for great headlines, Grant was beginning to realize that he may not have all summer, after all. He had lost 35,000 men in the campaign so far, an average of 2,000 soldiers per day – though he could more easily reinforce himself than could Lee, he knew he could not keep this up forever. So, on 21 May, he once again packed his army up and left the Spotsylvania trenches behind, hoping to once again sidle around Lee and force the rebel army to leave its defenses.

The plan worked. Understanding the need to keep between Grant and Richmond, Lee was forced to leave his strong defenses and move south, marching along a road parallel to the one Grant was taking. For the next few days, the two armies maneuvered around one another, fighting a series of skirmishes that were collectively known as the Battle of North Anna. By the end of May, both armies were headed for the crossroads at Cold Harbor, near the site where the Seven Days Battles had been fought two years before.

This time, it was the Yankees who got to Cold Harbor first. Sheridan's cavalry arrived on 31 May and set up fortifications just in time to beat back rebel cavalry under the Southern general's nephew, Fitzhugh Lee. The next day, Anderson arrived and attempted to dislodge Sheridan with an assault but was driven back. The Yankees rushed in their own reinforcements and launched an attack against Anderson's line, which was likewise repulsed.

Sensing another stalemate, each army spent the rest of the day – and indeed much of the next – rushing in reinforcements and digging earthworks. By the evening of 2 June, the Confederates had constructed a strong network of trenches described by one reporter as "intricate, zig-zagged lines within lines, lines protecting flanks of lines, lines built to enfilade opposing lines…works within works and works without works" (quoted in McPherson, 735). Despite the strength of these fortifications, Grant was determined to break out of the deadlock and ordered a large-scale assault for the morning of 3 June.

The Federal attack began on schedule – three corps, 60,000 men in all, marching forward through the swirling early morning mists. They soon came under fire from the well-entrenched Confederates and, within 20 minutes, were repulsed; nearly 7,000 Union soldiers were left dead or wounded in the no-man's land between the trenches. Over the course of the next few days, the wounded remained out in the field, dying slow, agonizing deaths as they succumbed to thirst, the elements, or their injuries.

It was not until 7 June that Grant finally organized a truce to collect his wounded, by which time only two of the wounded men were found alive. The stalemate continued that very much prefigured the static trench warfare on WWI's Western Front, still 50 years in the future. Then, on 12 June, Grant once again gave Lee the slip. He left his trenches and headed toward the James River, hoping to cross it and threaten the vital junction of Petersburg.

As the two main armies slugged it out in northern Virginia, the rest of Grant's multi-pronged push toward Richmond had fallen apart. In the Shenandoah Valley, Sigel's army had been checked at the Battle of New Market (15 May), while Butler's Army of the James had been bottled up in the town of Bermuda Hundred.

Though Sherman's army was making good progress in Georgia, success in Virginia now relied solely on the Army of the Potomac. Grant pressed onward, arriving at Petersburg to find that the place had been fortified by a token Confederate force under P. G. T. Beauregard. Beauregard held out long enough for Lee to rush his army in and take up position there. Thus began the Siege of Petersburg, a long, drawn-out campaign characterized by trench warfare.

The Overland Campaign was over, at a monstrous cost in human life. In the span of forty days, Grant had lost about 55,000 men killed or wounded, while Lee had suffered about 33,000 casualties. But despite this horrific butcher's bill, Grant was succeeding in his objective. While he could hardly claim victory in any of the Overland battles – except Sheridan's success at Yellow Tavern – Grant had proved that he was a fighter, willing to keep the offensive going at any cost. He was also successfully bleeding Lee's army white, aware that the North had much more manpower than the South at this late stage in the war. Now, having trapped Lee's army at Petersburg, Grant was determined to wear it down and defeat it once and for all, bringing an end to this long and bloody war.