To the Editor:

One-hundred-sixty years and one month ago, many families in St. Lawrence County were searching the local newspapers hoping NOT to find the names of their loved ones in the lists of casualties from the bloody battle of Cold Harbor, Virginia which was fought between Union and Confederate forces from June 1 through June 3, 1864.

That battle, and several others, were part of Union General Ulysses S. Grant's "overland campaign", which was an attempt to outflank Confederate General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, and get between Lee and the rebel capital of Richmond, Virginia. 

The 106th New York Volunteer Infantry was a part of the Sixth Corps attached to Grant's Army of the Potomac. Heavily engaged on the 1st of June, the 106th NYVI took heavy casualties during their assault on the Rebel lines which were being fortified by entrenching using felled trees and piled-up dirt to offer protection from the Yankee attack. 

Successful in capturing the first lines of trenches, and some Confederate prisoners, the New Yorkers momentum was eventually slowed, then halted, and they were forced to fall back, leaving many killed and wounded behind. Among the dead was Corporal Andrew Jackson Hitchcock, from Dekalb, New York, who was serving as part of the color guard in Company C. 

That day's fighting finally ended with the approaching nightfall leaving many killed and wounded on the field between the opposing lines of combatants. On June 2nd the Union soldiers rested and regrouped, but on the 3rd, General Grant ordered another all-out assault, even though the outcome of the fighting on the first day of battle was clear, and General Lee's troops had even more time to strengthen their position and bring up reinforcements. The result was a bloodbath, with thousands of Federal troops killed in the span of thirty minutes.

News of the battle, Lee's last victory of the war before the Siege of Petersburg began, was soon spreading across the telegraph wires, first to Washington where Lincoln and his cabinet awaited word on the outcome, and then to newspaper offices in cities across the North. 

Soon the papers carried accounts of the fighting and the dreaded lists of those brave men who were killed or wounded. Andrew Hitchcock's name was listed among the slain, causing great sorrow among his kin. The young soldier boy from the farm in Dekalb would not be coming home. 

It is assumed by this writer that Corporal Hitchcock's remains were eventually laid to rest in the mass burial grave of "the unknown soldiers" that is situated at what is now Cold Harbor Battlefield Park near Mechanicsville, Virginia, northeast of Richmond. 

As we celebrate our nation's 248th birthday, with parades and picnics, let us sing The Star Spangled Banner knowing that we live in "the land of the free, and the home of the brave", and remembering that it is because of the brave men and women who serve in our nation's military that we still have freedom in these United States of America. 

Dixie Dave Ellis
Hammond