The Battle of Cold Harbor was fought from May 31 to June 12, 1864, with the most significant fighting occurring on June 3. It was one of the final battles of Union General Grant's Overland Campaign during the American Civil War, and is remembered as one of American history's bloodiest, most lopsided battles. Thousands of Union soldiers were killed or wounded in a hopeless frontal assault against the fortified positions of Confederate General Robert E. Lee's army. The Overland Campaign was a series of battles fought in Virginia during May and June 1864, in the American Civil War. General Ulysses S. Grant, general-in-chief of all Union armies, directed the actions of the Army of the Potomac, commanded by General Meade, and other forces against Confederate General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. Although Grant suffered severe losses during the campaign, it was a strategic Union victory. It inflicted proportionately higher losses on Lee's army and maneuvered it into a siege at Richmond and Petersburg, Virginia, in just over eight weeks.