v1.1.2 / chapter 66 of 93 / 01 oct 09 / greg goebel / public domain
* After months of preparation, in early May Grant moved out to take on Lee. The result was a brutal, chaotic, inconclusive battle in the Wilderness, where Hooker had come to ruin the year before. Lee halted the Union advance, if only by the hardest. Grant considered the situation, then shifted out of the Wilderness to carry on the fight.
* By the beginning of May 1864, Robert E. Lee felt Grant was poised to attack and would do so very soon. In fact, Lee was wondering why the Federals hadn't attacked already, and correctly concluded that the Federals were trying to coordinate movements along several fronts.
His own intelligence assessments gave him a good idea of what the Yankees would do. On 2 May, Lee held a council of war with his senior generals, the group riding up to the top of Clark Mountain, providing them with a view of the terrain where Lee felt certain they would be fighting within days.
The next day, 3 May 1864, Lee received reports from his scouts that the
Federals had set large bonfires in their camps, evidently to clean up the
winter's accumulation of trash before moving out. Reports also filtered in
of large clouds of dust, no doubt caused by an army on the march, and
occasional glimpses of wagons or soldiers in columns. Late that night, a
signal was relayed to Dick Ewell, whose corps seemed closest to respond to
the Federal advance:
GENERAL EWELL, HAVE YOUR COMMAND READY TO MOVE AT DAYLIGHT.
* Grant had considered the options for his move carefully. He could transfer
the army by ship and fight another Peninsula campaign; or move towards
Gordonsville in the west, in the shadow of the Blue Ridge mountains; or take
a direct route south, driving through the Wilderness.
Although Grant had originally hoped to fight a second Peninsula campaign, and as respected a general as John Sedgwick had agreed with the idea, it had serious drawbacks. Robert E. Lee would almost certainly take advantage of the fact that the Army of the Potomac would not be able to fight as long as it was in transit by ship, and descend on some smaller Federal army that the rebels could then destroy with confidence.
The move would also leave Washington unprotected. The President and his men were not as touchy on this point as they had been in the past, but it was still a concern. Besides, everyone in charge understood that the goal of the offensive was not really to capture Richmond; that was only a means to an end. The real objective was to force Robert E. Lee and the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia to do battle, and take them off the playing board once and for all. If Richmond fell but Lee and his army survived, the Confederacy would survive; destroy Confederate forces and the Confederacy would be history.
Shifting to the west would have placed the Army of the Potomac at the mercy of a long rail line in territory infested with Confederate raiders such as John S. Mosby and his men. The raiders would also be certainly joined by Jeb Stuart and his troopers. Thousands of Union soldiers would have to be spared to protect the rail line, reducing the force available to meet the rebels in battle.
That left crossing the Wilderness. As Joe Hooker had proven at Chancellorsville, the Wilderness was a dangerous trap where a smaller force could bushwhack a bigger one with devastating results, but Grant felt he could risk it. He was no Joe Hooker, and was certainly not going to make the mistake of stopping there and waiting for Robert E. Lee to attack him.
In the dark hours of the morning of 4 May 1864, Federal advance troops moved across the Rapidan to snap up rebel pickets and clear the way for the main body. One Yankee cavalryman wondered what they were doing, "hunting around in the night for Johnnies this way." Another replied: "We're stealing a march on Old Man Lee." A third commented: "Lee will miss us in the morning." And a fourth concluded: "Yes, and then look out. He'll come tearing down this way, looking for a fight."
* The three corps of the Army of the Potomac mustered about 84,000 men, with Burnside's IX Corps adding about 15,000 more. Lee had about 65,000 effectives to oppose them. The Federals greatly outnumbered the rebels, but no Union soldier thought that Lee was going to be intimidated. To a certain extent, Lee saw a bigger opponent simply as a bigger target. Many Yankee soldiers, made cynical by the repeated failures of past campaigns, believed that they would be right back to where they started soon enough.
By midmorning, the Army of the Potomac was crossing the river in mass. Grant came over at noon, neatly dressed in a formal general's uniform for once and even wearing gloves, with cigars distributed among the pockets as was his custom. He set up temporary headquarters in a house overlooking the ford to keep an eye on things. A reported asked him how long it would take the army to move into Richmond. Grant replied, deadpan: "I will agree to be there in about four days." This startled the reporter, not to mention Grant's staff, but Grant then added: "That is, if General Lee becomes a party to the agreement. But if he objects, the trip will undoubtedly be prolonged." The staff officers laughed, probably as much at the way Grant had put the reporter in his place for the fatuous question as at the joke.
Grant was accompanied by his political patron, Congressman Elihu B. Washburne of Illinois. Washburne wore black civilian clothes; since he wasn't a familiar face to the troops, they wondered who he was. One joker suggested that Grant had brought along his own private undertaker.
* The Army of the Potomac's initial objective was to get through the Wilderness as quickly as possible. The Federals would find it difficult to bring their superior numbers to bear in the tangled environment, and so Lee would almost certainly attack them there if he could. The two armies were in a race.
The Union advance went quietly and well for the first day, 4 May, much to everyone's relief. Sheridan was so annoyed at not encountering Jeb Stuart's troopers that, on finding out they were at a review at Fredericksburg, Sheridan asked Grant and Meade for permission to take two of the three divisions of cavalry out at the next dawn to disrupt the proceedings. The request was granted.
In the meantime, Warren's V Corps marched over the Rapidan on two pontoon bridges at Germanna Ford into the heart of the Wilderness, to be followed by Sedgwick's VI Corps. That afternoon, Burnside's IX Corps was to converge on the same crossing, though he would not arrive there until the next day.
To the east, Hancock's II Corps moved across another pair of pontoon bridges downstream at Ely's Ford to skirt the eastern edge of the woodlands. Part of a huge supply train, a stream of wagons that would have been tens of miles long had it been arranged from end to end, followed II Corps across Ely's Ford, with the other part passing over a fifth pontoon bridge, set up between the others at Culpeper Mine Ford.
The movement was constrained by the forest's primitive road network. The Germanna Plank Road cut through the Wilderness from Germanna Ford southeast for about 6 miles (10 kilometers) until it passed out into the open.
The Germanna Plank Road was intersected in the woodlands by the Orange Turnpike, which ran in one direction from the intersection roughly east to Chancellorsville and Fredericksburg, and in the other direction southwest towards the Orange County Courthouse. Another road, the Orange Plank Road, ran south and parallel to the Orange Turnpike, with the two roads converging at Orange at one end and just west of Chancellorsville at the other end.
The Germanna Plank Road ended on the Orange Plank Road, but slightly to the north it was crisscrossed by the Brock Road, which ran from the Orange Turnpike across Orange Plank Road and then headed southeast. Just before the Brock Road left the Wilderness, it was intersected by the Catharpin Road, which roughly paralleled the Orange Turnpike and Orange Plank Road, still farther to the south.
The Federals made good progress through 4 May, though since they had to keep pace with their supply train they couldn't simply dash ahead. Hancock's II Corps advanced only a short distance from Ely's Ford to halt at Chancellorsville. Warren's V Corps marched down the Germanna Plank Road to the Wilderness Tavern, 5 miles (8 kilometers) west of Chancellorsville, and set up camp in its vicinity, to be followed by Sedgwick's VI Corps.
Three Federal corps had managed to get across the Rapidan without being attacked, though the supply train wouldn't be across until the next day. Many felt that they had in fact got the jump on the rebels, but this was just wishful thinking. Nobody who remembered the hideous fight with the rebs in this dark forest almost exactly a year before wanted to suffer through anything like it again. They spent an eerie night camped in the dark woods, weighed down by a sense of dread, occasionally stumbling onto the bones of soldiers who had been struck down there a year before.
Grant's intelligence told him that the Confederates were withdrawing, but he was too level-headed to complacently expect that things would be quite that easy. The reality was that Lee had put all three of his corps, the First Corps under Longstreet, the Second Corps under Ewell, and the Third Corps under A.P. Hill, in motion to hit the Yankees before they could emerge from the Wilderness, and had called in Stuart's cavalry from their review to assist. Sheridan's two divisions of troopers ended up chasing after rebels who weren't there.
Lee believed that he was facing only about 75,000 Yankees, which he regarded as good odds, and he felt confident. Longstreet's First Corps was the farthest away, having been earlier situated around Gordonsville to block any wide flanking attack by Grant and his forces. Once Longstreet and his troops were in position the next day, Lee would hit the Federals with almost everything he had.
* Both sides resumed their movements in the morning of Thursday, 5 May. Reports from Union scouts began to filter back of columns of Confederate troops marching to confront the Federals. Meade believed that the rebels were in fact withdrawing and that the Confederate force was just a rear-guard. He ordered Warren and the four divisions of V Corps to advance up to the Orange Turnpike and deal with them. If Warren moved fast, he might back the entire "rearguard" whole.
While Meade was passing orders on to Warren at the Wilderness Tavern, Grant came up and joined them. Grant was not much of a theoretician and didn't care much if the rebels were pulling out or not. He simply wanted to get his hands on them, telling Meade: "If any opportunity presents itself for pitching into a part of Lee's army, do so without giving time for disposition." Grant believed that Lee wanted to make a fight of it, and that the Army of the Potomac would give him a fight if he wanted one. Most of Warren's V Corps had already moved out southeast on the Germanna Plank Road, but now they backtracked to the Wilderness Tavern and moved out southwest on the Orange Turnpike.
Grant then received word from cavalry that another Confederate force was moving northeast up the Orange Plank Road. Hancock's II Corps was currently moving southwest on the Catharpin Road, essentially sidling by the unknown rebel force to the north. Grant sent orders to Hancock for him to backtrack as well, shuttling across the Brock Road to confront the Confederates on the Orange Plank Road.
Sedgwick was ordered to send one division to help Warren, a second division to help Hancock, and use the remaining division of VI Corps to hold down Germanna Ford until Burnside came up with IX Corps. Grant set up headquarters in a clearing and sat there in his dress uniform, chain-smoking cigars and whittling pieces of wood down to nothing while he issued orders and received reports.
* When V Corps reached the Orange Turnpike, Warren ordered a division under Brigadier General Charles Griffin, the tough regular who had blunted the momentum of the rebels at Chancellorsville by hosing them down with canister, to move west and ensure that the army's flank was protected. Warren told Griffin to move aggressively and not to wait for support, which Warren assured him would be sent along in the form of two divisions of V Corps, one under Brigadier General Samuel W. Crawford and the other under Brigadier General James S. Wadsworth, plus the division sent from Sedgwick's VI Corps, under Brigadier General Horatio G. Wright.
As they moved west, Griffin's skirmishers spotted large movements of rebel troops. Griffin formed up a line of battle as best he could in the undergrowth, and soon made contact with Ewell's Second Corps. Although Lee had made it clear to Ewell that a stand-up battle was to be avoided until Longstreet arrived with the First Corps, Ewell now had a battle on his hands, a big one, whether he liked it or not.
As had been demonstrated in the same terrain during the battle of Chancellorsville the year before, the Wilderness was a terrible place for a fight, with the tangle of trees and brush making it impossible to see very far in any direction. One soldier called it a "battle of invisibles with invisibles." The poor visibility was aggravated by clouds of black-powder smoke.
At first, the Federals threw the rebels back in confusion, but then Ewell called on a brigade of Georgians under hard-fighting Brigadier General John B. Gordon to throw themselves into the fight. Ewell called out to him: "General Gordon! The day belongs to you!" Gordon replied, loudly to encourage his troops: "These men will save it, sir!" And they did, halting Griffin's men in their tracks and throwing the Federals back. The other Yankee divisions were no luckier. Crawford and Wadsworth blundered into traps in the dense woods, Wadsworth's division taking a particularly nasty bloodying. Wright's division was lost in the woods for at least two hours and contributed little to the fight.
Griffin had been expecting help but none came, and he galloped back to talk to Meade, or rather to shout at him in a rage that generals who were supposed to be helping him were nowhere to be found. He then galloped back to his command just as fast as he had come. As Griffin galloped away, Grant, who had overheard the tirade, went up to Meade and asked: "Who is this General Gregg? You ought to put him under arrest." Meade's short temper seems to have been overshadowed by his coolness under fire, and he replied calmly: "His name's Griffin, not Gregg, and that's only his way of talking." As the two men spoke, Meade, in an oddly paternalistic gesture, leaned over and buttoned up Grant's overcoat.
The battle for the Orange Turnpike began to die down about 3:00 PM, with both sides forming up irregular lines in the tangled woods. Ewell set his men to fortifying their positions. Although there was shooting there for the rest of the day, and the Federals made a profitless assault on Ewell's lines just before sundown, the real fighting had moved south to the Orange Plank Road.
* While the fight was roaring on the Orange Turnpike, another battle was developing to the south as Ambrose Powell Hill pushed his Third Corps up the Orange Plank Road.
The location where the Orange Plank Road crossed the Brock Road was vital. If the rebels seized it, they would be able to split Warren's V Corps and Sedgwick's VI Corps from Hancock's II Corps. The division sent by Sedgwick to support Hancock, under Brigadier General George W. Getty, took up a position on the Orange Plank Road, just southwest of the intersection with the Brock Road, in the early afternoon.
Getty got to the crossroads just as the rebels were arriving in force. He had ridden ahead of his column and had to put on a demonstration, standing out in the middle of the road as if he were at the head of a larger force. This had the desired effect, with the rebels halting their advance for a moment to send out skirmishers to figure out what was going on. The pause was short-lived and the fighting began to flare up. Getty quickly realized he was outnumbered and wanted to fall back, but Grant told him to stay and fight, and if reinforcements could be found they would be sent up.
Fortunately, Hancock arrived with II Corps at about 2:00 PM. Although Grant had told Hancock basically just to go in and fight, on hearing that he was faced with A.P. Hill's Third Corps he realized that he was possibly taking on more than he could deal with. Hancock ordered his men to set up breastworks in the woods in the rear as a fall-back position.
This work went on until about 3:30 PM, when Hancock received an order from Grant insisting on an immediate attack. Having received intelligence that Longstreet was moving up with his First Corps, Hancock left two divisions, under Generals John Gibbon and Francis Barlow, to guard against a back-door attack, and went forward with the other two. As they moved up, Hancock then decided he needed a little more weight, and ordered Gibbon to send up two of the three brigades in his division.
In reality, Hill was very sick that day and wasn't at the head of his troops. He remained on the field of battle, while Lee directed the Third Corps personally. Lee had been given evidence of the confused nature of the fighting in the Wilderness when a platoon of Federals stumbled onto a conference between him, Hill, and Jeb Stuart. Fortunately for the Confederacy, the Yankees seemed at least as startled as the rebel generals and melted back into the woods.
Lee was trying to arrange an attack when Hancock's divisions fell on Third Corps, at about 4:00 PM. There was only a single Confederate division to oppose the much better part of three Federal divisions, but though the Yankees moved forward aggressively, the terrain was much better for defense than offense, and the Union troops suffered terribly. Hancock was undiscouraged, throwing his troops forward again and again. It was a mad, bewildering, savage fight, and under such conditions the side with more men was going to win; Hill's men found themselves being slowly cut up and shoved back. Lee threw in such reinforcements as he could find and held, if just barely.
Wadsworth's division of Warren's V Corps, which had spent the earlier part of the day profitlessly thrashing about in the woods and getting chewed up by Ewell's troops, had been ordered to flank the rebels, who were pinned down by Hancock's frontal assault. However, Wadsworth still couldn't get his bearings in the dense woods, and spent three more hours thrashing about. He finally got his troops into the fight near sundown. The only thing that Lee had to stop him was a regiment of Alabamans, who threw themselves at the Yankees as if they were an entire corps. Wadsworth swallowed the bluff and didn't press further.
Towards the evening, in another ugly reminder of the Chancellorsville battle, the dry leaves in the undergrowth caught fire, with the flames sweeping over wounded who could not move out of the way. They screamed into the night, and the wounded who were not burned alive moaned in pain and called for help, begged for water. There was little anyone could do for them.
The two sides stayed in place, waiting for the sun to come up so they could begin killing each other again. The men on the firing line were nervous in the dark, firing at anything that moved. General Henry Heth, whose division had taken the brunt of the Hancock's assault during the day, repeatedly asked Hill to allow the men to take up a new and more secure line, but Hill insisted they be allowed to get some sleep. Heth persisted; Hill finally ordered him to be quiet and go away.
The Federals had suffered heavily in the fight for the Orange Plank Road. Among the dead was Brigadier General Alexander Hays, a close friend of Grant's. When Grant was told of how Hays had been killed by a bullet in the head while leading his troops in the thick of fighting, Grant quietly replied: "It was just like him."
Behind the lines, troops columns shuffled around to prepare for the next round of fighting. Small groups of soldiers with an interest in obtaining or relaying information went from campfire to campfire to try to piece together a picture of what was going on, and do a little scavenging when the opportunity permitted. These "news walkers" were surprisingly effective at collecting and distributing information, and indeed they were generally regarded as more credible than headquarters announcements. As anybody who has ever been part of a large organization learns, the official word on matters is sometimes intended to conceal the facts, not make them clear.
* Grant ordered Hancock to push forward against Hill's men as soon as possible in the morning, while Warren and Sedgwick kept up the pressure on Ewell's line to keep him from sending reinforcements. Burnside, who had come up late the previous day with his IX Corps, was ordered to move into the gap between Ewell and Hill's positions and perform a flanking attack on Hill's troops.
With the dawn, Hancock went forward again on the Orange Plank Road. One witness reported the sound of the attack as like "the noise of a boy running with a stick pressed against a paling fence, faster and faster until it swelled into a continuous rattling roar." The rebels gradually began to fall back under pressure, and Hill's line began to crumble. The Confederates did not panic, simply moving back from their positions to find someplace better to fight, but under the circumstances they would be driven off the battlefield sooner or later.
Burnside got lost in the woods and contributed nothing to the battle, much to Hancock's fury, but for the moment it didn't seem to matter. Once more he was "Hancock the Superb", calling out to one of Meade's staff: "Tell him that we are driving them, sir! Tell General Meade we are driving them most beautifully!" Lee was desperately trying to rally his troops, but it seemed hopeless. Longstreet came up ahead of his First Corps, instantly assessed the situation, and galloped back to bring them up as fast as possible. Soon, the only solid rebel defense left was an artillery battalion that pumped double-shotted grape at the Yankees, but without infantry support the artillery would soon be overrun.
And then unknown Confederates began to come up to the firing line from the rear. "Who are you, my boys?!" Lee called to them. They yelled back: "Texas boys!" They were Texans of Hood's old brigade, now under Brigadier General John Gregg, among the best shock troops the Confederacy had, leading Longstreet's First Corps into battle. Lee shouted out: "HURRAH FOR TEXAS!" He took off his hat and waved it in sheer exuberance: "HURRAH FOR TEXAS!" Everyone was astonished; nobody had ever seen him demonstrate such emotion before. It wasn't an act, either, since as the Texans moved forward Lee spurred in horse, Traveler, as if to lead them into battle.
The Texans were appalled; any serious risk to Lee's life was unthinkable. They shouted: "LEE TO THE REAR! Go back, General Lee! Go back! We won't go unless you go back!" Lee hardly seemed to hear them, and the situation was only resolved when a staff colonel told him that Longstreet himself had come up. That snapped Lee out of his excitement, and he rode over to confer with Longstreet. The Texans would later boast that they had "put General Lee under arrest and sent him to the rear."
Longstreet sensed that Lee was aroused and wanted to take charge, and gave his commander a dry hint to get out of the way: "Your line will be recovered in an hour if you would permit me to handle the troops, but if my services are not needed I would like to ride to some place of safety, as it is not quite comfortable where we are now." Lee took the hint and rode back to join his staff.
Longstreet sent his troops forward; they hit hard as they always did, and blunted Hancock's attack just as the Federals seemed poised to break the Army of Northern Virginia in two. Half the Texans were shot down, but the rest kept pushing. Hill's men rallied and the Federal advance stopped at about 10:00 AM.
The fighting was hell on earth. The Yankees captured one of Gregg's Texans, and when they asked him what he thought of the battle, he shot back: "Battle be damned! This ain't no damned battle, it's a worse riot than Chickamauga! At Chickamauga there was at least a rear, but here there ain't neither front nor rear! It's all a damned mess! And our two armies ain't nothin' but howlin' mobs!"
The Federals began to fall back under pressure, though the troops refused to panic. However, Wadsworth's division, on the northeast flank of Hancock's line, came under heavy attack, scattering one of Wadsworth's three brigades. Wadsworth was an old man by army standards, white-haired and close to sixty, a wealthy patriot who was serving without pay, entirely beloved by his men and a great fighter. He was tired and ill that day, but still aggressive. He tried to rally his men, only to be hit in the back of the head with a Minie ball. That sent his men reeling back, some of them all the way to Grant's headquarters.
The setback made some of Grant's staff officers nervous, and when Dick Ewell got some guns in a position where they could shell Grant's headquarters from long range, one of Grant's staff suggested that it might be good to withdraw headquarters from their current position. Grant replied: "It strikes me it would be better to order some artillery and defend the present position." This was done, though the range was so great that neither side was likely to do much damage except through sheer dumb luck.
To deal with the scattering of Wadsworth's division, Hancock had managed to switch troops from one flank to shore up the other. Wadsworth had been left on the field by his men when they skedaddled, to be picked up by considerate rebels and taken to an aid station. He died two days later. Curious soldiers dropped by to take a look at this extraordinary Yankee, said to have more money than the entire Confederate treasury -- though that wasn't really saying all that much.
* Hancock tried to keep up the pressure, but the initiative had passed to the Confederates, and they intended to exploit it. Hill's men had extended the rebel line to link up with Ewell's, and now that they were in a position to effectively blunt an attack, they were ready to make one or their own.
Longstreet was always calm and calculating in battle. Although Barlow's division was still posted to the rear of Hancock's line to protect against a flank attack, it was deployed to block an attack up the Brock road by Pickett's division, which was actually not anywhere near the battle, having been detached for duty in the tidewater region. This mistaken intelligence had been compounded by various misleading reports, as well as by noisy but ineffectual skirmishes in the supposedly threatened area by Sheridan's cavalry, now returning from their wild goose chase after Stuart's troopers near Fredericksburg.
In any case, there was a wide gap between Barlow's division and Hancock's fighting line. Longstreet found this interesting. What made it even more interesting was that there was an unfinished and unmapped railroad line cut through the woods that pointed almost directly into the gap in the Union dispositions. The railroad offered excellent concealment for a force to sneak up on the Federals unseen.
Longstreet thought it over, and then assembled a division-sized force of four brigades, each borrowed from a different division, and put his chief of staff, Lieutenant Colonel G. Moxley Sorrel, in charge. The troops were to sneak up the railroad line and attack the open flank of Union II Corps. Once the Federal defense became unhinged the rest of Lee's army could then roll up Grant's troops in sequence, cut them off from their fords, and bag them whole. Longstreet characteristically emphasized to Sorrel to be methodical: "Hit hard when you start, but don't start until you have everything ready."
The fighting was relatively quiet while Sorrel's troops made their flank march. In a half hour, at about 11:00 AM, they were in position, and jumped off, achieving complete surprise. Longstreet then sent the troops to Hancock's front on the offensive as well. The fighting was even more violent than it had been the day before, with a ferocious battle in the undergrowth, the chaos compounded by black powder smoke and fires hopping through the woods. A VI Corps soldier described the sound as of "the most terrific musketry firing ever heard on the North American continent." Another Union soldier described it as "the wailing of a tempest or the roaring of the ocean in a storm." Even the most experienced soldiers could not remember a battle more characterized by sheer pandemonium.
The Confederates had the advantage and they pressed it. Years later, Hancock told Longstreet: "You rolled me up like a wet blanket." However, it wasn't quite a rout; they were experienced troops, and few simply threw their rifles away and ran for it. Most just faded back until they could find someplace where they could fight effectively again. One witness observed that the troops "did not seem demoralized in manner, nor did they present the appearance of soldiers moving under orders, but rather of a throng of armed men returning dissatisfied from a muster."
The breastworks that Hancock had ordered set up behind the line of advance the day before proved a useful rallying point. Union soldiers fading back from the fighting knew that simply skedaddling was unsafe, while the breastworks gave about as much a sense of security as was available under the circumstances, and so they gathered there to receive the Confederates.
The Confederate attack had gone as well or better than could be expected, but in a place like the Wilderness much could go wrong very quickly. Longstreet, riding around in the woods in the fighting to manage what he could see was shaping up as a great Southern victory, ran into spooked rebel troops who opened fire on him and his lieutenants. A courier and a captain died immediately, Brigadier General Micah Jenkins took a bullet in the head and died a few hours later, and Longstreet was wounded with a bullet that passed through his neck and lodged in his shoulder. Brigadier General Joseph Kershaw shouted out: "FRIENDS! THEY ARE FRIENDS!" The troops ran out in distress, greatly aggravated when they found out who they had hit. Longstreet was eased from the saddle and propped up against a tree. His mind was still on the battle, and he told Sorrel that Major General Charles W. Field, one of the First Corps division commanders, should take over command of the corps.
Longstreet was carried off on a stretcher. Of course the news had spread through the ranks immediately, and as he was being carried away he could hear the buzz among the troops: "He is dead. They are only telling us he is wounded." He raised his hat to prove otherwise, and the men cheered, improving his attitude about as well as could be expected under the circumstances. He would survive, though his right arm would be partly paralyzed for life and he would have to retrain himself to write with his left hand.
By this time, the Confederate attack was starting to run out of steam. Whether the accident that had dropped Longstreet had much to do with it is debatable, but certainly with his removal there was nobody on the field who could direct the battle anywhere near as well. The rebel attack had become disorganized in the tangle of trees and brush, Lee had to spend time trying to get things rolling again, and in the meantime Hancock was busy shoring up his position.
Longstreet had been considering an attack against an exposed flank of II Corps when he had been shot down, but Hancock was able to correct that defect, and the arrival, finally, of Burnside's IX Corps allowed him to shore up his other flank. The rebels resumed the attack at about 4:15 PM through smoke and fire, hit the Federal line, and were stopped cold. Hancock's corps had been hurt badly, but held fast. The rebels gave up after about an hour of futile charges.
Through all this fighting, Grant continued to smoke cigars, whittle, and direct operations as best he could. He was not really in control of the battle, nobody could be, but he managed to convey a willingness to fight that filtered down from the top. His calm helped reassure those around him, one reporting that he "gave his orders calmly and coherently, without any external sign of undue tension or agitation."
* While fight went on all day long on the Orange Plank Road, Warren and Sedgwick kept up the pressure on Ewell's Second Corps on the Orange Turnpike to keep him from sending reinforcements to the other battle. The Yankees took serious losses, but they were successful in keeping Ewell pinned down. Lee repeatedly urged Ewell to send any troops he could spare or to take the offensive himself, but Ewell kept replying that it wasn't possible.
In reality, General Gordon had scouted around the northern flank of Sedgwick's line and found it wide open. Gordon repeatedly asked Ewell for permission to attack, but both Ewell and Jubal Early, now a division commander in Second Corps, argued against it, since they believed that Burnside's IX Corps had been situated to the rear of the Federal assault to deal with such a move. In a sense, then, Burnside's bumbling in the woods with his IX Corps had a silver lining: if nobody knew where they were, Ewell and Early could assume the worst without contradiction, but once Burnside got his men into the fighting that silver lining would fade away.
At about 5:30 PM, Lee visited Ewell in person to plead for action, and when Ewell and Early stalled him again, Gordon dared to go over their heads and pleaded his case to Lee directly. Ewell and Early raised the Burnside bogeyman again. Lee knew perfectly well Burnside was occupied elsewhere, and without another word of discussion ordered an immediate assault. At 6:00 PM, Gordon swept down on the surprised VI Corps' 3rd Division, an outfit that had acquired a reputation in earlier years as "Milroy's weary boys", and sent them flying. The successful assault caused something of a panic among the Federals in the area. Sedgwick rode along the fighting lines, working to rally the bewildered troops.
It seemed to some like Chancellorsville all over again. When hysterical reports of Gordon's attack on Sedgwick's line filtered in to headquarters, neither Meade nor Grant were particularly intimidated. In response to two officers who cried that all was lost, Meade sensibly replied: "Nonsense! If they have broken our lines, they can do nothing more tonight."
When Grant was given a similar story by another officer, he actually lost his temper: "Oh, I am heartily sick and tired of what LEE is going to do! Some of you always seem to think he is suddenly going to turn a double somersault and land in our rear and on both our flanks at the same time! Go back to your command and try to think of what WE are going to do ourselves, instead of what LEE is going to do!" The outburst was undoubtedly the result of stress and pressure, grating on Grant's long-standing annoyance with the excessive awe in which the officers and men of the Army of the Potomac held Robert E. Lee. There were good reasons for the feeling stress, of course, given the chaos along Sedgwick's line, and there was no telling what might happen. Indeed, by sundown Grant knew perfectly well that he had never been confronted by a more terrifying threat, not even at Shiloh.
However, Meade was perfectly correct. Sedgwick managed to set up a solid defensive line, and by that time it was too dark to do any more effective fighting anyway. Gordon disengaged his troops. It had been a significant blow to the Federals, with the rebels taking about 600 prisoners and shooting down about the same number, while losing only about 50 of their own, but it had not come close to a real disaster.
The Army of the Potomac would survive. As his chief of staff, John Rawlins, later reported, Grant then went into the privacy of his tent, where he broke down and wept like a lost soul to relieve the stress. When he emerged later, he was as calm as ever. That night, a reporter leaving the battle area to file a story asked Grant if there was any word he could carry back. Grant thought for a moment and replied: "If you see the President, tell him from me that, whatever happens, there will be no turning back."
Later on, Grant was sitting in front of a fire with reporter Sylvanus Cadwallader, who had accompanied the general on many of his campaigns. Cadwallader was immersed in gloom and assumed that Grant was in the same state, until the general spoke up and began to chat about nothing much in particular, making idle conversation as if little of importance had happened. Grant did casually mention the "sharp work" Lee had given him, and then went into his tent to get a few hours of sleep. Cadwallader later wrote: "It was the grandest mental sunburst of my life. I had suddenly emerged from the slough of despond, to the solid bedrock of unwavering faith." This was the same Grant he had known in victorious campaigns in the West, not broken, not even bent, by a terrible reversal.
* There was no real fighting on Saturday, 7 May. Both sides had pulled back from contact and set up all but impregnable defensive lines. Lee hoped Grant would be rash enough to try the rebel defenses, but Grant was no Burnside: it was hard enough to have it out with an enemy on the move in such vegetation, and downright suicidal to attack one that was not only well dug in, but almost invisible.
Both sides were exhausted. Union patrols found the rebels "fidgety and quick to shoot", but other than the occasional potshot or squabble, both blue and gray soldiers were taking their rest.
The Battle of the Wilderness was over. The Federals had lost about 17,000 men, with about 2,200 killed outright, worse casualties than Hooker had suffered at Chancellorsville. Lee had lost about 7,800 men, much less than the 13,000 he had lost at Chancellorsville, though since the Confederate force was only about half the size of Grant's army, the rebel losses were proportionately about as great. In every real sense, though, this was a worse beating for the Federals than Chancellorsville, embarrassing as well as painful because Grant had been caught napping on two flanks, while Hooker had only been hit on one.
Grant was not Hooker. That evening, Grant began to pull his men out. Most thought they were withdrawing, going back home with their tail between their legs, "another skedaddle" as they put it. They were wrong.
The men of Warren's V Corps went on the march on the Brock Road at 8:30 PM to find themselves headed southeast, shielded behind the breastworks set up by Hancock's II Corps, who were to follow once the roads were clear. Sedgwick's VI Corps moved out at the same time, marching east to Chancellorsville and shielded by Burnside's IX Corps, and then to the surprise of the VI Corps soldiers turned southeast as well. Burnside's IX Corps was to follow, but remain in the rear to protect the supply train. Sheridan's cavalry was to probe ahead of the movement to protect it and determine how the Confederates were responding.
Grant wasn't beaten, not by a long shot. Taking casualties that would have sent most of his predecessors packing, he actually wrote Secretary Stanton later that the Wilderness fight had been "decidedly in our favor", though few others would have agreed. Grant was just moving his army to another location for another fight.
As he passed the columns of Warren's V Corps, the men began to cheer, but they were silenced to keep the move secret. The columns of men still remained buzzing with excitement. The men were weary, but many of them had undergone the same sort of resolution of faith that had enlightened Sylvanus Cadwallader the night before. Many would later say it was the most uplifting moment of the entire war, and one wrote later: "That night we were happy."
* The objective of the Union move was a small crossroads village named Spotsylvania Court House, only about 12 miles (19 kilometers) away. If Grant could make it there before Lee, the Federals would be between Lee and Richmond, and could force the Confederates to fight an offensive battle in open country against a larger force that was protected by defenses.
Many of Lee's officers had also believed Grant would retreat. That Saturday morning John Gordon had expressed this opinion to Robert E. Lee. Lee replied: "Grant is not going to retreat. He will move his army to Spotsylvania." Gordon was startled, and asked Lee if there was any evidence this was going to happen. Lee replied: "Not at all, not at all. But that is the next point at which the armies will meet. Spotsylvania is now General Grant's best strategic move."
Lee made a point of figuring out how his adversaries thought, and even reading newspaper headlines would have been enough to tell him that Grant just didn't give up easily. Lee's scouts also told him that the Federals had pulled up some of their pontoon bridges across the Rapidan, an action that did not suggest a withdrawal. Very well: if the Yankees were going to seek battle again, the most sensible place to do so would be at Spotsylvania.
That Saturday, Lee began to arrange his countermove. He ordered his chief of artillery, Brigadier General William N. Pendleton, to cut a road through the woods that would shorten the Confederate march once Lee was entirely certain that Grant was moving towards Spotsylvania.
Lee then appointed Major General Richard Anderson, a division commander in Hill's Third Corps, to take over the First Corps in the absence of the wounded Longstreet. Anderson was no Longstreet, being genial and competent but lacking aggressiveness. However, Anderson had served under Longstreet and knew most of the senior officers in the First Corps. Lee judged that Anderson would be the best quick fix over the short run, and there was really no one else available. First Corps, with two divisions, was to lead the march if and when it began.
In addition, A.P. Hill was gradually becoming very sick, as it turned out chronically sick, and though he refused to give up his command, Lee took Jubal Early from Ewell's Second Corps to take Hill's place should the need arise. Early was a mixed quantity as well, but he could fight. Besides, command of Early's Second Corps division then went to John Gordon, and Lee certainly felt Gordon's conduct that day earned him an effective field promotion.
Lee was hypersensitive to the movements of the Yankees, and when he was told at about 4:00 PM that Saturday afternoon that the Federals were pulling out heavy guns towards the southeast, he interpreted that as proof of his belief that Grant was moving towards Spotsylvania. He sent orders to Anderson to move the First Corps out after dark over the road Pendleton and his men had cut through the forest, and march to Spotsylvania and block Grant. Hill's Second Corps and Early's Third Corps would follow, in that order. The battle was moving on.
