University of Virginia Library

9. IX.
THE WILDERNESS—MAY, 1864.

From 1861 to 1864, the war was war. Thenceforth
it was slaughter.

The Federal Captains, McDowell, McClellan, Pope,
Burnside, Hooker and Meade had fought pitched battles—sword's
point against sword's point. Gen. Grant
was now going to bind his left arm to his adversary's
and stab with the bowie-knife until one or the other
was dead.

His theory of war had in it a grand simplicity. Lee
could only he crushed by hard blows. To attain that
end he had only to “hammer continuously.” When
Gen. Meade spoke of manoeuvring for position, Gen.
Grant replied:

“Oh! I never manoeuvre!”

There was the whole coming campaign in a nutshell.

The Army of Northern Virginia was, thus, in Gen.
Grant's estimation, a body of men whom he could not
intimidate—Gen. Lee a commander whom he could
not out-general. Well, he would shatter that army by
simple brute force—by the sheer weight of his gigantic
sledge-hammer, “hammering continuously.” He

would overcome Lee, not by “manoeuvring,” but by
simple, plain, hard fighting.

In the first week of May, 1864, the Titan, with his
hammer, crossed the Rapidan at the fords in Spottsylvania,
and began to batter at his great opponent.

It remained to be seen which would first be shattered—the
sledge-hammer or the anvil. That was of
tempered steel, and would endure much. Would it
endure this?

Such was the problem, which, from the 5th of May,
1864, to the 9th of April, 1865, the world had presented
for its solution. As the days wore on, the radical
change in the whole theory of the war became more
and more apparent. There were to be no more battles
of Manassas, Sharpsburg, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville,
Gettysburg—combats wherein one side or the
other had the advantage, and the struggle ended for
the time. One great wrestle was no longer to sum up
a campaign, and give the soldiers rest until the next.
Gen. Grant had adopted a new plan—to hammer and
hammer—to “fight it out on this line if it took all the
summer”—to grapple and drag his great adversary,
and hurl him into the “last ditch,” or be hurled into it
himself.

When war is thus conducted, it has, as we have said,
a grand simplicity. It is true, it is not instructive to
the military student, but it possesses the interest attached
to bloody fighting. You can't help being vividly
impressed by the spectacle of two bull-dogs clinging
to each other with teeth and nails—two game
cocks cutting each other's eyes out with their gaffs—
a hundred thousand men, who, breast to breast, tear

each other to pieces. That terrible and ghastly campaign,
dragging its bloody steps from the Wilderness
to Appomattox, may not have been war exactly, as the
world understands war, but it had a frightful attraction
in it—its glare was baleful, but brilliant.

And Gen. Grant was not wrong. It is the fashion
to deny him military genius. He had, at least, a just
conception of the work before him. The rapier had
been tried for three long years, and Lee, that great
swordsman, had parried every lunge. What was his
Federal adversary of the huge bulk and muscle to do
now, in these last days? One course alone was left
him—to take the sledge-hammer in both hands, and,
leaving tricks of fence aside, advance straightforward,
and smash the rapier in pieces, blow by blow, shattering
the arm that wielded it, to the shoulder blade.

The Army of Northern Virginia could not be out-generaled
and out-fought; Grant determined that it
should be worn out and destroyed, man by man. He
could not at one great blow stab it to death; he resolved
to drain its heart's blood, drop by drop. All his
predecessors had failed. On the 9th of April, 1865,
he had succeeded;—and was it not that good soldier,
Albert Sydney Johnston, who said, “Success is the test
of merit?”

Let us now follow Gen. Grant. At every step which
he took, a roar shook the ground.

In tracing the battles which sprung up wherever his
heel was placed, we shall have few manoeuvres to describe.
This or that brigade or division rarely accomplished
this or that heroic feat. Brigades, divisions,
even corps, are lost in the smoke. Through the lurid

cloud you saw only huge masses hurled against each
other—a storm thundered—when night came, five or
ten thousand men were dead, that was all.

The question was not whether this or that brigade
had fought well. What is the result? was asked. Men
had ceased to be human beings; they were units; the
representatives of force, merely. For your death to
be spoken of you must be at least the commander of a
corps.

Half a mile gained, and a portion of the breastworks
carried—ten thousand “casualties.” There was the
whole.

But, in these observations upon Gen. Grant's war-theory,
as applied to Lee, we have somewhat anticipated
the order of things. That programme was thrust
on him. His plan, he says in his report, was “to hammer
continuously against the armed force of the
enemy and his resources, until, by mere attrition, if
by nothing else, there should be nothing left of him,
but an equal submission with the loyal section of our
common country to the Constitution and laws.” (“An
equal submission.” Ah! General, that phrase seems a
mockery to-day—October, 1867—does it not?) But
that was after his first encounters with Lee. It was
then that the “attrition” programme was found necessary.
When Gen. Grant advanced to the Wilderness,
his object was undoubtedly, and properly, to make as
much of the road to Hanover Junction and Richmond
as he possibly could, without a fight. This is scarcely
to be questioned; at least, it was the belief of the
highest officers of the Confederate army, and the attacks
which he delivered in the jungle did not prove

the contrary. As the reader will soon see, Gen. Grant
thought the force there was only Lee's rear guard as he
retreated.

Before following the movements of the combatants,
let us look for a moment at their relative numbers.
Therein is the true glory of the South—a heritage of
honour, of which nothing can deprive her.

Grant's “available force present for duty, May 1,
1864,” was, by the official statement of the Federal
War Secretary, one hundred and forty-one thousand
one hundred and sixty-six men. Throughout the
month of May reinforcements, “to repair the losses of
the Army of the Potomac,” constantly arrived, making
the number of his troops operating “on this line”
nearly, or quite, two hundred thousand men.

Lee had “present for duty” at the same time, as the
rolls of his army will show, fifty-two thousand six
hundred and twenty-six.[1] Pickett and Breckenridge
brought him afterwards ten thousand men at most.
With about sixty-two thousand troops of all arms, Lee
fought from the Rapidan to Petersburg, repulsing the
assaults of nearly, or quite, two hundred thousand.

What was the explanation of Lee's paucity of

troops? Why did that army, which had numbered
sixty-seven thousand bayonets at Gettysburg, now
number only about forty thousand? To answer these
questions a volume would be necessary—wounds
closing now would bleed afresh. Let it pass. The
fact alone need be stated—that the force defending
Virginia was reduced to that. But they were the “Old
Guard” of the army—men who had made up their
minds to fight to the end—whose courage and constancy,
not hunger, hardships, nakedness, wounds nor
death could affect—who had resolved to live or die
with Lee.

And they adhered to that resolve with unshaken
constancy, to the end. They fought over every step of
ground from the Rapidan to Appomattox with a nerve
and dash so stubborn that their very enemies wondered;
and when, cut down to less than eight thousand
bayonets, they were driven to surrender, there
were tears on the gaunt faces, black with powder,
which had never been thus melted before.

Ten words from Lee had brought those tears. The
roar of Grant's cannon had only made them laugh and
cheer.

Let us follow now the Federal Thor as he advanced
to the arduous work before him.

On the morning of May 5th, Gen. Grant was across
Rapidan with one hundred thousand men—the rest
were hastening up.

When his adversary began thus his great advance,
Lee had held the line of the Rapidan above as far as
Liberty Mills. Hill was on his left, which was thrown

back toward Orange Court House—Ewell on his right
—Longstreet was in reserve, near Gordonsville.

No sooner, however, had Grant begun to move than
Lee broke up his camps, put his army in motion, and
—evidently without any design of retreating upon
Richmond—went down to the Wilderness to fight.

Some critics called Lee cautious; there was a terrible
audacity in his caution. With his fifty thousand,
he was going to attack Grant's one hundred and forty
thousand—to order “Halt!” to that commander in
full career.

On the morning of the 5th, he was in the Wilderness,
had thrown down the gauntlet, and the great
struggle began.

We have already described that singular and sombre
country—a land of thicket, undergrowth, jungle, ooze,
where men could not see each other twenty yards off,
and assaults had to be made by the compass. The fights
there were not as easy even as night attacks in open
country, for at night you can travel by the stars. Death
came unseen; regiments stumbled on each other, and
sent swift destruction into each other's ranks, guided by
the crackling of the bushes. It was not war—military
manœuvring; science had as little to do with it as
sight. Two wild animals were hunting each other.
When they heard each other's steps, they sprung and
grappled. The conqueror advanced, or went elsewhere.
The dead was lost from all eyes in the
shadowy depths.

This may seem a fancy sketch. It is the truth, and
that truth is shown by the curious spectacle here presented
of officers, advancing to the charge in that jungle,

compass in hand, attacking not by sight, but by
the bearing of the needle.

In this mournful and desolate thicket did the great
campaign of 1864 begin. Here in blind wrestle, as at
midnight, did two hundred thousand men, in blue and
gray, clutch each other—bloodiest and weirdest of
encounters. War had had nothing like it. The
genius of destruction, tired, apparently, of the old
commonplace killing, had invented “The Unseen
Death.”

Let us now follow the great drama, scene by scene,
accompany its advance, step by step, to the fall of the
curtain.

Lee marching down from Orange, found himself, on
the morning of the 5th of May, in face of the enemy.
He had only two of his corps with him—those of Hill
and Ewell. Longstreet had not arrived from Gordonsville.

Ewell, on the left and in advance, occupied the Old
Turnpike, across which, as his troops arrived, he
formed line of battle. Hill came by the Plank Road,
on the right of Ewell, and formed line there. These
two great highways, running from the west toward
Chancellorsville, struck straight into Grant's flank, as
he marched by way of the Brock Road toward the
South.

The Federal Generals had not believed that Lee
would have the boldness to advance and attack. They
were sure that he would fall back to the line of the
Central Railroad to protect Richmond. When the
gray-coats now appeared in their front, the force was
supposed to be merely a decoy to detain the Federal

army while Lee pressed forward toward Hanover
Junction.

Gen. Meade, at least, thought so. On this morning
he was with Grant at Wilderness Tavern, and said:

“They have left a division to fool us here, while
they concentrate and prepare a position toward the
South Anna, and what I want is to prevent those fellows
from getting back to Mine Run.”

Those fellows were Lee, Hill, and Ewell. They
were not intent on getting back to Mine Run, or fooling
anybody. On the contrary, they were bent on
fighting—a fact which soon became apparent.

At noon, the combat—a species of “feeler” preceding
the bloody battle of the next day—began.

The head of Ewell's column had just formed line of
battle, across the Old Turnpike, when it was furiously
assailed by Warren's corps of the Federal army. Then
came the tug. Warren's assault was so rapid and determined
that Ewell's front brigades were driven in on
his main body. There the enemy found, however, the
real wall. Ewell threw his remaining force into line
of battle; advanced straight upon Warren; swept
him back; seized two pieces of artillery, and about a
thousand prisoners; and the whole Federal force was
crushed back into the thickets of the Wilderness from
which they had emerged.[2]

Such was the result of the first assault—made, apparently,

upon the theory that the Confederate force
was small, and could easily be destroyed. It was now
found to be formidable, and to occupy both the Turnpike
and Plank Road.

An attack followed upon the force holding the latter.
The thunder on the left had scarcely died away
when a heavy assault was made on A. P. Hill, extending
across from Ewell's right. There an obstinate
attempt was again made by Gen. Grant to break
through and find out what was behind.

The attack was stubborn, the lines closing in, in a
rough wrestle; but no headway was made, though
Gen. Hancock put his best troops into the fight. “The
assaults,” says Gen. Lee, “were repeated and desperate,
but every one was repulsed.” When night fell,
the attack had completely failed in driving Hill from
his ground, and the Federal forces fell back to their
original position in the thickets, along the Brock
Road, from which they had advanced.

Thus ended the first round. Result—nothing.
Gen. Grant had, however, discovered that nearly the
whole Confederate army was in front of him, bent on
a fight; that if he did not attack, they would; and he
resolved to bring on the battle at once.

Lee had come to the same resolution. The affair
seemed arranged in council of war between the two
commanders. Grant ordered an attack at five in the
morning—Lee ordered an attack at five in the morning.
And at five, accordingly, on the morning of the
6th of May, the musketry began to rattle.

Then the opposing lines rushed together; the thickets

thundered with the long crash of small arms, for
that was no place for artillery.

The battle of the Wilderness had begun in earnest.

It was a furious grapple all along the lines of the
two armies, rather than a battle in the ordinary meaning
of the term. There was no room for strategy—it
was useless to manoeuvre for position, when one spot
of ground was as good as another. Gen. Grant, at
least, seemed to have no plan beyond attacking his adversary
in front, and breaking him to pieces.

It speedily became apparent, however, that Gen. Lee
had a plan, and a thoroughly matured one. That plan
was to envelope the left flank of the Federal army, as
it stretched out along the Brock Road running southward—attain
the rear of their left wing,—and drive
back the whole army on the Rapidan.

At five, as we have said, the opponents closed in,
fighting breast to breast almost, in the thicket. Each
had thrown up slight temporary breastworks of saplings
and dirt—beyond this they were unprotected.
The question now was which would succeed in driving
his adversary from these defences, almost within a few
yards of each other, and from behind which crackled
the musketry.

Never was sight more curious than that. On the
low line of these works, dimly seen in the thicket,
rested the muzzles, spouting flame; from the depths
rose cheers; charges were made and repulsed, the lines
scarcely seeing each other; men fell, and writhed, and
died, unseen;—their bodies lost in the thicket, their
death groans drowned in the steady, continuous, never-ceasing
crash.

In front of Hill, holding the Confederate right,
Grant had massed his crack troops, determined, apparently,
to break through, or die trying.

The greatest merit of this officer was undoubtedly
his skill in massing for assault; and Hill here felt his
heavy hand. He was borne back by the simple weight
of the mass thrown against him, and at seven o'clock
had been driven more than a mile on the army trains,
in front of which Stuart's cavalry made an obstinate
stand. Grant was pressing on—Lee's whole right
seemed carried away, his left, under Ewell, cut off
from succor,—when at this moment Gen. Longstreet
appeared upon the scene.

That officer had marched from Gordonsville, followed
the Plank Road, pressed forward more rapidly
at the sound of the firing, and now, as Hill fell back,
fighting obstinately, aided by Stuart, Longstreet came
to their assistance.

The Federal commander paused to reform his disordered
line before striking a decisive blow. When,
about nine o'clock, he advanced to deliver that blow,
he struck up against Longstreet and recoiled.

Then Lee took the initiative. Grasping the fresh
forces of Longstreet—ten thousand veteran troops,
upon whom long experience told him he could rely—
he hurled them against Hancock's corps in his front;
swept away two divisions at the first blow; and advancing
steadily, drove back the whole left wing of the
Federal army in confusion, to the line of Brock Road.

For the moment, then, everything was carried away.
No exertions of the Federal officers could rally the

men. The troops broke, and a great victory seemed
about to crown the day.

Lee was pressing on; his hand reached out to clutch
the Brock Road, and by that means turn the Federal
left.

“I thought we had another Bull Run on you,” said
Longstreet to a Northern writer, long afterwards, “for
I had made my dispositions to seize the Brock Road.”

To understand the significance of that threat, look
at the map. The Brock Road held by Lee, Grant was
shut up in the Wilderness. There was no more chance
for him than there had been for Hooker. He was
flanked and huddled up in the thicket.

That moment was undoubtedly the turning point of
the whole campaign. But this sombre Wilderness
was hostile to the South. What shadowy Fate was it
that ever tracked the Confederates there?—that struck
down Jackson at the instant when he was about to extend
his left at Chancellorsville, and cut off Hooker—
that now struck down Longstreet when his right
reached out to cut off Grant?

Longstreet had formed his column for the great assault;
the blow was about to be delivered—when
riding with his staff in front of his own lines, he was
mistaken in the thicket for a Federal officer, and fired
on, at twenty paces, by his own men, as Jackson had
been.

That fatal fire arrested everything for the time.
Longstreet was struck by a bullet in the throat, which,
inflicting a dangerous wound there, buried itself in his
right shoulder, which was paralyzed for many months
afterwards. He was borne to the rear, along the advancing

lines of his men, as Jackson had been—returned
their enthusiastic salutes, and disappeared, pale
and bleeding.

So fell Longstreet in his great moment, when he
seemed to hold the victory in his elenched hand.

Before Gen. Lee could arrive, and take the place
of his Lieutenant, the golden moment had passed.
More than three hours had been lost. The Federal
left, seeing its danger, had called for reinforcements;
they had hurried to the threatened point; when Lee
attacked in person, about four, P. M., Hancock's line
was thoroughly reformed, strengthened, and impregnable.

It was no longer an enemy fleeing in confusion, but
a massive order of battle behind works which must be
carried by assault.

Above all, was the Brock Road looked to. That vital
point was now guarded by a force which made the
hopes of carrying the position desperate.

Lee, nevertheless, attacked, and then came the veritable
struggle, to which all that preceded had been
but the preface.

The spectacle was grand and terrible. The woods
had been set on fire; flames crackled, dense clouds of
smoke rose; from that witch's cauldron of fire and
suffocating smoke rose cheers, groans, shouts, and the
long crash of musketry, as the lines closed in. Where
the wounded were struck down they fell; where the
dying staggered, they breathed flame. It was a veritable
hell “in little.”

Lee led the Texans of Gregg in person, into this

pandemonium, and it was here that the troops, seeing
the old cavalier exposing himself recklessly, shouted:

“To the rear! To the rear!”

That shout brought back the old days of Napoleon
—the hour when he promised his men that if they
fought as he wished, he would not lead them and expose
himself.

It was long before that protest of “Lee to the rear!”
rising in a shout from the men, moved its object. At
moments like that, Lee was no longer the Commander-in-Chief,
but the sabreur.

The battle was now in full blast, and the Wilderness
was swept by a hurricane. The two armies were grappling
in the thicket; and the combined forces of Hill
and Longstreet drove everything in their front.

As the gray masses rushed through the blazing
thicket, the blue lines gave way—the Confederates
dashed headlong to the works—and, storming them at
the point of the bayonet, planted their standards there,
and uttered a wild cheer, which rose above the din and
the flames.

The enemy's works were thus won, but they were
worthless. What were they in that crazy country
where there was no “position,” and no “advantage of
ground”—where you could not see ten yards in your
front? The enemy, nevertheless, made a vigorous effort
to recover them, and the fighting continued until
night, when it terminated, leaving the two armies still
locked in that miserable thicket—neither driven.

On Lee's left, Ewell had had a hard tussle with Gen.
Sedgwick; and here it was that Gordon, that brave of
braves, made an attack, which, if made in greater

force, would have probably done for the right of the
Federal army what Longstreet endeavored to do
against its left—that is, envelope and crush in its
whole right wing.

It is useless to speak of Gordon to any old soldier of
the army. They know that brave soldier—that man
possessing the élan of Murat, with the coolness and acumen
of the first army leaders of history. He urged in
the morning a turning movement against the Federal
right, and it was not made. In the evening it was
seen to be the thought of a great soldier, and Gordon
was ordered to make it, and did make it. He advanced
upon Sedgwick, turned his flank, struck him with the
bayonet, drove the Federal troops in disorder from
their works, and was in the rear of Grant's army, ready
to “turn and rend it,” when he was ordered to return.

He had broken to pieces the Federal right; captured
two of their Generals; the ground was strewed
with muskets, knapsacks, and dead bodies—and on
the next morning it was found that the enemy had
abandoned the entire line of works on their right.

Such was Gordon's great blow. He did what he
could with his force.

Thus the battle had ended on the left as on the
right.

Neither side had gained anything.

But Gen. Grant had made up his mind to one
thing—that he would get out of that wretched
country as soon as he possibly could.

He had attacked his adversary with all the troops at
his command, and instead of driving Lee, Lee had
driven him. It was therefore necessary to advance

or retire—and Grant was not the man to retire
then.

He put his army in motion; hurried forward by the
Brock road toward Spottsylvania; pressed on as rapidly
as Stuart's cavalry would permit, and reached
Spottsylvania Court House, only to find Lee in his
front there.

In the gloomy depths of the Wilderness thickets lay
thousands of corpses in blue and gray—that was all.

The whipoorwill was crying from the tangled underwood.

The war-hounds had gone to tear each other elsewhere.