Court House, a hamlet located some
10 miles (16km) to the southeast of the
Wilderness battlefield. It stood at
a crossroads that controlled the routes
to Richmond.
Grant was determined to position his
forces between Lee and the Confederate
capital. He knew this was the only way
he could compel the enemy to fight in
the open, and he did not want to see
Lee’s outnumbered veterans get behind
breastworks. The task of prying them
out would lead to further grueling
and costly fighting.THE WILDERNESS CAMPAIGNThird Corps bore down on them.
Thousands of men on both sides were
soon clawing their way through briars
and stumbling across ravines, trying to
form orderly battle lines. Formations and
directions of advance rapidly went astray
in the tangled maze of undergrowth.
The confused fighting continued
all day. At Grant’s headquarters, the
general ceaselessly whittled sticks and
chain-smoked
cigars as he waited
for reports. In the
woods, the volume
of musketry was
rapidly becoming
a deafening
cacophony as
yelling men, groping blindly, shot
point-blank at muzzle flashes in the
gloom—”firing by earsight.” Storms
of bullets tore through the woods and
cut men down in droves. Brush fires
became runaway infernos, burning to
death many of the helpless wounded,
whose hideous screams could be heard
above the din. Smoke had turned the
sun a lurid bloodred long before
twilight finally descended and the battle
subsided. Weary survivors literally fell
to sleep, rifles in hand.
Early on May 6, the fighting resumed
as Grant went on the attack. The Union
right wing kept up the pressure, then
W. S. Hancock’s Second Corps, at the
Brock Road, smashed through the
underbrush into A. P. Hill’s ragged lines,
which broke and fled.
Lee himself rode into the bedlam,
trying desperately to rally his troops
before all was lost. With only
his staff and a single artillery battery
standing between his army and disaster,
Lee saw that Longstreet’s divisions were
finally arriving
down the Plank
Road. “Who are
you, my boys?”
Lee cried above
the uproar. “Texas
boys,” came the
reply. “Texans
always move them!” the general
shouted, waving his hat, and with a
strange light in his eyes began to lead
them into battle. Grimy hands tugged at
his bridle, as men yelled, “Go back,
General Lee! Lee to the rear!”Brigadier General John Gregg’s
800 Texans surged forward and stopped
the onslaught, although at a fearful
price. Fewer than 250 of the men who
charged emerged unscathed.Confederate riposte
By mid-morning, some of Longstreet’s
men had discovered an unfinished
railroad cut to the south and, concealed
from view, turned Hancock’s flank,
rolling it up brigade by brigade until
the Union troops were in mass retreat.
In the din and confusion, some
Confederates saw horses galloping
toward them through the smoke andleveled a volley. Among the men and
animals left sprawled on the ground
were South Carolina’s General Micah
Jenkins, shot in the head, and Lee’s
“Old War Horse,” Longstreet himself,
severely wounded in the neck.
With that the Southern attack
faltered; when it was renewed in late
afternoon it was decisively repulsed by
Federal troops deployed behind
breastworks along Brock Road. A roar
of musketry to the north was that of
John B. Gordon’s Georgians trying to
outflank the Union right, but the
shooting slackened with darkness, with
neither side able to break through. A
second horrid night descended on the
burning, bullet-shredded Wilderness.
Grant called off his attacks; Lee dug in.
By dawn on May 7, with both armies
well entrenched and the fighting ended
for the moment, Grant had made the
decision not to retreat,
as his predecessors had
too often done when
faced with a setback.
Rather, he planned to
slide left and south,
ordering the Army of
the Potomac’s high
command to strike that
evening for SpotsylvaniaWilderness and Spotsylvania Court House
The two armies first clashed on May 5 in the thickly
wooded Wilderness area. Then, on the night of
May 7, Grant ordered his army to march southeast to
Spotsylvania Court House. The Confederates, however,
managed to get there before him. They dug in and
repelled a series of desperate Union attacks.Escaping the flames
As flames swept the thickets, many wounded men,
left behind by the ebb and flow of battle, were
carried or crawled to safety. But many of those
who were unable to move were burned to death.
“The incessant roar of the rifles
... men cheering, groaning,
yelling, swearing, and praying!”
PRIVATE THEODORE GERRISH, 20 MAINE INFANTRY, IN ARMY LIFE, 1882The approximate number
of men in the two armies
who were killed in action in the Battle of
the Wilderness. Hundreds of others,
recorded as “missing,” probably died in
the brush fires ignited by the fighting.3,750
Skeletal remains
Alongside fragments of clothing,
cartridge boxes, perforated
canteens, rotting shoes, ruined
breastworks, and shattered trees,
the bones of hastily buried men
littered the Wilderness for years.Todd’s
TavernHarris
FarmSpotsylvania
Court HouseSpindle
FarmMule Shoe
SalientBloody
AngleRappa
hannoc
k^ RiverPo RiverNy^ Rive
r^The(^) Wild
erness
Laurel
Hill
MEADE
WARREN
WARREN
SEDGWICK
HANCOCK
HANCOCK
BURNSIDE
BURNSIDE
LONGSTREET
ANDERSON
EWELL
EWELL
GORDON
A.P.HILL
GRANT
LEE
LEE
Chancellorsville
Spotsylvania
Fredericksburg
Oran
ge (^) Turn
pike
Brock Road
Shady Grove (^) Church Road
Unfinished railroad
Orange
Plank Road
KEY
Union positions May 6
Confederate positions May 6
Union positions May 12
Confederate positions May 12
④ May 7–8:
Union night
march to
Spotsylvania
③ May 6: Hancock’s
corps drives back Hill’s
men, but progress is
halted by arrival of
Longstreet’s troops
① May 5: First clash between
the armies. Fires spread
through the undergrowth as
fierce fighting continues all day
⑤ May 7–8:
Cavalry battle at
Todd’s Tavern
⑥ May 8:
Anderson’s corps
wins the race to
Spotsylvania
② May 5:
A. P. Hill’s corps
attacks Union
troops along
Brock Road
⑧ May 18: Fresh Union
assault driven back by
Confederate artillery
N
0 km
0 miles 1 2
21
⑦ May 12: Union
breakthrough
at the apex of
Mule Shoe Salient.
Confederates
fall back to new
defensive line