On 5 May 1864 the Union Army of the Potomac, with Ulysses S. Grant directing it, ran into Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia in the Wilderness, a tangle of scrub forest in central Virginia. For two days the armies fought at close range in woods so thick that soldiers could barely see each other, and fires set by the gunfire burned the wounded where they lay. Grant lost far more men than Lee, but instead of retreating he marched south, and the long campaign that ended at Richmond began.
A new commander in the east
In March 1864 Abraham Lincoln made Grant general-in-chief of all the Union armies. Grant chose to travel with the Army of the Potomac, which George G. Meade still commanded, leaving Meade to handle tactics while he directed the strategy. The aim of the spring campaign was to drive toward the Confederate capital at Richmond and to fight Lee's army wherever it could be found. The National Park Service quotes Grant's order to Meade: Lee's army would be his objective, and where Lee went, he would go too.1 › George Meade
The strength of the two armies is given differently. The National Park Service counts about 120,000 Union troops against about 62,000 Confederates, while the American Battlefield Trust puts the forces engaged at 101,895 and 61,025. Either way Lee was badly outnumbered and short of guns.2
Into the Wilderness
At dawn on 4 May the Union army began crossing the Rapidan River at Germanna Ford and other crossings, and marched into the Wilderness. This was ground Lee wanted. In the thick woods Grant could not use his artillery well, and the trees would hide how small the Confederate army was. Grant hoped to push through quickly into open country, but Lee ordered his corps east to strike him in the forest.3
On 5 May the two armies collided on two roads. On the Orange Turnpike, around noon, Gouverneur K. Warren's Union corps found Richard S. Ewell's Confederate corps dug in at the west edge of a clearing called Saunders Field. Warren's men attacked across the open ground and were cut down, and the fight spread into the woods on both sides. One soldier, quoted by the National Park Service, called it bushwhacking on a grand scale. Three miles to the south, on the Orange Plank Road, A. P. Hill's Confederate corps pushed toward the Brock Road crossroads, which would have cut off Winfield S. Hancock's Union corps from the rest of the army. A Union division under George W. Getty reached the crossroads first, and with Hancock's corps it fought Hill until dark.4
The second day and the fires
At 5:00 a.m. on 6 May Hancock attacked again and drove Hill's tired divisions back along the Plank Road until the Confederate line seemed close to breaking. James Longstreet's corps, which had fallen hours behind schedule, arrived just in time, led by John Gregg's Texas Brigade, and stopped the Union advance. Longstreet then sent brigades along an unfinished railroad cut into the Union flank and rolled it up. As he rode forward to press the attack, he was shot by his own men, close to where Stonewall Jackson had been shot by Confederate troops a year earlier. The National Park Service puts the spot about five miles from Jackson's, and Britannica says four. Longstreet survived, but the attack lost its momentum. Lee's last assault on the Brock Road line was beaten off.5
Near sunset John B. Gordon's Confederate brigade struck the exposed Union right flank north of the Turnpike, and the National Park Service says it captured two Union generals before darkness ended the attack. Fires started by the fighting spread through the dry woods, and Britannica says a brush fire on the night of 6 May killed many of the wounded still lying between the lines.6
Grant turns south
Neither side attacked on 7 May. The losses are counted differently. The National Park Service gives about 18,000 Union casualties against about 8,000 Confederate, while the American Battlefield Trust gives nearly 18,000 Union losses, almost twice Lee's, and about 29,800 for both armies together. The National Park Service calls the battle a tactical Confederate victory; the American Battlefield Trust and Britannica call it inconclusive. Britannica quotes Lincoln: “I cannot bear it. This suffering, this loss of life is dreadful.”7
Earlier Union commanders had retreated after such a battle. Late on 7 May Grant rode to a road junction where a left turn led back to the river crossings and a right turn led south toward Spotsylvania Court House. He turned south, and his soldiers cheered. The armies met again at Spotsylvania. The whole battle is told in our article on the Battle of the Wilderness, and the rivalry of the two generals in Grant vs Lee.8
Also on this day
- 1945: Battle of Castle Itter. In the final days of the war in Europe, American tank crews, Wehrmacht soldiers and freed French prisoners together held Castle Itter in the Tyrol against Waffen-SS troops.
