by Ron Chernow
The May 5 fighting, however feverish, was inconclusive. The next morning dawned bright but hazy, veiled by hanging smoke. Showing his inborn fighting spirit, Grant sent orders through Meade to pummel Lee’s army as early as possible, much as he had done the second day of Shiloh. “It was my plan then, as it was on all other occasions, to take the initiative whenever the enemy could be drawn from his intrenchments,” Grant wrote.24 Eager to fight, he planned to attack Lee at 4:30 a.m. until Meade pleaded that the men were exhausted and argued for 6 a.m. Grant grudgingly allowed an extra half hour of sleep and set the time at 5 a.m. Throughout the Overland Campaign, he would force Lee to react to him. Striking first, setting the pace, shaping the contours of battle—these were priorities dear to Grant’s heart. He also knew that Longstreet and his fourteen thousand men were furiously converging on the Wilderness and hoped to inflict maximum damage before their advent.
At 4 a.m., Grant rose and breakfasted on a cucumber soaked in vinegar, washed down with black coffee. Then he stuffed his pockets with cigars and retreated to a little knoll to superintend the battle. He paced as he awaited the opening guns. At 5 a.m., right on schedule, Hancock led two divisions up the Orange Plank Road and smashed the enemy so hard the Confederate line reeled backward. Chased for a mile into the woods, it dispersed in confusion.25 It seemed as if total victory lay within Hancock’s grasp. “We are driving them, sir!” Hancock exclaimed to Theodore Lyman. “Tell General Meade we are driving them most beautifully.”26
His gloating was premature. Finding himself in an exposed forward position, Lee saw hundreds of soldiers from A. P. Hill’s corps streaming back toward him, and he endeavored on horseback to arrest their flight. He would have failed had it not been for the timely arrival of Longstreet’s troops, who surged forward, quick time, in a double column. Overcome with emotion, Lee asked which brigade this was. “The Texas brigade, sir,” someone responded. “Hurrah for Texas,” Lee called, waving his hat with delirious joy.27 Still gripped by powerful emotion, he scurried to spearhead the Texas brigade, leading the counterattack himself. The soldiers, observing this brave folly, rushed to curb it. “Lee to the rear! Lee to the rear!” they hollered and finally prevailed upon him to hang back, one soldier actually taking his bridle and escorting him rearward.28 The extraordinary moment disclosed Lee’s battlefield zest and mystic bond with his men.
Backed by Longstreet, Lee cobbled together a revived force. Favored with intimate knowledge of the terrain, one Confederate general identified an old roadbed built for a disused railroad. Longstreet’s men crept furtively along it then exploded from the closed woods in a stinging assault against Grant’s men. In two hours, they wiped out earlier Union gains. The Confederate advance halted when Longstreet was struck by friendly fire in the neck and shoulder, an injury that would paralyze his right arm and sideline him for five months. Bleeding profusely, he was borne in a stretcher to a waiting ambulance as soldiers wept openly. When he heard them bemoaning his death, Longstreet lifted his hat with his good arm to reassure them he was still alive. Lee seemed stunned. “I shall not soon forget the sadness in his face,” wrote a Confederate captain, “and the almost despairing movement of his hands, when he was told that Longstreet had fallen.”29 Grant knew Longstreet’s worth to Lee, reflecting that it “compensated in a great measure for the mishap, or misapprehensions, which had fallen to our lot during the day.”30 Losing his best deputy forced Lee to assume his command and gave the Union side critical time to retreat, regroup, and blunt the Confederate countermeasure.
In the convoluted web of the Wilderness, Grant had to form a picture of the battle in his mind, for there was no hilltop ledge from which to survey his men. Only two or three times in two days of combat did Grant ride out on Cincinnati and witness fighting firsthand. Seated on a tree stump, in a hilly clearing, he puffed through twenty cigars, smoked a briarwood pipe, wrote orders, examined maps, and chatted with Meade. He idly whittled so many branches with a penknife that he wore holes in his thread gloves. While some observers claimed his hands trembled, most were struck by his unnatural calm. He seemed undisturbed when enemy shells burst nearby, refusing to relocate to a safer place, saying, “It would be better to order up some artillery and defend the present location.”31 If Grant had to make an instant decision, Badeau wrote, “it was made and uttered instantly, and unflinchingly, though it involved the fate of a corps. At these supreme moments, the dullest perceived his intensity, the most unwilling admitted his power.”32
On the thickly wooded knoll, Grant had to be guided by sound more than sight, combined with dispatches rushed into his hands by breathless couriers. Like Lee, he could adapt swiftly to a shifting array of battlefield forces. The dense foliage, which made artillery useless, led to hand-to-hand combat of an appalling character. This frenzied fighting was like a deadly game of blindman’s buff, with both armies flailing wildly at each other, their visions blinkered by floating smoke.
After an early afternoon lull, the fighting resumed at 4:15 p.m. as Lee mounted a furious attack against Hancock. Within an hour Hancock had repulsed the movement, but not before a terrifying event intervened: the woods started burning again. Exploding shells ignited dry brush and pine needles, heating the forest into a raging inferno. Adding to the conflagration were wooden Union breastworks, which blazed up with stunning speed. Wounded men were roasted alive on the forest floor, their agonized cries audible everywhere; many committed suicide rather than burn to death. Swirling smoke asphyxiated soldiers on both sides and Porter remembered how “the wind howled through the tree-tops, mingling its moans with the groans of the dying, and heavy branches were cut off by the fire of the artillery, and fell crashing upon the heads of the men, adding a new terror to battle.”33 Blood-smeared, hideous garments clung to bushes, and many survivors said the scene approached as near to scenes of hell as they could ever picture. Stanton would christen the Wilderness “the bloodiest swath ever made on this globe.”34
One thing Grant hoped to accomplish was to stamp out the legend of Lee’s invincibility. Toward evening he learned the myth was still alive. The Confederate general John B. Gordon had discovered that Grant’s right flank was vulnerable and got Lee’s permission to attack it. Gordon’s unexpected drive shoved back Union soldiers for a mile and bagged two northern generals. An agitated Union general burst into Grant’s presence, babbling about Lee’s prowess: “I know Lee’s methods well by past experience; he will throw his whole army between us and the Rapidan, and cut us off completely from our communications.” Grant sprang to his feet, snatched his cigar from his mouth, and chastised the panic-stricken officer. “Oh, I am heartily tired of hearing about what Lee is going to do,” he said with uncommon vehemence. “Some of you always seem to think he is suddenly going to turn a double somersault, and land in our rear and on both of our flanks at the same time. Go back to your command, and try to think what we are going to do ourselves, instead of what Lee is going to do.”35 This tirade from the taciturn Grant was clearly something he had meditated for some time, and the moment must have felt liberating. He wanted to banish the defeatist mentality from the Army of the Potomac and get its officers thinking confidently instead of shrinking into a defensive posture.
By the time darkness descended, the Union line had re-formed on the right and Gordon and his men retreated to their entrenchments, ending the Wilderness battle after two days of hectic fighting and unspeakable carnage. Even having experienced Shiloh, Grant still wrote that “more desperate fighting has not been witnessed on this continent.”36 Characteristically the tightly buttoned Grant allowed himself release only once the crisis passed. He carried the full weight of the Union cause on his shoulders, an impossible burden for any man. So, perhaps not surprisingly, he submitted to an overflow of feeling. “When all proper measures had been taken,” Rawlins related, “Grant went into his tent, threw himself face downward on his cot, and gave way to the greatest emotion.” The man of extreme self-control surrendered to h
is feelings. Rawlins asserted he had “never before seen him so deeply moved” and that “nothing could be more certain than that he was stirred to the very depths of his soul.” Charles F. Adams Jr. confirmed that he “never saw a man so agitated in my life.”37
After Grant experienced this tremendous catharsis, he snapped back to his usual self, showing his recuperative powers. Others who saw him that night were no less struck by the calm that settled over him. Ten minutes later, Porter wrote, “I looked in his tent, and found him sleeping as soundly and as peacefully as an infant.”38 “Several times during the night I visited his tent to receive or deliver messages, and found him apparently unmoved by the direful rumors,” said cipher operator Samuel Beckwith. “Even with some of these disquieting tales unrefuted, he retired to his cot to snatch a much needed rest, the least ruffled of the group about headquarters.”39
For two years, the journalist Sylvanus Cadwallader had covered Grant admiringly, but the horror of the Wilderness momentarily weakened his faith. Wrestling with his pessimism, he chatted with Grant by a dying campfire. “His hat was drawn down over his face,” wrote Cadwallader, “the high collar of an old blue army overcoat turned up above his ears, one leg crossed over the other knee, eyes on the ashes in front.” Grant noted that Lee could choose his own ground, but he was ready to contest him wherever he found him. Slowly it dawned on the skeptical journalist that Grant wasn’t deterred by the recent slaughter. Quite the contrary, his resolve had been hardened. In his memoirs, Cadwallader recounted that 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.”40 Indeed, though shaken to the core, some deep-seated determination took hold of the doughty Grant. When a journalist asked if he had anything to say to higher-ups back in Washington, Grant came back with a succinct response that carried the force of a credo: “If you see the President, tell him, from me, that, whatever happens, there will be no turning back.”41 When Henry Wing of the New York Tribune relayed Grant’s words to the president, Lincoln was so transported with joy that he wrapped his “great strong arms” around the journalist, kissing him on the brow.42
In the immediate aftermath of the Wilderness, Grant speculated that Confederate forces had suffered more casualties than his own, but the reality was the reverse: the 17,500 Union casualties exceeded 11,000 on the other side. Nevertheless, Rawlins deemed the Wilderness a clear-cut Union victory since Grant’s men, by the end, found themselves “masters of the field, the enemy having withdrawn.”43 That Grant refused to concede victory to Lee may seem self-serving, but he had sound reasons. “Our victory consisted in having successfully crossed a formidable stream, almost in the face of an enemy, and in getting the army together as a unit,” he maintained.44 He saw the Wilderness as the opening act in a long drama. He thought in terms of the overall war, not individual battles, and he had succeeded in taking the necessary first step to push Lee toward Richmond, paring down his army in the process. He would now initiate a new style of warfare, an uninterrupted stream of battles such as the war had never seen.
Grant’s response to the battle was no less important than his behavior during it. Neither disheartened nor dismayed, he didn’t lick his wounds or go skulking back to Washington with excuses. The Wilderness only toughened his resolve. Lee had failed to tame or cow Grant, who didn’t shrink from the seas of blood through which his men would have to wade. Nobody appreciated his resolute qualities more than Lincoln, who, during the Wilderness battle, summed up Grant’s style: “The great thing about Grant is his perfect coolness and persistency of purpose . . . he is not easily excited . . . and he has the grit of a bull-dog! Once let him get his ‘teeth’ in, and nothing can shake him off.”45
One other person who understood that Grant was quite unlike his predecessors was his chief antagonist: Robert E. Lee. As both sides buried their dead, General Gordon boasted that there was “no doubt but that Grant is retreating.” “You are mistaken,” Lee corrected him, “quite mistaken. Grant is not retreating; he is not a retreating man.”46 The thought was expressed more poetically by Walt Whitman, who ardently followed the Overland Campaign: “When did [Grant] ever turn back? He was not that sort; he could no more turn back than time! . . . Grant was one of the inevitables; he always arrived; he was invincible as a law: he never bragged—often seemed about to be defeated when he was in fact on the eve of a tremendous victory.”47
—
BASED ON PAST EXPERIENCE, the Army of the Potomac, after the grisly death toll of the previous two days, expected to turn north and slink back in disgrace across the Rapidan. Under previous commanders, they had been forced into demoralizing retreats, victimized by a defeatist attitude. But Grant refused to “give [Lee] time to repair damages.”48 As always, he thought of what he would do to Lee, not vice versa. “If [Lee] falls back and intrenches,” Grant informed his staff, “my notion is to move promptly toward the left. This will, in all probability, compel him to try and throw himself between us and Richmond, and in such a movement I hope to be able to attack him in a more open country, and outside of his breastworks.”49 Lee would be thrust permanently on the defensive by Grant, who would set the agenda for coming battles, defining the war’s geography and scope. By shifting to the left in a bold flank movement, he hoped to shield Washington from raids and effect an early junction with Butler and his Army of the James, which had landed safely at City Point on the James River. One of Grant’s overriding fears was that Lee might beat him to Richmond and annihilate Butler before he arrived.
Under cover of darkness, Grant planned the stealthy overnight evacuation of his entire army to Spotsylvania Court House, a dozen miles southeast. If successful, his army would get there first and be closer to Richmond than Lee. As was his habit, Grant confined his secret plans to a small circle of officers. After sundown, his army began to pack up their gear and prepare to march north. Then, around 8 p.m., Grant and Meade, obscure, shadowy figures in the dark, came barreling down a narrow road on horseback at a rapid clip. The big movement was under way. Sections of forest still burned, throwing a lurid glow into the sky, and the stench of charred human flesh permeated the air.
As long columns of Union soldiers began to stir that night, they found themselves suddenly wheeling around, not to the north but to the south, and realized with a flush of exhilaration that Grant was going on the offensive, leading them back into battle against Lee! The cry that went up, “Grant is moving to Richmond,” was echoed up and down the line.50 In spontaneous joy, soldiers expressed their fond opinion of Grant with cheers so loud they resounded through the woods, leading Confederates to fear an attack. “Men swung their hats, tossed up their arms, and pressed forward to within touch of their chief, clapping their hands, and speaking to him with the familiarity of comrades,” wrote Porter.51 Grant hushed them. “This is most unfortunate,” he warned. “The sound will reach the ears of the enemy, and I fear it may reveal our movement.”52 Nonetheless, the men were thrilled that they had such a redoubtable commander, had not been defeated, and were plunging toward the Confederate capital. “Our spirits rose,” said a veteran. “We marched free. The men began to sing . . . That night we were happy.”53 Some even kindled leaves that flickered in the dark, turning the army march into a festive parade.54
Everyone sensed a turning point in the war. “Spirits of men and officers are of the highest pitch of animation,” Dana reassured Stanton.55 When Sherman learned of the movement, he labeled it “the grandest act of [Grant’s] life; now I feel that the rebellion will be crushed.” He saluted Grant for his courageous order, telling him “if Wellington could have heard it he would have jumped out of his boots.”56 Grant hadn’t yet slain Lee, but he had done something as important—he had slain his specter. James Wilson recalled how Grant’s summons to turn south toward Richmond “lifted a great weight from my mind. We who had known him best felt that the crisis was safely passed, and that we were now on the sure road to
ultimate victory.”57
The contagious high spirits even infected Washington, where, according to Noah Brooks, “the entire city was ablaze with joy upon learning that Grant had pressed the rebels past their old battle ground of the Wilderness, and was driving them before him toward Richmond.”58 A procession of citizens, brimming with excitement, accompanied a band to the White House, where they serenaded the president. When Lincoln appeared, looking sleepless with black circles under his eyes, he comprehended the significance of Grant’s movements. “I think, without knowing the particulars of the plans of General Grant, that what has been accomplished is of more importance than at first appears. I believe I know—and am especially grateful to know—that General Grant has not been jostled in his purposes . . . and today he is on his line as he purposed before he moved his armies.”59 Privately Lincoln expressed abiding faith in Grant. “I believe if any other General had been at the Head of that army it would now have been on this side of the Rapidan.”60
After hours of hard riding, Grant reached Todd’s Tavern, northwest of Spotsylvania, where he bedded down for several hours on blankets spread on the barroom floor. Endowed with eerie intuition, Lee had accurately forecast Grant’s next move to his generals: “Grant is not going to retreat. He will move his army to Spotsylvania.”61 This hunch wasn’t based on direct evidence so much as a sense that the hamlet represented the strongest strategic point. Once Lee ascertained that Grant’s army was in motion—dust clouds hurled aloft by tramping feet disclosed this—he rushed his army south and beat the sometimes cumbersome Union army to Spotsylvania Court House. Grant knew Lee would stand and fight at this advantageous spot, which lay athwart his path to Richmond. Dismayed though not despondent, Grant was “in capital spirits and seems to have no doubt of success,” Washburne wrote to his wife.62