On the morning of the 5th General Lee, though generally reticent at table on military affairs, spoke very cheerfully of the situation, having learned that Grant was crossing at Germanna Ford and moving into the Wilderness. He expressed his pleasure that the Federal general had not profited by General Hooker’s Wilderness experiences, and that he seemed inclined to throw away to some extent the immense advantage which his great superiority in numbers in every arm of the service gave him. On the 5th Ewell marched on the old turnpike, and Hill on the Plank road, and the cavalry on a road still farther to the right into the Wilderness. Lee rode with Hill at the head of his column. He was at the front in the skirmish at Parker’s Store and moved with the advance to the field on the edge of the forest which became the scene of the great conflict on the Plank road. Riding on in advance of the troops, the party, consisting of Generals Lee, Hill, and Stuart and their staff-officers, dismounted and sat under the shade of the trees, when a party of the enemy’s skirmishers deployed from a grove of old-field pines on the left, thus revealing the close proximity of Grant’s forces, and the ease of concealing movements in the Wilderness.
Hill’s troops were soon up and in line, and then began on the Plank road a fierce struggle, nearly simultaneously with that of Ewell’s forces on the old turnpike. Thus was inaugurated a contest of many battles, in which the almost daily deadly firing did not cease for eleven long months.
Heth’s and Wilcox’s divisions, under Lee’s eye, maintained themselves well against the heavy assault of the Federal forces which greatly outnumbered them; Ewell’s corps did good work on the old turnpike in its contest with Warren’s corps, and Rosser’s cavalry on the right had driven Wilson back. Lee slept on the field not far from his line of battle, sending orders to Longstreet to make a night march and reach the front by daybreak on the 6th.
On that morning serious disaster seemed imminent. Longstreet did not arrive in time to reënforce Lee’s line of battle in the position it held at the close of the engagement of the preceding evening. Hancock’s well-planned attack on our right forced the two Confederate divisions from their position, and it seemed at one moment that they would sweep the field. Lee gave orders to get his wagon trains ready for a movement in retreat, and sent an aide to quicken the march of Longstreet’s two divisions. These came soon, a little after sunrise, at double-quick, in parallel columns, down the Plank road. Lee was in the midst of Hill’s sullenly retreating troops, aiding in rallying them, and restoring confidence and order, when Longstreet’s men came gallantly in and re-formed the line of battle under his eye. Lee’s presence at the front aroused his men to great enthusiasm. He was a superb figure as he sat on his spirited gray with the light of battle on his face. His presence was an inspiration. The retreating columns turned their faces bravely to the front once more, and the fresh divisions went forward under his eye with splendid spirit. It was on this occasion that the men of the Texas brigade (always favorites of the general), discovering that he was riding with them into the charge, shouted to him that they would not go on unless he went back. The battle line was restored early in the morning. Soon afterward, Anderson’s division, which had been left on the Rapidan heights, arrived on the ground; and a successful assault, which carried everything before it, was made on Grant’s left. The Federal troops were driven back, with heavy loss, to their intrenchments on the Brock road. Longstreet’s wounding, and the necessary delay in the change of commanders,1 caused loss of time in attacking them in this position. An attack made in the afternoon failed, after some partial successes, to gain possession of the Federal breastworks. The rumor which General Grant mentions in his “Memoirs,” and to which he seems to have given credence, that “Lee’s men were in confusion after this attack, and that his efforts failed to restore order,” was without foundation in fact. On the same afternoon, of the 6th, a successful flank assault was made by Gordon, with three brigades of Ewell’s corps, the results of which were not so great as hoped for, because night put a stop to his further successful rolling up of Sedgwick’s line.
The Wilderness fighting closed with the night of the 6th of May.
Lee’s grand tactics in these two days of battle had been a superb exhibition of military genius and skill in executing his plan of throwing his little army boldly against his opponent, where his great inferiority in numbers would place him at the least disadvantage; where manœuvring of large bodies was most difficult, and where superiority in cavalry and artillery counted almost for nothing.
The failure to push rapidly the successful movement in which Longstreet was wounded was a serious disappointment to General Lee. I believe his daring spirit conceived the signal defeat of Grant’s army, and the driving it back across the Rapidan, as a possibility within his immediate grasp. One thing remarkable in the position of the Confederate lines in these engagements is worthy of note, namely, the large gap between Ewell’s right and Longstreet and Hill’s left. I had occasion, on being sent with orders to General Ewell on the 6th, to ride across this lonesome interval of half a mile or more, and to meet or see no one, except two Federal soldiers, who had found it easier to desert to the front than to the rear.
MAJOR-GENERAL G.W.C. LEE, C.S.A. FROM A PHOTOGRAPH.
The quiet on the 7th told Lee that Grant would move on around his left. When Grant did move, the Confederate general, with that firm reliance upon the steadfast courage of his men in fighting against odds which had never failed him, and in the consequent ability of a small body of his troops to hold superior forces in check until he could come to their support, sent Anderson with Longstreet’s two divisions to support Stuart’s cavalry in holding Spotsylvania Court House until he could come up with the rest of his army. This mutual confidence between the general and his men was a striking feature of the campaign, and, indeed, a prime necessity for any possibility of success. General Grant sent troops to occupy Spotsylvania Court House, but retained Hancock’s corps to guard against the contingency of another attack from Lee in the Wilderness. Lee had evidently won the respect of his foes when, with his smaller force, reduced by two days’ hard fighting, he could employ one part of his infantry to aid in checking the movement of the Army of the Potomac on Spotsylvania Court House, and at the same time threaten its rear in the Wilderness. Meanwhile General Grant was sending to Washington for reënforcements.
MAJOR-GENERAL STEPHEN D. RAMSEUR, C.S.A. FROM A PHOTOGRAPH.
Lee sent an aide-de-camp with Anderson under orders to keep him constantly advised, and, following with the main body of his army, took up his position on the Spotsylvania lines in the afternoon of the 8th. And Grant again found himself in a position which required hard fighting and in which he could not use to great advantage his superiority in numbers and equipment.
The Spotsylvania campaign of twelve days was marked by almost daily combats. It was General Lee’s habit in those days of physical and mental trial to retire about 10 or 11 at night, to rise at 3 A.M., breakfast by candle-light, and return to the front, spending the entire day on the lines. The 9th of May was spent by both armies mainly in strengthening their positions by throwing up intrenchments. The day was marked, however, by the death of General Sedgwick, who was killed by a Confederate sharp-shooter. He was much liked and respected by his old West Point comrades in the Confederate army, and his death was a real sorrow to them. Early on the morning of the 10th Hancock’s corps made an effort to pass around Lee’s left wing and gain a position on his flank and rear. This was repulsed by Early, commanding Hill’s corps (Hill being ill). Almost simultaneously came fierce assaults on Lee’s left wing, which were repulsed with terrible slaughter. These were renewed again in the afternoon with the same result. The heaviest assault was made at 5 o’clock by Hancock and Warren, and again repulsed; again reorganized and hurled at Lee’s lines only to meet with a still more bloody reception. In one of these attacks a small portion of the Confederate line was taken, but held for a short time only by the assailants. It was pitiful to see and hear the bravest of these br
ave men who had got up nearest to the Confederate lines as they lay the next day groaning with the pangs of thirst and pains of death, when to relieve them was impossible, on account of the active sharp-shooting of the Federal riflemen. One fair-haired New York youth lay thus twenty-four hours near the Confederate intrenchments before he was relieved from his sufferings by death, every effort to bring him in having been rendered unavailing by the sharp fire which his would-be rescuers met at the hands of his comrades, ignorant of their kind intentions. About the same hour at which these last assaults were made, there was a heavy attack by the Sixth Corps on Ewell’s front, near Lee’s headquarters for the day, about 200 yards in rear of Doles’s brigade, which captured and held a portion of the lines for a short time. This attack was repulsed and the line recaptured by Gordon, the men and officers, as in the Wilderness, again beseeching Lee to go to the rear, and shouting their promises to retake the line if he would only go back.
The 11th of May was a comparatively quiet day, as there were no regular assaults on the Confederate lines. But on that day the gallant J.E.B. Stuart met his death in an engagement with Sheridan, whom he had followed up from Spotsylvania and boldly attacked with greatly inferior numbers near Richmond. Stuart’s loss was greatly mourned by General Lee,2 who prized him highly both as a skillful soldier of splendid courage and energy, and a hearty, joyous, loving friend.
On the 12th, before dawn, came Hancock’s famous assault on a weak salient in Ewell’s front—the sole appreciable success in attack of all the hard fighting by the Federal troops since they crossed the Rapidan. The threatening attitude of Hancock’s attacking column, as indicated by the noise of the preparations going on in front of the salient during the night, had not been communicated to General Lee. The announcement of the disaster was the first news which came to him of this movement of the enemy. He galloped forward in the darkness of the morning and learned the extent of it from those engaged in rallying the remnants of Edward Johnson’s division and in making arrangements to check Hancock. The occasion aroused all the combative energies of his soldier nature, and he rode forward with his columns toward the captured angle. His generals expostulated with him, and his men cried him back shouting their promises to retake the lines. The advance of Hancock’s troops, after his successful assault, was checked by the brigades of Hill’s corps, under Early, which held the lines on the right of the salient, and by Ewell’s troops on the left of it.
A line of battle was formed making the base of the triangle of the salient, and the work on the retrenchment (which had been begun the day before as a new line to remedy this weak point in the lines) was pushed rapidly forward. During the day General Lee sent three brigades and a number of batteries of artillery to reënforce Rodes’s division, on which fell the main task of holding the enemy in check and recovering, if practicable, the salient and the eighteen pieces of Confederate artillery which lay silent between the opposing lines (having arrived too late in the morning for effective use against Hancock’s assault). In that narrow space of the salient captured before dawn raged the fiercest battle of the war. Lee’s position during the day was near Early’s lines, where he observed, from time to time, the movements of the Federal troops in aid of Hancock’s attack, and counter-movements of Early’s troops. He was with the artillery when it broke Burnside’s assault. Lee was present dictating notes and orders in the midst of his guns. At one time he rode at the head of Harris’s Mississippi brigade, which by his orders I was guiding down in column to the assistance of Rodes. The men marched steadily on until they noticed that Lee at their head was riding across a space swept by the artillery fire of the enemy. Then were renewed the same protesting shouts of “Go back, General Lee,” and the same promises to do their duty. The firing in the battle of the salient did not cease until far into the night. Hancock had been compelled to retire behind the lines which he had captured, holding them as breastworks for the protection of his troops. The Confederate front at the close covered four of the eighteen pieces of artillery. Lee’s retrenchment in rear of our battle-line (which rendered the salient a useless capture) had been completed. The wearied and worn Confederate battalions were withdrawn to this line late at night, but the four recovered guns, after being dragged off, were left hopelessly stuck in a swamp outside of the new lines, and became Hancock’s trophies after all. General Grant did not leave Hancock unaided in this fight, having sent the Sixth and Fifth corps to his support. He expected much from Burnside also, but Early’s counter-movements in part prevented the realization of these hopes. I have gone into some detail in this brief sketch of the battle of the salient, because, as perhaps the fiercest struggle of the war, it is illustrative of the valor of the troops on both sides.
On the 18th an attack was made on Early’s left and easily repulsed, though some of the assailants reached the breastworks. On the 19th Ewell was sent to the north side of the Ny to threaten Grant’s communications. He met some Federal reënforcements, and, being without artillery (finding the ground impracticable for it), he regained his position on the south side of that stream with some loss. Hampton’s cavalry brigade and battery of horse artillery proved of great assistance in his withdrawal from his hazardous position.
The battles of Spotsylvania Court House closed with the 19th of May. It gives a clearer idea of the nature of this tremendous contest to group by days and count its various combats from the beginning of the campaign: On May 5th, three; on May 6th, four; on May 8th, two; on May 10th, five; on May 12th, repeated assaults during twenty hours in salient and two combats on another part of the line; May 18th, one; May 19th, one. It is no wonder that on these fields the Confederate ordnance officers gathered more than 120,000 pounds of lead, which was recast in bullets and did work again before the campaign of 1864 was closed.
Lee, discovering that Grant had set out on the 20th of May on his flanking movement southward, immediately marched so as to throw his army between the Federal forces and Richmond. He crossed the North Anna on the 21st. General Grant arrived on the 23d. Lee would gladly have compelled battle in his position there. He was anxious now to strike a telling blow, as he was convinced that General Grant’s men were dispirited by the bloody repulses of their repeated attacks on our lines. Lee had drawn Pickett and Breckinridge to him. But in the midst of the operations on the North Anna he succumbed to sickness, against which he had struggled for some days. As he lay in his tent he would say, in his impatience, “We must strike them!” “We must never let them pass us again!” “We must strike them!” He had reports brought to him constantly from the field. But Lee ill in his tent was not Lee at the front. He was much disappointed in not securing larger results from the attack which prevented the junction of Hancock’s and Warren’s columns after they had crossed the North Anna.
On May 26th Grant withdrew his army from its rather critical position on the south side of the North Anna, and moved again to the east, down the Pamunkey, which he crossed on the 28th, to find Lee confronting him on the Totopotomoy. Grant had received reënforcements from Washington, and had drawn Smith’s corps from Butler in Bermuda Hundred. This corps reached him at Cold Harbor on June 1st. On the 30th the Confederate forces were in line of battle, with the left at Atlee’s Station confronting the Federal army. General Lee was still sick, and occupied a house at night for the first time during the campaign. As one of his trusted lieutenants has well said: “In fact, nothing but his own determined will kept him in the field; and it was then rendered more evident than ever that he was the head and front, the very life and soul of his army.” Grant declined general battle and drew eastward; and after several lesser combats, with no serious results, the two armies confronted one another on the 3d of June at Cold Harbor. In these days Lee had drawn to himself Hoke’s division from Beauregard, and had been reënforced by Finegan’s Florida brigade and Keitt’s South Carolina regiment.
The days from May 30th to June 2d were anxious ones for General Lee. For while General Grant had easy and safe communication with P
etersburg and Bermuda Hundred, and commanded all the Federal troops north and south of Richmond, he commanded only the Army of Northern Virginia and was compelled to communicate his “suggestions” to General Beauregard through General Bragg and the War Department at Richmond. This marred greatly the unity, secrecy, and celerity of action so absolutely essential to success. That he considered this separation of commands, and the consequent circuitous mode of communication with its uncertain results, a very grave matter is plain from the telegrams which he sent at this time. General Beauregard had telegraphed from Chester (half-way between Richmond and Petersburg), on May 30th, 5:15 P.M., as follows:
“War Department must determine when and what troops to order from here. I send to General Bragg all information I obtain relative to movement of enemy’s troops in front.”
This called forth the following telegrams:3
“ATLEE’S, 7½ P.M., 30th May, 1864.
“GENERAL G. T. BEAUREGARD, HANCOCK’S HOUSE:
“If you cannot determine what troops you can spare, the Department cannot. The result of your delay will be disaster. Butler’s troops will be with Grant to-morrow.
Hearts Touched by Fire Page 107