Governeur K. Warren
Major-General
Fifth Corps
Peter Lyle
B'v't Brig.-General
First Brig., Second Div. Fifth Corps
THE WILDERNESS
At first our own course is northward, toward Culpeper, then we bear off to the right, passing the headquarters of the Sixth Corps, and those of the Army of the Potomac skirting the base of Pony Mountain and on to Germanna, remembered well in our Mine Run campaign. Though nominally, for several days a part of the Fifth Corps, we do not actually meet any part of the Corps itself till just before reaching the ford. We cross the river at about 11 a. m., nowhere encountering any opposition from the enemy, who evidently is endeavoring to ascertain what Grant's objective may be, catching up with the other portions of the Corps late in the afternoon. After an arduous march of considerably more than twenty miles, burdened by heavy knapsacks, filled in winter quarters, our division bivouaced near the Wilderness Tavern.[J] From this point the almost countless campfires of our army could be seen, always an impressive sight, and never were the soldiers of the Potomac Army in a more impressible mood than after their long period in winter quarters. Of the troop thus in bivouac, Lieut. Porter of Company A wrote, "The men were in the best of spirits. They believed that the supreme effort to bring the rebellion to a close was being made. There were enthusiasm and determination in the minds of everyone." A year ago the word "Wilderness" was frequently heard as the events of Chancellorsville were discussed and now it is to gain even wider mention; it seems a name quite out of place in the midst of the Old Dominion, not so far from the very first settlements in British North America.
General Morris Schaff in his story of the great battle says this of the section, "What is known as the Wilderness begins near Orange Court House on the west and extends almost to Fredericksburg, twenty-five or thirty miles to the east. Its northern bounds are the Rapidan and the Rappahannock and, owing to the winding channels, its width is somewhat irregular. At Spottsylvania, its extreme southern limit, it is some ten miles wide." Considerably more than a hundred years before, there were extensive iron mines worked in this region under the directions of Alexander Spottswood, then governor of Virginia. To feed the furnaces the section was quite denuded of trees and the irregular growth of subsequent years, upon the thin soil, of low-limbed and scraggy pines, stiff and bristling chinkapins, scrub-oaks and hazel bushes gave rise to the appellation so often applied. Hooker and Chancellorsville are already involved in memories of the region and coming days will give equal associations with Grant and Meade, while the Confederates, remembering that within its mazes their own shots killed their peerless leader, Jackson, ere many hours have passed will lament a similar misfortune to Longstreet.
Within this tangled thicket, artillery will be of no avail and the vast array of thunderers will stand silent as artillerymen hear the roar of musketry; cavalry will be equally out of the question, but within firing distance more than May 4, '64 two hundred thousand men will consume vast quantities of gunpowder in their efforts to destroy each other. It is generally understood that General Grant did not expect an encounter with Lee within the Wilderness itself, as is evident in Meade's orders to Hancock and the Second Corps; indeed on the 5th the latter was recalled from Chancellorsville to the Brock Road at the left of the Fifth Corps, the Confederates having displayed a disposition to attack much earlier than the Union Commanders had thought probable; how Sedgwick and the Sixth Corps held the Union right, Warren and his Fifth the centre and Hancock with the Second were at the left are figures from the past well remembered by participant and student. While every movement of the Union Army has a southern tendency, a disposition to get nearer to Richmond, yet in the Wilderness all of the fighting was along a north and south line, the enemy exhibiting an unwillingness to be outflanked as easily as the new leader of the Potomac Army had evidently expected.
In the morning of the 5th of May, General Richard S. Ewell commands the Confederate left with "Stonewall" Jackson's old army or what may be left of it; next to him, at his right, is A. P. Hill with the divisions of Wilcox, Heth, Scales and Lane; Longstreet has not arrived as yet, the morning finding him as far away as Gordonville, but he is making all the speed possible towards the scene of conflict, and when he arrives his station will be on the rebel right, his lieutenants being Anderson, Mahone, Wofford and Davis. The intricacies of this jungle-infested region are much better known to the Southern soldiers than to those from the North, and this knowledge is a full compensation for any disparity in numbers known to exist. Burnside and the Ninth Corps of the Federal forces are just crossing the Rapidan after a forced march from Rappahannock Station and when they reach the battle line, it will be to occupy some of the thinly covered interval between Warren and Hancock. All of the amenities of the long winter months are now forgotten, and war to the death is confronting every combatant, whether in blue or gray.
In coming days, these men will recount the events of May, 1864, and while the roar of musketry will play a veritable diapason of war for them, they will not forget how readily they dropped the musket and, grasping axe or shovel, felled the trees and, weaving them into earth-covered breastworks, interposed thus much protection from the cruel missiles of the enemy. If the survivors of the Potomac Army in the battle summer had chosen to wear subsequently as under-guards or supports of their respective Corps-badges, whether, trefoil, Greek or Maltese Cross or shield, the semblance of musket and shovel crossed, no one would have questioned its oppositeness. However averse men may have been to the regular use of pick and shovel, experience soon told them that an old fence rail, a small sapling or a shovelful of earth might ward off a hostile bullet and, lacking the intrenching tools, they were known to throw up, in an incredibly brief time, serviceable defenses, using no more effective utensils than their bayonets, case-knives and tin plates. Future archaeologists, in the Wilderness region, will have difficulty in distinguishing between the works of the Eighteenth century miners and their soldier successors more than a hundred years later. Deeply scarred was the battle-riven surface of the Old Dominion and, centuries hence, poets and historians will wax as eloquent over some of these fiercely contested places as did Charles Dickens over the bloody field of Shrewsbury where "the stream ran red, the trodden earth became a quagmire and fertile spots marked the places where heaps of men and horses lay buried indiscriminately, enriching the ground." Macaulay, too, never wrote with more brilliant pen than when he described the poppy-strewn plain of Neerwinden, "fertilized with twenty thousand corpses."
May 5, '64 If Grant had known as definitely the mind of Lee as the latter appeared to divine the intentions of the Union General, the story of the Wilderness might have been very different. The orders for the morning of the 5th were for Warren to move to Parker's store, towards the southwest; Sedgwick was to follow Warren, ranging up at his right; Hancock with the Second Corps was to advance, also towards the southwest, his left to reach to Shady Grove Church. The enemy was discovered before Warren reached Parker's store and he was ordered to attack; Getty and the Second Division of the Sixth Corps were sent to defend Warren's left flank and Wright with the First Division of the Sixth Corps was ordered up to Warren's right, and at nine o'clock Hancock was ordered to come to the support of Getty, all this happening where Grant had expected, at least had hoped for, an unopposed passage. Instead of a retreating enemy, Warren opened the great battle of the Wilderness by an attack upon a foe ready for the fray; but let the Fifth Corps Commander tell his own story:—