Of this day General Warren says that the army took up defensive positions and spent the time getting together the several commands which had been detached to defend parts of the field in the varying emergencies of the previous days' battles. Of himself he remarks that he had received, on the 6th, eighteen orders to send reinforcements to other parts of the line. It is nine o'clock in the evening of the 7th that the Fifth Corps takes up its line of march towards the left. Men of other corps are seen asleep as we pass by, and it is no craven thought for us to wish that we might slumber also, but "Forward" is the word. Lieutenant Schaff, more than forty years later to produce one of the most remarkable battle descriptions ever given, his story of the Wilderness, an officer on Warren's staff, says this of the scene:—
"Here comes the head of Warren's Corps with banners afloat. What calm serenity, what unquenchable spirit are in the battle-flags! On they go. Good-by, old fields, deep woods, and lonesome roads. And murmuring runs, Wilderness, and Caton, you too farewell. The head of Warren's column has reached the Brook Road and is turning South. At once the men catch what it means. Oh, the Old Army of the Potomac is not retreating, and, in the dusky light, as Grant and Meade pass by, they give them high, ringing cheers.
"Now we are passing Hancock's lines and never, never shall I forget the scene. Dimly visible, but almost within reach of our horses, the gallant men of the Second Corps are resting against the charred parapets, from which they hurled Field. Here and there is a weird little fire, groups of mounted officers stand undistinguishable in the darkness, and up in the towering tree tops of the thick woods beyond the intrenchments, tongues of yellow flame are pulsing from dead limbs, lapping the face of night. All, all is deathly still. We pass on, cross the unfinished railway, then Poplar Run and then up a shouldered hill. Our horses are walking slowly. We are in dismal pine woods, the habitation of thousands of whippoorwills uttering their desolate notes unceasingly. Now and then a sabre clanks and close behind us the men are toiling on.
"It is midnight. Tood's Tavern is two or three miles away. Deep, deep is the silence. Jehovah reigns; Spottsylvania and Cold Harbor are waiting for us and here The Wilderness ends."
SPOTTSYLVANIA
Of this same day and evening, our own Colonel Peirson has also given a vivid picture; after quoting Grant's words to Colonel Theodore Wyman, sitting under a pine tree, May 7, '64 on the 7th, "To-night Lee will be retreating south" he says, in his Loyal Legion paper:—
"Lee did retreat south, but only for the purpose of intercepting the onward movement of Grant, and he retreated so rapidly that we found him at Spottsylvania when we emerged from The Wilderness. Nightfall of the 7th saw our whole army on the march for Spottsylvania—Warren leading with Robinson's division by the most direct route, which was by the Brock Road, via Todd's Tavern,—leaving on the field all our dead and wounded Grant remarked that if Lee thought he was going to stop to bury his dead he was mistaken, but a few days later he sent a cavalry force back with ambulances, who succeeded in saving some of the wounded men.... The 7th was hot and dusty, and as it was necessary in order to clear the roads of trains by daylight, the movement was discovered by the enemy. The Fifth Corps in the advance, preceded by cavalry and followed by the Second Corps, took the Brock Road. The Sixth Corps moved by the Plank and Turnpike roads via Chancellorsville, preceded by the train, and followed by the Ninth Corps, who were the rear guard.... The Fifth Corps, led by Robinson's division, marched all night and about six on the morning of the 8th emerged from the wilderness near Todd's Tavern, and after marching a mile or two came up with our cavalry, who, as evidenced by several dead cavalrymen by the roadside, had recently been engaged with the enemy."
General F. A. Walker, in his history of the Second Corps, accounts for the presence of the Confederates at Spottsylvania on the arrival of the Union army in a very interesting manner. He says that Lee, convinced of the intention on Grant's part of moving towards Fredericksburg, ordered Anderson, who had succeeded to Longstreet's position, to move in the morning of the 8th to Spottsylvania. We remember that the whole battle section had been overrun with fire and that it was still burning when the orders came. Anxious to escape its unpleasant nearness, he determined to set out in the evening of the 7th and so make a night-march of the fifteen miles intervening. By what Southern pietists might call this Providential procedure on the part of the Confederate leader, he got there ahead of Warren.