Confederate wizards of the saddle /

by Bennett H. Young

On the 11th General Grant had still further reason to revise his opinions. He wired General Halleck: “We have now ended the 6th day of very heavy fighting. The result to this time is in our favor, but our losses have been heavy as well as those of the enemy. We have lost to this time eleven ... general officers killed, wounded and missing, and probably twenty thousand men. I propose to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer.”

Not sufficiently protected, twenty-eight hundred of General Lee’s men had been captured. Artillery had not been ordered to their support promptly enough, and twenty cannon were the prize of Hancock’s valiant followers. General Lee heard the sounds of a fierce conflict and rode to the scene of danger and advanced into a line of heavy fire. He found himself in the midst of General John B. Gordon’s men. General Gordon, with that voice that thrilled men in war and peace, wherever it was heard, shouted: “General Lee to the rear!” and flaming with courage and enthusiasm he rode to the Confederate chieftain and exclaimed, “General Lee, these men are Georgians and Virginians; they have never failed you. They will not fail you now.” A soldier, moved by the spirit of the moment, rushed from the ranks and seizing “Traveler” by the bridle turned his head to the rear and led him away, and up and down the line came a mighty cry, “Lee to the rear!” With a wild rush Gordon drove the enemy from his front, but not a step did the soldiers advance until General Lee had obeyed their peremptory order to find a place of safety.

General Lee, remaining close to the position where Gordon had left him, attempted to lead the Mississippians under Harris. These again took up the great heart cry of the Confederate hosts, and shouted, “Lee to the rear! Lee to the rear!” The conflict became appalling. Men from opposite sides of breastworks climbed to their tops and fired into the face of their opponents. They grappled with each other and drew each other across the breastworks. The trenches were filled with blood, and nature sent a cold and dreary rain to chill the life currents of the wounded men that lay on the field. It was said by those who listened to the sound of musketry and the crash of artillery at Spottsylvania and elsewhere, that it was the steadiest and most continuous and deafening that the war witnessed.

By the 13th twenty-eight hundred of Lee’s men had been captured under General Bushrod Johnson, but he had only lost eighteen per cent of his army. Sixteen thousand of General Grant’s had been killed and wounded. To this loss must be added the twenty thousand who had already fallen bravely before the men of the Army of Northern Virginia.

By the 12th General Grant had telegraphed: “The 8th day of battle closed. The enemy obstinate. They seem to have found the last ditch.” On the morning of the 13th General Grant’s subordinate again telegraphed: “The proportion of severely wounded is greater than either of the previous day’s fighting.” He further said in the afternoon: “The impression that Lee had started on his retreat which prevailed at the date of my despatch this morning is not confirmed.... Of course, we cannot determine without a battle whether the whole army is still here, and nothing has been done today to provoke one. It has been necessary to rest the men, and accordingly we have everywhere stood upon the defensive.”

It was on the evening of May 11th that along the wires came to General Lee the startling and shocking intelligence that General J. E. B. Stuart had fallen. For seven days Lee declined to give any official announcement of this tragedy. He carried the depressing secret in his bosom. A year before, Stonewall Jackson, at Chancellorsville, had been stricken down in the midst of another gigantic conflict. General Lee was unwilling to let his fighters know that death had called the illustrious cavalry chieftain at the moment when they most needed the inspiration of every Confederate leader.

Grant sat down to wait five days and in the meantime he added twenty thousand fresh troops to his legions.

The hammering process had not proved such a wonderful success after all, and so Grant had ordered Sigel down the Shenandoah Valley to break Lee’s communication. In the meantime General John C. Breckinridge came up from Southwestern Virginia and brought with him some infantry and some cavalry, and on the 15th of May, while General Grant was waiting, Breckinridge had crushed Sigel and captured six of his guns as well as one-sixth of his men. On the 17th of May, Halleck wired General Grant: “Sigel is in full retreat on Strasburg. He will do nothing but run—never did anything else”; and there came also to General Grant on this eventful day the news that Beauregard over at Petersburg had driven General Butler back and bottled him up on the James River.

On the 20th of May, Grant moved still further eastward at Spottsylvania Court House. Since crossing the Rapidan on May 4th, sixteen days before, he had suffered a loss of thirty-seven thousand men. This was thirty per cent of all the fighting men that he had led out from Culpepper Court House.

Grant was still moving eastward and Dana telegraphed: “Now for the first time Lee prevented his southward march.” He seemed to have forgotten what had been happening since the 4th of May.