General Grant has himself explained the immediate strategy employed by him in his campaign in northern Virginia. He had his choice between two courses,—either to move continuously by his own left flank around Lee's right, thus keeping always at his back that great system of waterways beginning in the Rappahannock and Potomac, and stretching on to Fortress Monroe and the James, and maintaining at all times in his rear a perfect and unassailable base of communications and supplies; or, on the other hand, to move by his own right flank around Lee's left, as Hooker had tried to do, thus threatening the Confederate communications, and forcing Lee, as it were, into a pocket. Should he adopt this second course, however, he must carry with him all that he needed of ammunition and food supplies, and expose his own communications to possible rupture at any hour by daring operations on the part of the Confederate forces. He determined, therefore, to move by his own left, assailing Lee's right and keeping the waterways always at his back.
The plan was simple and effective. It is true that it left some advantages to Lee—unmolested communications and short lines of march—but these were more than offset by the other considerations involved. From beginning to end of the struggle Grant found no occasion to change his method in the least.
[CHAPTER XLV]
The Battles in the Wilderness
With the coming of May, 1864, the two great commanding geniuses of the War—Lee and Grant—met each other in conflict. The exact forces commanded by each have never been ascertained. But the estimates of the various writers on the subject, North and South, do not differ sufficiently, to make their differences of much consequence. In round numbers Lee had, on the Rapidan, about 66,000 men. The army with which Grant opposed him numbered approximately 120,000. These estimates do not include either the Confederate forces defending Richmond and Petersburg on the one hand, or Butler's strong army south of the James on the other. Lee had called Longstreet back from the region of Atlanta, and had thus in effect massed all the force that he could hope to employ in that campaign. With this force substantially half as large as that of his adversary, he determined to accept Grant's offer of battle in the field. To that end he moved his army on the second of May to the western edge of that peculiar region known as the Wilderness. There he awaited the coming of Grant.
This Wilderness, it should be explained, is a region of peculiar difficulty by reason of the tangled mass of second growths which have replaced the original forest, cut away a century or more ago as fuel for iron works. In extent the region is about a dozen miles wide in either direction. It borders the Rapidan, and extends to the open country in front of Chancellorsville, where the battle of that name had been fought a year before.
At midnight on the third of May the Army of the Potomac crossed the Rapidan on five pontoon bridges, and marched at once into the Wilderness, where it remained during the whole of the fourth in order that its enormous train of 4,000 wagons and the reserve artillery of more than 100 guns might be protected in their passage across the river. It was Grant's hope to move by his left flank, out of the Wilderness, passing around his enemy, and placing himself with all his force between that enemy and the Confederate capital. But with that promptitude which was characteristic of all his operations, Lee anticipated this movement and struck at Grant's flank early on the morning of the fifth.
The assault was made in the midst of the Wilderness—in a thicket so dense that it was impossible at many points for the men on one side to see those on the other, a hundred feet away. Every forward or backward movement involved a struggle through a tangle of vines and underbrush and young forest growths so thickly standing as to render all progress difficult, and all regularity of formation impossible. On either side no corps or regiment or company could know what its own friends were doing on its right or its left; no officer could tell whether he was being supported on his flank or had been abandoned there; no steadiness or cohesion was possible. No alignment could be maintained. It is doubtful to-day that any officer on either side in that struggle, from Grant and Lee at the top to the smallest commander at the other end of the line, ever had a clear-cut idea of the course that that day's fighting took. It consisted of a series of irregular assaults made with desperate valor, and repelled with equal determination. It resembled nothing so much as a battle in the dark, the one thing which all commanders most dread, and most sedulously avoid.
Very naturally the fighting was at short range at every point. Scarcely anywhere on that tangled field did the opposing forces discover each other's positions until they came within short pistol-shot range. The slaughter was therefore tremendous and at no time could either commanding general fully satisfy himself as to how the battle was going or what its result was likely to be or even what his own or the enemy's position was.