The Civil War Through the Camera

by Henry W. Elson

By eight o’clock on the morning of the 4th the various rumors as to the Federal army’s crossing the Rapidan received by Lee were fully confirmed, and at once he prepared to set his own army in motion for the Wilderness, and to throw himself across the path of his foe. Two days before he had gathered his corps and division commanders around him at the signal station on Clark’s Mountain, a considerable eminence south of the Rapidan, near Robertson’s Ford. Here he expressed the opinion that Grant would cross at the lower fords, as he did, but nevertheless Longstreet was kept at Gordonsville in case the Federals should move by the Confederate left.

The day was oppressively hot, and the troops suffered greatly from thirst as they plodded along the forest aisles through the jungle-like region. The Wilderness was a maze of trees, underbrush, and ragged foliage. Low-limbed pines, scrub-oaks, hazels, and chinkapins interlaced their branches on the sides of rough country roads that lead through this labyrinth of desolation. The weary troops looked upon the heavy tangles of fallen timber and dense undergrowth with a sense of isolation. Only the sounds of the birds in the trees, the rustling of the leaves, and the passing of the army relieved the heavy pall of solitude that bore upon the senses of the Federal host.

The forces of the Northern army advanced into the vast no-man’s land by the roads leading from the fords. In the afternoon, Hancock was resting at Chancellorsville, while Warren posted his corps near the Wilderness Tavern, in which General Grant established his headquarters. Sedgwick’s corps had followed in the track of Warren’s veterans, but was ordered to halt near the river crossing, or a little south of it. The cavalry, as much as was not covering the rear wagon trains, was stationed near Chancellorsville and the Wilderness Tavern. That night the men from the North lay in bivouac with little fear of being attacked in this wilderness of waste, where military maneuvers would be very difficult.

Two roads—the old Orange turnpike and the Orange plank road—enter the Wilderness from the southwest. Along these the Confederates moved from their entrenched position to oppose the advancing hosts of the North. Ewell took the old turnpike and Hill the plank road. Longstreet was hastening from Gordonsville. The troops of Longstreet, on the one side, and of Burnside, on the other, arrived on the field after exhausting forced marches.

The locality in which the Federal army found itself on the 5th of May was not one that any commander would choose for a battle-ground. Lee was more familiar with its terrible features than was his opponent, but this gave him little or no advantage. Grant, having decided to move by the Confederate right flank, could only hope to pass through the desolate region and reach more open country before the inevitable clash would come. But this was not to be. General Humphreys, who was Meade’s chief of staff, says in his “Virginia Campaign of 1864 and 1865”: “So far as I know, no great battle ever took place before on such ground. But little of the combatants could be seen, and its progress was known to the senses chiefly by the rising and falling sounds of a vast musketry fire that continually swept along the lines of battle, many miles in length, sounds which at times approached to the sublime.”

As Ewell, moving along the old turnpike on the morning of May 5th, came near the Germanna Ford road, Warren’s corps was marching down the latter on its way to Parker’s store, the destination assigned it by the orders of the day. This meeting precipitated the battle of the Wilderness.

Meade learned the position of Ewell’s advance division and ordered an attack. The Confederates were driven back a mile or two, but, re-forming and reënforced, the tide of battle was turned the other way. Sedgwick’s marching orders were sending him to the Wilderness Tavern on the turnpike. He was on his way when the battle began, and he now turned to the right from the Germanna Ford road and formed several of his divisions on Warren’s right. The presence of Hill on the plank road became known to Meade and Grant, about eight in the morning. Hancock, at Chancellorsville, was too far away to check him, so Getty’s division of Sedgwick’s corps, on its way to the right, was sent over the Brock road to its junction with the plank road for the purpose of driving Hill back, if possible, beyond Parker’s store.

Warren and Sedgwick began to entrench themselves when they realized that Ewell had effectively blocked their progress. Getty, at the junction of the Brock and the Orange plank roads, was likewise throwing up breastworks as fast as he could. Hancock, coming down the Brock road from Chancellorsville, reached him at two in the afternoon and found two of A. P. Hill’s divisions in front. After waiting to finish his breastworks, Getty, a little after four o’clock, started, with Hancock supporting him, to carry out his orders to drive Hill back. Hancock says: “The fighting became very fierce at once. The lines of battle were exceedingly close, the musketry continuous and deadly along the entire line.... The battle raged with great severity and obstinacy until about 8 P.M. without decided advantage to either party.” Here, on the Federal left, and in this desperate engagement, General Alexander Hays, one of Hancock’s brigade commanders, was shot through the head and killed.

The afternoon had worn away with heavy skirmishing on the right. About five o’clock Meade made another attempt on Ewell’s forces. Both lines were well entrenched, but the Confederate artillery enfiladed the Federal positions. It was after dark when General Seymour of Sedgwick’s corps finally withdrew his brigade, with heavy loss in killed and wounded.

When the battle roar had ceased, the rank and file of the Confederate soldiers learned with sorrow of the death of one of the most dashing brigade leaders in Ewell’s corps, General John M. Jones. This fighting was the preliminary struggle for position in the formation of the battle-lines of the two armies, to secure the final hold for the death grapple. The contestants were without advantage on either side when the sanguinary day’s work was finished.