The Civil War Through the Camera - Henry W. Elson

A LOSS IN “EFFECTIVE STRENGTH”—WOUNDED AT FREDERICKSBURG

Federal wounded in the Wilderness campaign, at Fredericksburg. Grant lost 17.3 per cent. of his numbers engaged in the two days’ battles of the Wilderness alone. Lee’s loss was 18.1 per cent. More than 24,000 of the Army of the Potomac and of the Army of Northern Virginia lay suffering in those uninhabited thickets. There many of them died alone, and some perished in the horror of a forest fire on the night of May 5th. The Federals lost many gallant officers, among them the veteran Wadsworth. The Confederates lost Generals Jenkins and Jones, killed, and suffered a staggering blow in the disabling of Longstreet. The series of battles of the Wilderness and Spotsylvania campaigns were more costly to the Federals than Antietam and Gettysburg combined.

ONE OF GRANT’S FIELD-TELEGRAPH STATIONS IN 1864

This photograph, taken at Wilcox Landing, near City Point, gives an excellent idea of the difficulties under which telegraphing was done at the front or on the march. With a tent-fly for shelter and a hard-tack box for a table, the resourceful operator mounted his “relay,” tested his wire, and brought the commanding general into direct communication with separated brigades or divisions. The U. S. Military Telegraph Corps, through its Superintendent of Construction, Dennis Doren, kept Meade and both wings of his army in communication from the crossing of the Rapidan in May, 1864, till the siege of Petersburg. Over this field-line Grant received daily reports from four separate armies, numbering a quarter of a million men, and replied with daily directions for their operations over an area of seven hundred and fifty thousand square miles. Though every corps of Meade’s army moved daily, Doren kept them in touch with headquarters. The field-line was built of seven twisted, rubber-coated wires which were hastily strung on trees or fences.