“Resolved, That the President be requested to transmit a copy of the foregoing resolution to Lieutenant-General Longstreet for publication to his command.
“Approved February 17, 1864.”
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS.
Campaign of 1864—General Grant in the Field—Strength of the Armies—Their Positions—Description of the Wilderness—The Battle opened—A Brisk Day’s Fighting—Longstreet’s Command faces Hancock’s on the Morning of the Second Day—An Effective Flank Movement—General Wadsworth mortally wounded—General Jenkins falls under Fire of Friends, and Longstreet is seriously wounded—Carried from the Field on a Litter—Tribute to General Jenkins—Criticism and Controversy.
After reporting the return of my command to service with the Army of Northern Virginia, I took the earliest opportunity to suggest that the preliminaries of the campaign should be carefully confined to strategic manœuvre until we could show better generalship. That accomplished, I argued, the enemy’s forces would lose confidence in the superiority of their leader’s skill and prowess; that both armies were composed of intelligent, experienced veterans, who were as quick to discover the better handling of their ranks as trained generals; that by such successful manœuvres the Confederates would gain confidence and power as the enemy began to lose prestige; that then we could begin to look for a favorable opportunity to call the enemy to aggressive work, while immediate aggression from us against his greater numbers must make our labors heavy and more or less doubtful; that we should first show that the power of battle is in generalship more than in the number of soldiers, which, properly illustrated, would make the weaker numbers of the contention the stronger force.
In this connection I refer to the policy of attrition which became a prominent feature during part of the campaign, and showed that the enemy put his faith in numbers more than in superior skill and generalship.
General Grant made his head-quarters near the Army of the Potomac, in Culpeper County, Virginia, commanded by Major-General George G. Meade. It had been organized into three corps, Second, Fifth, and Sixth, commanded respectively by Major-General W. S. Hancock, Major-General G. K. Warren, and Major-General John Sedgwick, all in cantonment near Culpeper Court-House. The Ninth Corps was a distinct body reorganized under Major-General A. E. Burnside, and posted in co-operative position near the railroad bridge over the Rappahannock River. The aggregate of the two commands was about one hundred and thirty thousand men, classified as follows: