By a curious coincidence, Grant and Lee both began the attack and at the same hour. At five o’clock in the morning the blue and gray ranks rushed together, and opened fire on each other. Or rather, they fired when they heard each others’ steps and shouts. You saw little in that jungle.
I have already spoken more than once of this sombre country—a land of undergrowth, thicket, ooze; where sight failed, and attacks had to be made by the needle, the officers advancing in front of the line with drawn—compasses!
The assaults here were worse than night fighting; the combats strange beyond example. Regiments, brigades, and divisions stumbled on each other before they knew it; and each opened fire, guided alone by the crackling of steps in the bushes. There was something weird and lugubrious in such a struggle. It was not a conflict of men, matched against each other in civilized warfare. Two wild animals were prowling, and hunting each other in the jungle. When they heard each others’ steps, they sprang and grappled. One fell, the other fell upon him. Then the conqueror rose up and went in pursuit of other game—the dead was lost from all eyes.
In this mournful and desolate country of the Spottsylvania Wilderness, did the bloody campaign of 1864 begin. Here, where the very landscape seemed dolorous; here, in blind wrestle, as at midnight, did 200,000 men, in blue and gray, clutch each other—bloodiest and weirdest of encounters.
War had had nothing like it. Destruction of life had become a science, and was done by the compass.
The Genius of Blood, apparently tired of the old common-place mode of killing, had invented the “Unseen Death,” in the depths of the jungle.
On the morning of May 6th, Lee and Grant had grappled, and the battle became general along the entire line of the two armies. In these rapid memoirs I need only outline this bitter struggle—the histories will describe it.
Lee was aiming to get around the enemy’s left, and huddle him up in the thicket—but in this he failed.
Just as Longstreet, who had arrived and taken part in the action, was advancing to turn the Federal flank on the Brock road, he was wounded by one of his own men; and the movement was arrested in mid career.
But Lee adhered to his plan. He determined to lead his column in person, and would have done so, but for the remonstrances of his men.