CHAPTER VI.
THE WILDERNESS, SPOTSYLVANIA AND
COLD HARBOR.
On the 10th of March an order was received from President Lincoln assigning Gen. U. S. Grant to the command of all the armies of the United States, and during the last days of the same month Gen. Grant pitched his headquarters tent at Culpepper Court House, and commenced a study of the situation in Virginia, where the real struggle of the war had been maintained for nearly three years, and where the strength of the Confederacy yet lay. The time, until the 3d of May, was spent in active preparation for the opening of the spring campaign. Sick and disabled men were sent to the rear. All surplus baggage and stores were turned in, and the army, stripped for the fight, stood ready whenever the new commander should sound the advance; for although Gen. Meade was still commander of the Army of the Potomac, every man knew that Gen. Grant was there for the purpose of personally directing its movements. On the 3d of May the sharp shooters broke camp and marched out on that campaign which was destined to be one continual battle for nearly a year to come, and at the end of which was to come the final triumph at Appomattox.
The organization of Co. F at this time was as follows:
Captain, C. D. Merriman; vice E. W. Hindes honorably discharged on surgeon's certificate of disability.
| First Lieutenant, | H. E. Kinsman.. |
| First Sergeant, | Lewis J. Allen. |
| Second Sergeant, | Cassius Peck. |
| Third Sergeant, | Paul M. Thompson. |
| Fourth Sergeant, | L. D. Grover. |
| Fifth Sergeant, | Edward F. Stevens. |
| First Corporal, | Chas. M. Jordan. |
| Second Corporal, | Edward Trask. |
| Third Corporal, | M. Cunningham. |
| Fourth Corporal, | Edward Lyman. |
| Fifth Corporal, | D. W. French. |
| Sixth Corporal, | Carlos E. Mead. |
| Seventh Corporal, | Henry Mattocks. |
| Eighth Corporal, | Chas. B. Mead. |
With this organization and forty-three enlisted men, the company crossed the Rapidan at Ely's ford at nine o'clock A. M. on the 4th of May, 1864. Marching rapidly to the southeast; they bivouacked for the night near Chancellorsville on the identical ground on which they had fought exactly one year before under Hooker. The omen was not a happy one, but with high hopes of success under this new western general who had always beaten his enemies hitherto, they lay down prepared for whatever of good or ill the morrow might bring forth.
Reminders of the conflict of May, 1863, were thickly scattered about on the ground, and some men in the regiment found their hair covered knapsacks where they had thrown them off in the heat of the former battle, and which they had been forced to abandon. They found also the graves of some of their lost comrades, buried where they fell, while in many places human bones shone white and ghastly in the moonlight. It was the very ground over which the sharp shooters had driven the Stonewall brigade on the night of the 3d of May of the preceding year. With the earliest streaking of the eastern sky on the morning of the fifth, the Second Corps, with the sharp shooters in the advance, was put in motion towards Shady Grove church, situated some four or five miles to the southward at the junction of two important roads, and where they were to form the extreme left of the army. Before the head of the column had reached that point heavy firing was heard on the right and rear, and the column was counter-marched and ordered to return to the junction of the Brock road with the Orange plank road, which the enemy were making desperate efforts to secure. It was indeed a matter of the utmost importance to maintain possession of the Brock road, since it was the very key to the whole battle ground. Running nearly north and south from the Orange turnpike, near the old Wilderness tavern, it intersects all the roads leading from the direction from which the enemy were approaching, and, as it is the only important, or even passable, road running in that direction, its possession by either army would enable that party to outflank the other almost at pleasure. Getty's Division of the Sixth had been detached from that corps on the right some hours before, and ordered to hold this position at all hazards, and it was the sudden attack on this isolated command that had called the Second Corps back from its march towards Shady Grove church.