Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2017 with funding from Duke University Libraries https://archive.org/details/battleofwilderne01scha ^Soofes 6p JHorrts ^>cl)aff THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS. Large crown 8vo, $2.00, net. Postage extra. THE SPIRIT OF OLD WEST POINT. Illustrated. Octavo, 583.00, net. Postage 20 cents. ETNA AND KIRKERSVI LLE, LICKING CO., OHIO. i2mo, $1.00 , net. Postage 8 cents. HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY Boston and New York THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS BY MORRIS SCHAFF AUTHOR OP “THE SPIRIT OP OLD WEST point” WITH MAPS AND PLANS BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY (Cfte Itibetsi&e pres£ Cambridge 1910 COPYRIGHT, I9IO, BY MORRIS SCHAFP ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Published October iqiq _ _ . , J. 7 7 3 ' 73 ^ /Al ajjJriAs V / A-W-fi — i ^ 2. '~7 £> $).s* f This booh is dedicated to the memory of my mother Charlotte l^art^dl J>d)aff buried in the little graveyard at Etna Ohio and whose gentle clay has long since blended with the common earth Morris Schaff £30369 LIST OF MAPS Battle-field of the Wilderness . . . Frontispiece Country between the Rapidan and Rappahan- nock 52 Country South of the Rapidan 68 General Map of the Wilderness 122 Country South of the Rappahannock .... 144 230369 \ THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS I From time to time, one or two friends have urged me to write of the war between the States, in which, as a boy, I took a humble part just after graduating at West Point; but I have always answered that nature had not given me the qualifications of a historian, and that, moreover, every nook and corner of the field had been reaped and garnered. So, I kept on my way. But not long ago, while in a meditative mood, a brooding peace settled over my mind, and lo! across a solemn gorge, and far up and away against the past, lay the misting field of History. While as in dream- land my inward eye was wandering bewitched over it, a voice hailed me from a green knoll at the foot of which burst a spring whose light-hearted current wimpled away to a pond hard by. “ Come over here,” said the voice, beckoning; and seeing that I stood still, and wore a perplexed look, it added feelingly, “You have written your boyhood memories of your old home, and you have written those of your cadet days at West Point; am I not dear to you, too? I am your boyhood memories of the War.” At once, from 2 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS the fields of Virginia the Army of the Potomac lifted as by magic and began to break camp to go on its last campaign; its old, battle-scarred flags were fluttering proudly, the batteries were drawing out, the bronze guns that I had heard thunder on many fields were sparkling gayly, and my horse, the same wide-nos- triled, broad-chested, silky-haired roan, stood sad- dled and bridled before my tent. The trumpets sounded ; and, as their notes died away, I picked up the pen once more. Upon graduating at West Point in June, 1862, I was commissioned a Second Lieutenant in the Ord- nance Corps and assigned to duty under that loyal, deeply-brown-eyed, modest Virginia gentleman and soldier, Captain T. G. Baylor, commanding the Arsenal at Fort Monroe. Fort Monroe, or Old Point Comfort (which is the loving and venerable historic name of the place), at that time and throughout the war was the port and station of greatest importance on our southern seaboard. Situated practically at the mouth of the James, it not only commanded the out- let from the Confederate capital at Richmond, but also the navigation of the Chesapeake and the Po- tomac, and offered a safe point for the assembly of fleets and armies preparatory to taking the offensive. When I reached there, it was the base of supplies for the Army of the Potomac, then on the last stage of its disastrous Peninsula campaign, and also for Burn- THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS 3 side’s army operating on the coast of North Carolina. Moreover, it was the rendezvous of our Atlantic squadrons and of the foreign men-of-war, which, drawn as eagles to the scene of our conflict, came in, cast their anchors, and saluted the flag, though the hearts of most of them were not with us. The little Monitor was lying there, basking in her victory over the huge, ungainly Merrimac; and alongside of her, their yards towering far above her, lay the pride of the old navy, the Wabash, the Colorado, and the Minnesota. Vessels, sail and steam, were coming and going, and the whole harbor was alive with naval and military activity. Nor did it cease when night came on; at all hours you could hear the wharves’ deep rumblings, and the suddenly rapid clanking of hoist- ing engines as ships loaded or discharged their car- goes; while from off in the harbor we could hear the childlike bells on the grim war-vessels striking the deep hours of the night. It was my first acquaintance with the sea, and I think I was fortunate in the spot where I gained my first impressions of it. For never yet have I stood on a beach where the water, rocking in long, regular beats, as if listening to music in its dreams, spread away in such mild union with the clouds and sunshine. The Army of the Potomac, whose fortunes I was to share on many a field, had just been through the fierce battles of Fair Oaks, Gaines’s Mill, Glendale (orFrayser’s Farm as it is called by the Confederates), 4 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS and Malvern Hill. In these desperate engagements it had been driven from the Chickahominy, and was then huddled around Harrison’s Landing on the north bank of the James, about twenty-five miles below Richmond. The army had suffered terribly in this campaign, known as that of the Peninsula; but the government, though cast down and sorely disap- pointed at the outcome, immediately responded with vigor to its needs, and the river and Hampton Roads were lined day and night with transports taking sup- plies of all kinds to it, and bringing back the sick and wounded, of whom there were very, very many. Its commander was McClellan, perhaps the war’s great- est marvel as an example of personal magnetism, and one of Fortune’s dearest children; yet one who, when Victory again and again poised, ready to light on his banner, failed to give the decisive blow. The authori- ties at Washington, never quite satisfied with Mc- Clellan and never confident that he would win, har- bored, I am satisfied, a political dread of him should success attend him; and now, finding him cooped up at Harrison’s Landing, organized an army to operate between Washington and Richmond, and had assigned to its command that really able and much abused soldier, John Pope, thereby hoping to get rid of McClellan. When Pope’s army on the upper Rappahannock was threatened with overthrow, the Army of the Po- tomac was recalled to Washington. It marched down THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS 5 the Peninsula to Old Point Comfort, where transports had been gathered to meet it. During that time McClellan and his staff were at our officers’ mess for several days, and on one occasion I lunched almost alone with him. So sweet and winsome was he, that I ever after was one of his sympathetic and ardent admirers. Later on I served with Hooker, Burnside, Meade, and Grant, each of whom in turn followed him at the head of the Army of the Potomac; but were that old army to rise from its tomb, not one of them would call out such cheers as those which would break when “Little Mac,” as it loved to call him, should appear. He was a short, compact, square- shouldered, round-bodied man, with a low forehead and heavily wrinkled brow. . j It took three or four days to embark the troops, and meanwhile I visited the camps of many of my West Point friends, and for the first time heard the trumpets of the dear old army. At last they were all aboard, and I watched them heading off up the Ches- apeake and longed to go with them, with my friends of cadet days, Custer, Cushing, Woodruff, Bowen, Kirby, Dimick, and others, — all of whose cheery, young faces seemed to diffuse the very air of glory, while the colors of Regulars and Volunteers seemed to beckon me to follow as they were borne away. The Army of the Potomac had come to be recog- nized at home and abroad as the country’s chief safe- guard, the one firm barrier to be relied upon to hold 6 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS Washington. For, the National Capital once in the hands of the Confederates, the cause of the Union would be irretrievably lost. None saw this fact clearer than the cold-eyed commercial power of the North, yet whose heart throbbed with the common love of the country’s ideals. So, all over the North, and especially in the region east of the Alleghanies where the most of its rank and file were reared, the people were proud of the Army of the Potomac; and at sunrise and sunset, and around every fireside, offered their prayers for it. Fearful indeed had been, and were to be, its trials. It had lost much blood, but the people knew that it was ready to lose still more before it would yield to a truce or ignominious peace. From the parapets of Fortress Monroe I saw that army move away. It soon met its old antagonist, the Army of Northern Virginia, the flower of the South- ern armies, on the field of Manassas, and then, just as autumn’s golden glow began to haze the fields, at Antietam; and at last under Burnside in the short, cold days of December, it made its frightful assault on Lee’s entrenchments along Marye’s Heights, back of Fredericksburg. It never showed greater valor, and its losses were sickening. The army wintered on the Rappahannock, opposite Fredericksburg, and in sight of the lines it had vainly tried to carry. Now and then I heard from my friends with the army, and day after day continued my duties in the shops, or testing big guns on the beach, wondering if THE BATTLE OF THE WILDEKNESS 7 the war would be over before I should see any active service in the field. Thus winter was passed and spring came — and nowhere does her face wear such a smile as at Old Point. The last of the migrating birds had gone over us, the days were lengthening, and I knew that the army would soon be moving again, and longed more and more to be with it. But my wonder and longing were soon to end. On April 16, Captain Baylor called me into the office, and with a smile handed me the following : — Wab Department, Adjutant-General’s Office, Washington, April 15 , 1883 . Special Orders No. 173 24. First Lieut. Morris Schaff, Ordnance Depart- ment, is hereby assigned to duty with the Army of the Potomac, and will report in person without delay to Major-General Hooker, Commanding. By Order of the Secretary of War, E. D. Townsend, Assistant Adjutant-General. Great was my delight ! I was in my twenty-second year, and what a mere, undeveloped boy! I bade good-by to Captain and Mrs. Baylor, and I never think of them without the tenderest emotion. He and a little group of friends, — in those days, as now, I made friends slowly, — all of whom were my seniors, went with me to the boat, and soon I was on my way. 8 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS Hooker’s headquarters were at the Phillips house on one of the hills known as the hills of Stafford, which shoulder up in array along the north bank of the Rap- pahannock. On reporting to him I was assigned as assistant to his chief of Ordnance, the big-hearted Captain D. W. Flagler (with whom I had been at West Point for three years), thereby becoming a part of the headquarters-staff of the army. I never saw Hooker’s equal in soldierly appearance ; moreover, there was a certain air of promise about him, — at least so he impressed me, — as he came riding up to headquarters just after I got there. His plans were made, and he was almost ready to move. A few days after I had reported, he sent for- Flagler, and gave him orders to have a supply of ammunition at the White House on the Pamunkey, which, as every one knows, is not far from Richmond, remarking that he had Lee’s army in his grasp, and could crush it like that, — closing his hand firmly. When Flagler came back to the tent, and told me what the general had said, the big fellow smiled; and, in the light of what happened, well he might: for within a few weeks, at Chancellorsville (lying just within the eastern border of the Wilderness), Hooker met a crushing defeat, and his laurels, like those of his predecessors, McClellan, Burnside, and Pope, were permanently blasted. The outlook from our headquarters, a truly vener- able Virginia manor-house, was commanding and THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS 9 interesting. Before it, on the other side of the river, and dreaming of its historic past, lay the old colonial town of Fredericksburg, in whose graveyard Wash- ington’s mother is buried. At the foot of the hill was the Rappahannock, bearing on peacefully between its willow-fringed banks, the Confederate pickets on one, and ours on the other in open view. Starting at the river side is a plain running off level as a floor, nearly a mile, to a line of low encircling hills known as Marye’s Heights. Fences, stone walls, and sunken roads mark the slopes of these hills, and on Decem- ber 13, 1863, the ground in front of them was blue, but not with autumn’s last blooming flower, the gentian, but with our dead. Back of the hills were fringes of timber, and then the rim of the bending sky. There lay Lee’s intrepid army, under the command of Longstreet, Hill, and Stonewall Jackson. The view had a pensive charm for me, and I could look at it hour after hour. At last all was ready, and Hooker, masked by the woods, moved up the river, crossed, and entered the Wilderness with boldness. He no sooner breathed its air than he lost all vigor, became dazed, and at Chan- cellorsville met his fate. In this savage encounter three of my young friends were either killed or mor- tally wounded: Marsh, Kirby, and Dimick. It will be remembered that Stonewall Jackson, conceded by friend and foe to be the ablest and most formidable corps commander of modern times, lost 10 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS his life by a volley from his own men at this battle of Chancellorsville, when on the very verge of deliver- ing what might have proved a mortal blow to the Army of the Potomac. As the circumstances of this event, so momentous to the Confederacy, repeated themselves with startling fidelity just a year later on the same road, and not two miles away, in the battle of the Wilderness, stopping again, but this time for good and all, Lee’s hour-hand of victory, there is established a mysteriously intimate and dramatic relation between the two battles, which will be revealed in its entire significance, I hope, as the narrative makes its way. On the day Stonewall was buried the bells of Fredericksburg tolled sadly, and across the river came to us the plaintive strains of their bands playing dirges. After Chancellorsville the defeated army staggered back to its old encampments, and the writer returned to the ordnance depot at Aquia Creek. There I saw Abraham Lincoln for the first and only time. He was seated in an ordinary, empty freight-car, on a stout plank supported at each end by a cracker-box. Hal- leck, in undress uniform, was on his left, a big man with baggy cheeks and pop eyes. Mr. Lincoln was gazing off over the heads of the staring groups of soldiers and laborers white and black, to the silent, timbered Virginia shore of the Potomac. He seemed utterly unconscious of all who had gathered about him. He was on his way to Hooker’s headquarters, THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS 11 and looked, and doubtless felt, sad enough. The world knows his features well. Plainer or more un- predictive externals nature never spread over the genius to govern ; but then she put in his breast as kind and lyric a heart as ever beat. Elated by his victory and urged on by the state of the Confederacy’s resources and his natural inclina- tion for the offensive, Lee, within a month, began the movements toward the upper Potomac which culmi- nated in the battle at Gettysburg, where for a time I remained, collecting the arms that were left on the field. I little dreamed then, as I rode and walked over that famous field, what an epoch it marked in the history of the war. Through the vast amount that has been written about the battle, and the devoted spirit in which the field has been preserved, and the services of those who fell commemorated, an im- pression prevails that the fate of the Confederacy was sealed that day, — an impression which a com- prehensive view of the situation will, I believe, chal- lenge if not remove. Let me state the grounds of my disbelief, and, if they do not convince, they may at least serve as a background for the narrative, aiding us to weigh the issues hanging on the campaign of 1864. When Grant was brought on from the West, and took virtual command of the Army of the Potomac, in the spring after Gettysburg, the war had been raging for three years. First and last, the North had 12 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS put into the field rising two million men; and, although important victories, such as Vicksburg, Gettysburg, and Missionary Ridge, had been won, and obviously the North had had the best of it, yet there is no gainsaying that her condition was peril- ous and her disappointments great. She had hoped and had sincerely believed that long ere that time she would have put down the Rebellion, and keenly she felt the sneers of the old world as she struggled for existence. But, notwithstanding her supreme efforts, the South was in some respects closer knit than ever, and far from being conquered. And now, at the end of three years of desperate war, she was staggering under a mighty debt, the Confed- erate cruisers had driven her commerce from the sea, volunteering, which had begun spontaneously and with burning enthusiasm, had stopped, and the ad- ministration had been forced to resort to the draft. Successive defeats had bred factions within and with- out the cabinet, — factions made up of governors, editors, and senators, all secretly denouncing Mr. Lincoln and his administration, and actively plot- ting to defeat him at the forthcoming convention. To make matters worse, the government, fretted by repeated reverses, had become more and more irritable, and, as was natural with the continuance of the war, more and more arbitrary. Those in offi- cial life who criticised its policies were turned upon fiercely; the press, never an easy friend or foe to deal THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS 13 with in time of peril, was threatened with muzzling, and some papers were actually suppressed, and their proprietors imprisoned; the provost-marshals, of necessity invested with wide but delicate military authority, often became despotic in their arrests, and almost habitually haughty in parading of their office, — their haughtiness aggravated by ignorance, vanity, and bad manners. Under it all, discontent had grown and spread, until, by the time the cam- paign of 1864 was ready to open, in the states border- ing on the Ohio there was a secret organization said to have had over four hundred thousand members, a coagulation of all phases of political hatred and tainted loyalty, only waiting for a substantial defeat of the Union army to break out into an open demand for an armistice, which, of course, meant the recog- nition of the South. As a proof of the depth and reality of this over- hanging danger, see the action of some of the courts, and the attempt of the legislature of Indiana to transfer the control of the state’s arsenal, with its eighteen thousand arms, — directly, to be sure, to three trustees, but in the end to that ostensibly peace-seeking yet practically traitorous organization. Meantime throughout the North patriotism was smothering under the bitterness of faction, and the blighting evil of indifference to the country’s glory, an indifference that nurses always at the breast of commercial prosperity. At the same time corruption 14 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS in official life, and dissipation in various forms, ran riot and made their way, undermining civic morals and manly virtues. Never were gambling-houses so common, low theatres so crowded, streets gayer, or the rotundas of hotels and the richly furnished rooms of fashionable clubs more frequented by young, able- bodied, well-dressed “high rollers ” and champagne- drinkers. Yet, let the sound of a drum be heard in the street at the head of some returning body of veterans, — whom not one of them had had the cour- age or manliness to join in defense of the country, — and lo! up would go the windows of the clubs, and they and the balconies of every hotel would be filled with cheering men. This being the state of affairs, let us suppose that Lee, at the outset of the campaign of 1864, had de- feated the Army of the Potomac decisively, and had driven Grant back across the Rappahannock, as he had driven Burnside, Pope, and Hooker, — how loud and almost irresistible would have been the cry for an armistice, supported (as it would have been) by Wall Street and all Europe! Where, then, would have been the victory of Gettysburg? In view of the dis- parity of numbers and the depleted resources of the Confederacy, was it possible for Lee to have given such a blow? Yes, and had not Fate registered her decree that at the critical moment Longstreet was to fall in the Wilderness as Jackson had fallen at THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS 15 Chancellorsville, he would have come near doing so. And so, great as was the victory at Gettysburg, I am not at all convinced that it was decisive, remem- bering, as I do, how the balance trembled more than once in the campaign from the Rapidan. But, however this may be, it must not be forgotten that, counterbalancing the incongruous gayety and dissipation that prevailed in our large cities, the dying down of early ardor, and the disloyal hives that were ready to swarm, there were thousands of pure, high-minded, resolute men and women who re- mained faithful to their ideals and kept the national spirit alive; who, in sunshine and shadow, for the glory of the country and their generation, upheld Mr. Lincoln’s hands and stood by him to the last most loyally. Neither defeat, pleas for peace, nor desire for ease prevailed against their heaven-inspired and steel-hardened determination to fight the Con- federacy to an end; and on them and the army in the field, I think, the honors of carrying the country through its perils should fall. It is true, and for the sake of history it should be recorded, that while a great majority of those stead- fast, loyal people of the North had felt that slavery was wrong and altogether out of harmony with civil- ization and the spirit of a free government, yet in the beginning of the war they had no desire or intent to interfere with it in the states; so dear were the mem- ories of the Revolution, and so deep their reverence 16 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS for Washington and his fellow slave-holding com- patriots who had joined Puritan New England in establishing the independence of the colonies. More- over, and notwithstanding those galling irritations which always attend the concession of social and political dominance, the North had not inherited any active hates or vindictiveness, although it had felt deeply of late the repeated scorn and increasing arrogance of the political leaders of the South, mani- fested in the discussion of slavery that had been going on for twenty or thirty years. It is needless to say that the language in Congress grew more and more heated, or that it was marked more and more by asperity of criticism and ugliness of temper and insolence of bearing. Neither side was fair in judging the convictions or the situation of the other. The Disunionist was blind to the inevitable wreck of all that was dear in social and political life if he destroyed the Union; the Abolitionist was blind, utterly blind, to the immediate and lasting evils of having his way with slavery. So it went on, till at last, burning with a raging fever over the John Brown raid, and lashed by a savage press, the South burst into delirium upon the election of Lincoln, and madly and vauntingly fired on the flag, that rippled out in joyful peace with every breeze that blew over Sumter. The arrogant leaders of the South meant that shot for a stinging challenge, and it was so understood. Every beech THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS 17 and maple and strong-limbed oak in the North, every one of her hills and streams, every one of the old fields and the liberty-enjoying winds that swept them, said, “Accept the challenge! Go, Northerners, go and assert your manhood!” But, Southerners! let me tell you that as they passed down the walks of the old home dooryards and out of the gates, followed by eyes that were dimmed with tears, the evils or the abolition of slavery did not enter the mind of one in a thou- sand. Their country and their honor were at stake, not the destruction of slavery. So it was generally, far and wide among the great body of the people. But with the progress of the war, and under the severe defeats of one army after another, as the South, out of the depths of her resolution, struck again and again, the belief took root that God would not bless their arms while slavery had a recognized legal exist- ence; and inasmuch as it became obvious that its death would be at the same hour as that of the Con- federacy, the influence of long-accepted legal defense and the golden ties of friendship melted before the warmth of moral and patriotic emotion. As a result, Lincoln, sensitive in a marvelous degree to what was going on deep in the hearts of the common people, carved emancipation across the sky of those solemn days, and the army that had left home without pro- nounced feeling against slavery said, “Amen!” And, what is more, “Amen!” said all the civilized world. There was also, coincident with this change, which 18 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS in a sense was political, another in the army, which was spiritual. Gradually, for in the divine ordering of progress consecrating spirits reveal themselves slowly, the consciousness broke at last on the minds of officers and men that the dearest hopes of man- kind were appealing to them individually in the name of duty and honor and all that was sacred, not to despair or to yield, come weal, come woe, till the country’s supremacy was unchallenged, and the way cleared for her future. Of nothing am I surer than of this visitation and the consequent serious, deep, and exalted mood; and I am fain to believe that every drop of blood that strained through a heart that lis- tened to these spiritual heralds and welcomed the vow, was permanently heightened in its color. When we realize how meagre had been the advantages among the rank and file, and how generally humble and obscure their homes, the marvel grows, and our hands reach instinctively for garlands for every one of them who gave up his life or who bore his part manfully. Now, a word as to the South. If the disappoint- ments of the North over the outcome of three years of war had been deep, those of the South had been deeper. So sure was she of the poltroonery of the North, and the indomitable courage of her own sons, that she had expected at the beginning to achieve her independence long, long ere the date of the cam- paign of May 1, 1864. In fact, thousands and thou- THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS 19 sands of her soldiers believed, as they set off in the spring of ’61 for the Potomac and the Ohio, that the southern banks of these beautiful rivers were to be the northern boundaries of their proud and victori- ous Confederacy; and this before the cotton, then ready to branch, should all be picked. But there had been Gaines’s Mill, Malvern Hill, Antietam, and Gettysburg in the east; Shiloh, Missionary Ridge, Stone’s River, and Vicksburg, in the west. No, they did not get back in time to see the cotton picked; many of them were never to see it bloom again. Year after year they had followed the drum, and were still far from home fighting for their wan, unacknowledged Confederacy, or sleeping in their graves. There is pathos in the contrast, as we think of them walking their sentry-posts to and fro, half-fed and half-clothed, now under drenching rains, now shiver- ing under northern winds, their hearts beating low, — so completely had the scene shifted and their hopes vanished. And what surprises they had had, too! Where was the evidence of that poltroonery in their enemies that they were so sure of? Lo, as when the heavens at night are troubled, and light- ning from some black cloud flashes as from a sud- denly opened furnace door, revealing to us across a field a wood standing resolute in burnished glory, so in the light of their own volleys again and again they had seen the North. More than once, also, they had witnessed Northern courage, as when the volun- 20 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS teers came on at Fort Donelson and Fredericksburg, leaving the ground they passed over blue with dead. No, they had discovered that there was steel and iron in the Northern blood when it came to battling for their self-respect and a cause which they believed to be holy. Again, when the Confederacy was launched at Montgomery, the South had the keen pleasure of seeing it hailed by several of the governments of Europe as a coming sister in the family of nations. While in buoyant self-confidence she was sure that all of them would recognize her sooner or later, yet it was her chief expectation and desire that England, with whose landed aristocracy the slave-holders had made themselves believe there was a natural sym- pathy, would be the first to reach out a welcoming hand. But days, months, and years had passed, and no hand had been extended. On the contrary, either through fear or interest, all, including England, had yielded to the demands of her despised adversary and drawn the mantle of neutrality closely around them. Before the first day of May, 1864, she had seen through the sarcasm and mockery of their greeting smiles. The situation was humiliating to the last degree. Moreover, the North had driven the Southern armies back from the Potomac and the Ohio, it had wrested from them the control of the Mississippi Valley, and had overrun and desolated a great share of their home-country. THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS 21 In addition, the Confederacy’s financial system, to their distress and mortification, had broken down completely, and about all their ports had been sealed up, thus cutting them off from both military and hospital supplies, and — at the time with which this narrative is dealing — humanity’s pleading cry from their hospitals was heard day and night. They had the means neither to succor their own sick and wounded, nor to discharge their duties to the pris- oners they held. The luxuries, too, once so abundant and so hospitably shared, were all gone; rich and poor were living from day to day on the plainest food. As in the case of the North, the high wave of volunteering for service in the field had passed, and the conscripting officer had become a visitor at every door, no matter how secluded in the woods or remote in the mountains the home might be. At his first visit he called for the boys of eighteen and the men up to forty-five. Later he came again, and demanded this time the boy of seventeen and the man of fifty. Northern men, who after engagements went over the fields where the Southern dead lay, will recall the young faces and the venerable gray hairs among the fallen. I saw a boy with a sweet face, who could not have been over sixteen or seventeen years old, lying on his back in a clover-field on the Beverly farm, within sight of Spotsylvania. He had just been killed. We had had tw*o or three days of heavy rains, but that morning it had cleared off smilingly. Only 22 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS a few drifting white clouds were left, and I am sure that they and the door of Heaven opened tenderly for his spirit as it mounted from the blooming clover. Well, so it was, — the boys and all the old men had been gleaned. While these bitter experiences and disappoint- ments were following one another year after year with their deepening gloom, a profound seriousness, which is reflected, I think, in the prayers, sermons, and diaries of the time, spread over the entire South. As a result, the war’s passions and the grounds of its justification underwent a progressive metamor- phosis in the minds and hearts of the Southern people, and especially of its armies, not unlike that which was going on simultaneously in the North. I some- times think that a history of the Rebellion cannot be full, just, or truly enlightening, that does not try to give us as close and real a view as it can of these spiritual changes. In the case of the South, it ac- counts, or so it seems to me, for two very impressive things, namely, the gallantry with which Lee’s army battled on, when the chance of success was almost hopeless; and the dearness of the memory of the Confederacy to all of them, notwithstanding that they see now, as we all see, that it was best that it should fail. .This change in the temper of the South in regard to the war and its issues embodied itself finally, as in the North, in a spirit of consecration. And to THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS 23 what? Her ports closed, her resources nearly ex- hausted, her dwindling armies suffering for food and clothing, a wide zone of desolation along her northern border, and unfriended by one of all the nations of the world, the South in her chagrin, humiliation, and despair turned for comfort to mind and heart, as we all do at last, invoking the guidance and help of her naturally religious better nature. In that solemn hour, banishing from her presence the hitherto baneful companions Arrogance and Disdain, who had caused her to drink of the full stream of trouble, she summoned back that master workman, Judg- ment, to whom in her delirium she had not listened; and behold, there came with him an immortal youth whose name is The Future. The former, facing the cold realities, pronounced slavery dead, whether the Confederacy lived days or years; and Lincoln’s emancipation proclamation, not the decree of one man, but the fiat of the civilized world. While Judgment’s verdict grew weightier and more certain as clearer and clearer became the writing on the wall, the immortal youth slowly drew back one of his curtains, revealing slavery becoming more and more abhorrent as mankind rose in intelligence and gentleness. Honor and Manliness, those two high- minded brothers in the Southerner’s character, shrank back at the sight, and declared their unwill- ingness to leave as the ultimate verdict of history that the Southland, the home of Washington and 24 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS Jefferson, had plunged the country into war for the preservation of an institution so repellent. Then up spoke that mighty, but not over-scrupulous advocate called Reason; yet on this occasion he spoke with sincerity unfeigned, saying : — “If there are wrongs, there are also rights. Man- kind knows that we of to-day are not responsible for slavery. It descended to us from our fathers, and through generations it has knit itself into our homes, our social and our political life. We cannot separate ourselves from it at once, if we would, without chaos and possibly universal massacre. But if our slaves are entitled to freedom, then we are entitled to govern ourselves; for that is the first of the heaven- born rights in the hands of freemen. In other words, we are asking only for our natural rights incorporated in the rights of our states, which underlie the founda- tions of the Union;” — and in majesty before the Southern mind the original sovereignty of the old colonies, with Washington and Adams at the head, passed in review. “ No, whatever may have been our delirium at the beginning of the war, we are not fight- ing for the defense of property in human beings, but for the ineradicable and unconquerable instinct of self-government as states; and for our homes.” And lo! at this point of the argument, the light of their burning homes flashed across the scene; for hardly a day or night passed that somewhere the Southern sky was not lit by them. Whereupon, THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS 25 leader and officer and man in the ranks rose as one, and facing the immortal Youth, in whose eyes lay the question of justification, exclaimed resolutely: “On the ground of the right of self-government we will stand; and committing our souls to God and our memories to those who follow us, let history record what it may as to our justification in the years and days to come.” And thus having answered the ques- tion in the eyes of The Future, reverently and calmly, they fell on their knees and asked God to bless them. There, reader, we have the spring of their fortitude, and there we touch the tender chords which keep the memory of the Confederacy dear. And really, friends, sure of the grounds of their construction of the Constitution and in the shadow of the clouds that overhung them, addressed by all the voices of their and our common nature, and moved by those deep currents which flow in every heart, could any other possible conclusion be ex- pected of a proud people? I think not. V And now, having set forth, I trust with fidelity, I know with charity, the state of affairs North and South, as well as I can; and having brought into view, as faithfully and vividly as lies in my power, the spirits which animated both armies, my narrative will go on. After Gettysburg, Lee, with what must have been a heavy heart, led his sorely wounded army back 26 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS into Virginia. Then, passing through the upper gaps of the Blue Ridge, he took his stand once more behind the Rappahannock, near whose banks lower down he had played as a boy. Meade followed him, and when I was recalled from Gettysburg and rejoined his headquarters, I found them near Fayetteville, a little hamlet between Bealeton and Warren ton. They were pitched on a rise in a heaving old planta- tion more or less shadowed by a scattered growth of young pines. I was glad to get back. The month I had passed at Gettysburg, however, was very interesting, and has left many memories, most of them dear to me. But after a battle is over and the army gone, you see the obverse side of glory so plainly that you long to get away from the blood-stained fields, and the ever-speaking loneliness of the shallow graves, to join your young, light-hearted friends around the cheering camp-fires. A few days after my return an incident took place which I think I should have laughed over whether we had gained a victory at Gettysburg or not. The tent I occupied was nearly opposite that of Colonel Schriver, Inspector- General on the staff. The old Colonel was rather spare, stern, and always neatly arrayed. About church-time, one very sunshiny Sabbath morning, I noticed him walking back and forth before his tent in high and brilliantly polished cavalry boots, with prayer-book in hand, reading his prayers. I thought what a splendid example of a THE BATTLE OF TEE WILDERNESS 27 follower of Jesus! and wished that I had the courage to perform my devotions so openly, and acknowledge that while I was a soldier of the Army of the Potomac I was also a soldier of the Cross. Suddenly I heard him call out, “James! James!!” James was his strapping young colored boy, and had a very nappy head. I looked up. The Colonel had halted, and his eyes were glaring across his well-defined nose toward James, who, sprawled out and bareheaded, was sun- ning himself with several other headquarters darkies behind the tent, and had probably gone dead asleep. “"What are you up to there, you damned black rascal!” roared the Colonel. “Lift those tent-walls!” James was on his feet with startling rapidity, and dived for the tent-ropes. Up came the prayer-book, out went the Colonel’s left foot, and when I saw his lips begin moving again reverently, boylike, I tum- bled down on my bed and nearly died laughing. Even now a smile ripples as I recall the scene. Surely, our inconsistencies are a blessing, for they are one of the perpetual fountains of amusement. The army was occupying the north bank of the Rappahannock, from Kelly’s Ford, a few miles below where the Orange and Alexandria Railroad crosses the river, up to Warrenton. It had almost recovered from its severe engagement, and was beginning to realize the magnitude and significance of the victory it had won. That mild and deep joy which a soldier always feels when he has met danger and done his 28 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS duty was in the hearts of all. Camp was bound to camp, corps to corps, and officer to private, by the ties of a new sense of high fellowship which proved to be abiding. This inspiring relation, the most val- uable in an army’s life, had been smelted, so to speak, in those three trying days at Gettysburg when cavalry, infantry, and artillery, line-officers, staff - officers, and privates in the ranks had witnessed each other’s steady, heroic conduct. And the result of this supreme test of courage was that officers and men of the Army of the Potomac felt that respect for one another and that pride in one another that only a battlefield can create. Whoever will read the story of Gettysburg will gain a notion how and why these ties were formed. Every living veteran who was there will recall Webb, Cushing, Woodruff, Haskell, and Hall; the latter carried as mild a face as graced the West Point battalion in my day. I saw Haskell frequently, and I have no doubt that Duty and Courage visit often, and linger fondly, around the spot where he fell at Cold Harbor. Allow me to add what I know to be true, that no matter how high or how low may be an officer’s rank, no matter where he was educated, what name he bears, what blood may be in his veins, or what wealth at his command, if, when he is going up under fire, mounted or dismounted, a private or non-commis- sioned officer near him advances beside him with undaunted face, — more than once it was a lad from THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS 29 a farm or humble walk in life, — all the claims of rank, wealth, and station are lost in admiration and sympathetic comradeship. What is more, he never forgets the boy. In this connection I trust I may refer with’ pro- priety to what a member of the Supreme Court of the United States, a learned judge who carries some of the country’s best blood, and who spilled some of it on several fields, told me one evening, before a quietly burning wood-fire, of an impression made on him at the Wilderness. In the midst of darkness and widespread panic, veteran regiments and bri- gades of the Sixth Corps breaking badly, an officer who had only casually gained his attention called out above the din, in a voice of perfect control, “Steady, steady — Massachusetts!” The gallant regiment steadied, and the incident left, as an endur- ing memory, the cool voice of the obscure officer still ringing across the vanished years. Nay, we think, in fact we know, that the final test of the soldier is when the colors move forward or the enemy comes on at them. Thank God for all the tender and iron-hearted young fellows who have stood it! '■ From that camp dates my first deep interest in the unfortunate Warren, for it was there, while messing with him and his fellow engineer-officers on the staff, that I saw him day after day at close range. The glory of having saved Round Top was beginning 30 THE BATTLE OF TEE WILDERNESS to break around him, and shortly after, as a reward, Meade assigned him to the command of Hancock’s corps, Hancock having been wounded at Gettysburg. But however keen and full may have been his in- ward joy, the joy of having done his duty, and saved a glorious field, it altered not his bearing, — which was that of the thoughtful, modest scholar rather than the soldier, — nor did it kindle any vanity in look or speech. It may have accounted, however, for the manifestation of what seemed to me a queer sense of humor, namely, his laughing and laughing again while alone in his tent over a small volume of “lim- ericks,” the first to appear, as I remember, in this country. He would repeat them at almost every meal, and, I think, with wonder that they did not seem nearly so amusing to others as they did to him. I am satisfied that it takes a transverse kind of humor to enjoy limericks. There was a note of singular attraction in his voice. His hair, rather long and carried flat across his well- balanced forehead, was as black as I have ever seen. His eyes were small and jet black also, one of them apparently a bit smaller than the other, giving a suggestion of cast in his look. But the striking char- acteristic was an habitual and noticeably grave expression which harbored in his dusky, sallow face, and instead of lighting, deepened as he rose in fame and command. Now, as I recall his seriousness and almost sympathy-craving look as an instructor at THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS 31 West Point, and think over his beclouded, heart- broken end, I never see the name of Five Forks that I do not hear Sheridan peremptorily relieving him just after the victory was won, and while the smoke of battle still hung in the trees. From my youth, I have seen Fate’s shadow falling across events, and I incline to believe that evil fortune took up its habita- tion in that deeply sallow, wistful face long before he or any one else dreamed of the great Rebellion. But, be that as it may, in that sunny field at head- quarters of the Army of the Potomac, I gained my first boyhood impressions of Warren, whose sad fate haunts that army’s history. And now, on those soft mountain and valley winds of memory, which always set in when anything pen- sive warms the heart, are borne the notes of the bugles sounding taps in the camps around us on those long- vanished August nights. Camp after camp takes up the call, some near, some far. The last of the clear, lamenting tones die away sweetly and plaintively in the distance, and back comes the hush of night as of old. Again the sentinels are marching their beats slowly, most of them thinking of home, now and then one, with moistened eyes, of a baby in a cradle. Peace to the ashes of Warren, peace to those of the sentinels of the Army of the Potomac who walked their posts on those gone-by, starry nights. II After several abortively offensive movements by each of the armies during the autumn of 1863, they went into winter quarters: Lee, with his army well in hand, on the south bank of the Rapidan; Meade, between the Rapidan and the Rappahannock. The former’s headquarters were among some pines and cedars at the foot of Clarke’s Mountain, near Orange Court House; the latter’s were on a knoll covered with tall young pines about a mile and a half north- west from Brandy Station. The bulk of the army of the Potomac was around Culpeper and Stevens- burg; one corps, the Fifth, under Warren, stretched northward along the Orange and Alexandria Rail- road — at present the Southern — as far as Calver- ton; the Sixth was between the railroad and Hazel River, a little tributary of the Rappahannock, the Second around Stevensburg, the First and Third, consolidated before we moved with the other three, were about Culpeper. Lee’s principal depot for sup- plies was at Orange Court House, ours at Brandy, where I passed the greater part of the winter in charge of the ordnance depot. The town, about midway between Culpeper and the Rappahannock, then had only three or four houses and a one-story, unpainted, lonely sort of a building THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS 33 for receiving freight. A good deal of military history of interest is connected with Brandy ; for in the rolling fields of the plantations about it, Lee, just before setting out for Gettysburg, reviewed Stuart’s cavalry, ten to twelve thousand strong. The dew was still on his great victory at Chancellorsville, won in the month before, and the review, according to all accounts, was a pageant, drawing people from far and near. Ladies, young and old, of Culpeper, Charlottes- ville, and more distant points in Virginia, were there, and around some of the horses’ necks, and hanging from the cantles of the saddles, and at the heads of the fluttering guidons, were bouquets and bunches of wild flowers which they bad brought w r ith them. They were proud, and justly so, of their sons, bro- thers, and lovers; and I really believe that the future of the Confederacy never looked so fair to them, or to those at its helm as on that June day. It will be remembered that in the deep mist of the morning following the review our cavalry crossed the Rappahannock and gave Stuart desperate battle right around Brandy; and it is a matter of history that our mounted force had its baptism on that field. For two years it had been a negligible quantity, and scorned by its enemy ; but from then on to the end our cavalry met the enemy sternly, with increas- ing bravery and effectiveness. The battle lasted nearly all day and was very severe; Buford, Gregg, Custer, Merritt, Kilpatrick, and the lamented Davis, 34 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS were all there. My tent at the station, pitched after dark and partly floored, I discovered later was over the grave of some one who had fallen in those re- peated charges. The other day I wandered over those same fields: cattle and sheep were grazing up the slopes where the squadrons had marched in the June sunshine; killdeers with banded necks and bladed wings, turtle-doves, meadow-larks, and serenely joyous little sparrows were flying and singing where the flags had fluttered and the bugles sounded. j In view of the fact that the bulk of the supplies to meet the daily wants of the army, then consisting of a hundred thousand men, and between forty and fifty thousand animals, were sent to Brandy, it is easy to imagine that it was a very busy place. Of course they all came by rail from Washington and Alex- andria. Those for the ordnance, hospital, and cloth- ing departments were put under cover in temporary buildings, while forage, and unperishable quarter- master and commissary stores, were racked up and covered by tarpaulins along the track and sidings. Some of the piles were immense, and from morning till night trains of army wagons were coming and going, or stood occupying all the open space around the station, waiting for their turn to load. In the history of the Fifth Massachusetts is the following letter from one of the sergeants of the battery. It is dated April 30, 1864. “The next battle will be a rouser! The rebels of THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS 35 Lee’s army are all ready for us, and are said to be ninety thousand. They will give us a tough pull if my opinion amounts to anything. “To-day I was up to Brandy Station. You can form no idea of the bustle and confusion at this depot when the army is getting ready to move. It looked to me as if a thousand or more wagons were waiting to load, and there were immense piles of ammunition and all kinds of Ordnance Stores, etc., etc., and piles of boxes of hard bread as high as two and three-story houses. It reminded me some of a wharf in New York with twelve or fifteen ships load- ing and unloading.” The trains were generally in charge of sergeants, but were often accompanied by their brigade and division officers, so that those of us at the head of depots gained a wide acquaintance throughout the army. Frequently these officers staid with us for dinner; and as my fellow messmate was Dr. J. B. Brinton of Philadelphia, in charge of the medical supplies, and as surgeons, like certain aspiring young lawyers, never cease to talk about their cases, I knew a good many surgeons well, and understood at least a part of their professional lingo. The wagons were generally drawn by six mules driven by negroes, who rode the nigh wheeler and managed the team by a jerk line to the nigh leader. In these days it may seem like a shiftless way to drive a team, but it worked well, and possibly be- 36 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS cause the darkies and the mules, through some me- dium or other, understood each other perfectly; at any rate, the drivers talked to their teams as if they comprehended every word said to them; and some- times it was worth listening to, when the roads were bad and some of the wagons ahead of them were stuck in the mud. “Calline” (Caroline, the nigh leader), giving her an awakening jerk of the line, “stop dreamin’ with dem y’ears o’ yourn.” “Jer’miah” (Jeremiah, the off wheeler), “you’ll think the insex is bit’n you if you don’t put dem sholdahs agin dat collah.” “Dan’l” (Daniel, the wheeler he is on), giving him a sharp dig in the ribs with his boot-heels, the road getting heavier every minute, “no foolin’, you old hahdened sinnah ! ” “Member, Mrs. N’nias ” (Mrs. Ananias, off leader), “if dis yere wagon sticks in dat hole ahead o’ you, you ’ll wish you ’re down in the dakh grave ’longside dat lie’n husband o’ yourn.” And, on reaching the worst place in the road, yelling “Yep! Yah!” loud enough to be heard half-way from Washington to Baltimore, every prophet and lady mule in the team knew what to expect if the wagon stuck, and generally the faithful creatures pulled it through. In one of the teams of the ammunition-trains that came to the depot, there was a little bay mule, the leader, that wore a small and sweetly tinkling sheep- bell. I stroked her silky nose and neck often and was always glad to see her. On the Mine Run campaign. THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS 37 one of the abortive campaigns referred to above, in December, 1863, while riding from Ely’s Ford to Meade’s headquarters at Robertson’s Tavern on the Orange and Fredericksburg pike, a road which will be mentioned over and over again later, I overtook a long train. My progress by it was necessarily slow, for it was a pitch-dark night and the road narrow and very bad. But when I got near the head of the train I heard the little tinkling bell, and soon was along- side the faithful creature tugging away to the front. It may seem ridiculous, but I felt I had met a friend, and rode by her side for quite a while. I do not re- member seeing her again till the army was crossing the James near Fort Powhatan. While I do not wish to encumber the narrative with a burden of figures, yet it may interest the reader to know that we had in the Army of the Potomac, the morning we set off on the great cam- paign, 4300 wagons and 835 ambulances. There were 34,981 artillery, cavalry, and ambulance horses, and 22,528 mules, making an aggregate of 57,509 animals. The strength of the Army of the Potomac was between ninety-nine and one hundred thousand men. Burnside, who caught up with us the second day of the Wilderness, brought with him about twenty thousand more. My original telegraph book, now before me, shows that I called for and issued between April 4 and May 2, the day before we moved, in addition to equip- 88 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS ments and supplies of all kinds for infantry, artillery and cavalry, 2,325,000 rounds of musket and pistol cartridges as a reserve for what was already on hand. When Sheridan returned from his Trevilian raid and battle, we then had gone as far on our way toward Richmond as the White House, Mrs. Washington’s attractive old home on the Pamunkey. At the men- tion of the memorable place, back comes the odor of mint being brewed in a julep, mint gathered in the famous war-stricken garden; and back come also a squad of dust-covered soldiers removing tenderly the bodies of their gallant commanders, Porter and Morris, killed at Cold Harbor, from ambulances, and bearing them aboard the boat for home. While at White House I ordered 88,600 rounds of pistol and carbine ammunition for Sheridan’s command alone. When we reached City Point a few days later • — the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, and Cold Harbor lay behind us — I called, on one requisition, for 5,863,000 rounds of infantry and 11,000 rounds of artillery ammunition, this 11,000 in addition to a like amount received at White House. I should be untrue to my memory of Brandy if I did not record my high regard for my messmate through all that long winter of ’63 and ’64, Dr. J. B. Brinton, an assistant surgeon in the regular army. Transparency in minerals is rare, and always carries a suggestion of refinement; in the characters of men it is supreme, overtopping genius itself. It was Brin- THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS 39 ton’s steady characteristic, and in all the long pro- cession of friends that have blest my way through life I recall no one more humanly real, or who had more natural sweetness, or who cherished better ideals. Moreover, there was a fountain of quiet joy- ousness about him, too, and I fondly believe that the recording angel has but little in his book against either of us for those winter days and nights. For I know we passed them without envy, hatred, or malice toward any one in the world. There was an incident in our life at Brandy, con- nected with Gettysburg, which possibly is worth relating. Batchelder, whose map of the battlefield of Gettysburg is authority, and whom we had fallen in with while we were there, asked to join our mess at Brandy when he came to the army to verify the positions of the various commands. One night, just after we had sat down to dinner, he entered quite tired. “Well,” he announced, taking his place at the table, “I have been in the Second Corps to-day, and I believe I have discovered how Joshua made the sun stand still. I first went to regiment and had the officers mark on the map the hour of their brigade’s position at a certain point. Then I went to regiment in the same brigade; they declared positively it was one or two hours earlier or later than that given by the other. So it went on, no two regiments or brigades agreeing, and if I hinted that some of them must certainly be mistaken, they would set me down by saying, with 40 THE; BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS severe dignity, ‘We were there, Batchelder, and we ought to know, I guess’; and I made up my mind that it would take a day of at least twenty hours instead of thirteen at Gettysburg to satisfy their ac- counts. So, when Joshua’s captains got around him after the fight and they began to talk it over, the only way under the heavens that he could ever harmonize their statements was to make the sun stand still and give them all a chance.” Any one who has ever tried to establish the exact position or hour when anything took place in an engagement will confirm Batchelder ’s experience; and possibly, if not too orthodox, accept his explanation of Josh- ua’s feat. My duties called me daily to Meade’s headquar- ters; and when his Chief of Ordnance, John R. Edie of Pennsylvania and of the class ahead of mine at West Point, was away on leave I took his place there per- manently. Meade at this time was in his forty-ninth year, and his Gettysburg laurels were green. His face was spare and strong, of the Romanish type, its com- plexion pallid. His blue eyes were prominent, coldly penetrating and underhung by sweeping lobes that when cares were great and health not good had a rim of purplish hue. His height was well above the average, and his mien that of a soldier, a man of the world, and a scholarly gentleman. He wore a full, but inconspicuous beard, and his originally deep chestnut, but now frosted hair, was soft and inclined THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS 41 to wave on good, easy terms with his conspicuous and speaking forehead. His manners were native and high-bred, but, alas! they reared a barrier around him which cut him off from the love of his army, and I doubt if it would ever have rallied around him had he been relieved and recalled, as it did around McClellan. In social hours, when things were going well, no man in civil or military life would outshine him in genial spirits or contribution of easy and thoughtful suggestive speech. He had, too, that marvelous instrument, a rich, cultivated voice. But nature had not been alto- gether partial: she had given him a most irritable temper. I have seen him so cross and ugly that no one dared to speak to him, — in fact, at such times his staff and everybody else at headquarters kept as clear of him as possible. As the campaign progressed, with its frightful carnage and disappointments, his temper grew fiercer — but, save Grant’s, everybody’s got on edge, and it was not to be wondered at. Nevertheless, Meade was a fine, cultivated, and gal- lant gentleman, and as long as the victory of Gettys- burg appeals to the people he will be remembered gratefully, and proudly too. In camp his military coat, sack in cut, was always open, displaying his well-ordered linen, vest, and necktie; when mounted, he wore a drooping army hat, yellow gauntlets, and rode a bald-faced horse with a fox-walk which kept all in a dog-trot to keep up with him, and on more 42 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS than one occasion some one of the staff was heard to say, “Damn that horse of Meade’s! I wish he would either go faster or slower.” Hancock, who commanded the Second Corps, was, like Hooker, a very handsome, striking-looking man ; both were of the military type and looked and moved grandly. He was symmetrically large, with chest- nut hair and rather low forehead, but authority was in his open face, which, when times were storm- ing, became the mirror of his bold heart; “so that in battle,” says Walker, his distinguished Inspec- tor-General, “ where his men could see him, as at Williamsburg and Gettysburg, he lifted them to the level of his impetuous valor. But when he was surrounded by woods and he could not see his enemy, as at Ream’s Station and the Wilder- ness, he was restless and shorn of much of his effec- tiveness, very unlike the great commander he was as he rode up and down his lines, inspiring them with his electrical energy, until severely wounded, when Pickett was coming on.” When he returned to duty I happened to be at Meade’s headquarters. Some one observed, “There’s Hancock,” who was just dismounting. Meade came hurrying out from his quarters, bareheaded and with illuminated face — I can hear his rich-toned voice as he said, “I’m glad to see you again, Hancock,” and grasped the latter’s outstretched hand with both of his. They had not seen each other since the great day. THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS 43 Sedgwick, who commanded the Sixth Corps, was stocky, had short, curling chestnut hair, was a bache- lor, and spent lots of time playing solitaire. His whole manner breathed of gentleness and sweetness, his soldiers called him Uncle John, and in his broad breast was a boy’s heart. I saw him only a few hours before it ceased to beat at Spotsylvania. Sheridan joined the army just before we moved and so I saw much less of him than of any of the other corps commanders. He was not of delicate fibre. His pictures are excellent, preserving faith- fully the animation of his ruddy, square face and large, glowing dark eyes. With his close army asso- ciates he threw off rank and fame and made many a night memorable and loud, and Lee’s final over- throw is due in great measure to him. He had a genius for war and his name will last long. Meade’s chief of staff was Humphreys, and as so much of the success or failure of an army hangs on that position, a word about him will not be out of place. Moreover, his services were great as a corps commander, for after we got in front of Petersburg, Hancock, on account of his Gettysburg wound, had to give up command, and Meade assigned Hum- phreys to succeed him at the head of the famous Second Corps. He was a small, bow-legged man, with chopped-off, iron gray moustache; and when he lifted his army hat you saw a rather low forehead, and a shock of iron-gray hair. His blue-gray dauntless 44 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS eyes threw into his stern face the coldness of ham- mered steel. I never saw it lit up with joy but once, and that was long after the war, as he met an old classmate at West Point on graduation day. And yet off duty, by his simple manners, unfailing in their courtesy, and his clear, easy, and informing talk, he bound friends and strangers to him closely. Look at him well: you are gazing at a hero, one who has the austere charm of dignity and a well- stored mind. Like a knight of old, Humphreys led his division against the heights of Fredericksburg; and at Gettysburg, on the second day, he was only driven from the Emmitsburgh road salient after a most desperate defense, probably saving the line. He graduated in the class of 1831, Meade in that of 1835. And now I come to two men on Meade’s staff whose names like daisies in a meadow dot the his- tory of the Army of the Potomac: Seth Williams, who was the Adjutant-General, and General Henry J. Hunt, Chief of Artillery. To set them forth so that the reader would see them and know them as they were, would give me keen pleasure, for there never was a sweeter-tempered or kindlier heart than Williams’s, or a braver one than Hunt’s. Williams’s hair was red, his face full, open and generous, and always lit up as if there were a harp playing in his breast. At Appomattox, when Lee was going through the trying ordeal of surrendering his army, the only one of all in the room whom he greeted with anything THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS 45 like cordiality was Williams; for all others his face wore its native dignity. Williams was from Maine, and had been Lee’s adjutant at West Point when he was superintendent. Hunt, the chief of artillery, whose complexion was about the color of an old drum-head, had rather dull black eyes, separated by a thin nose. His West Point classmates loved him, and called him “Cupid.” He was lion-hearted, and had won brevet on brevet for gallant conduct. At Gettysburg it was Hunt, riding through the storm, who brought up the fresh bat- teries and put them into action at the critical moment of Pickett’s charge. Both he and Williams have long since made their bed in the grave. There is a great temptation to dwell on other mem- bers of the staff. On Ingalls, the chief quartermaster, a classmate of Grant’s: a chunky, oracular-looking man who carried sedulously a wisp of long hair up over his otherwise balding pate, and who, besides being the best quartermaster the war produced, could hold his own very well with the best poker players in the army or Congress, and in those days there were some very good ones in both Senate and House. On McParlin, the head of the medical depart- ment, Duane, the chief engineer, Michler, Mendell, and Theodore Lyman of Boston, of Meade’s staff. All were my seniors, and their character and services I remember with veneration. Especially would I love to dwell on those who were about my own age, not 46 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS one of us over twenty -five, mere boys as it were: Sanders, Bache, Bates, Edie, Cadwalader, Biddle, Pease, and handsome George Meade, with whom I passed many a pleasant hour. So far as our services or personalities had significance, we were like the little feathery clouds which sometimes fringe great ones as they bear steadily on. And, truly like them, we have melted away. The big clouds, on the other hand, that we accompanied, at more or less dis- tance, with such light hearts, Grant and Meade, are lying richly banded low down across the glowing sun- set sky of History. "When I visited the knoll, a few weeks ago, where Meade had his headquarters, and where we all passed a happy winter, — it is now bare, clothed only in grass, with here and there an apple tree or a locust in bloom, that have taken the places of the young pines, — I thought of them all. It is needless to say that the scene from the old camp offered its contrasts. Where desolation had brooded, clover was blooming; in the fields where the bleaching bones of cattle, horses, and mules, had stippled the twilight, the plough was upturning the rich red earth with its sweet, fresh breath of promise. In short, the choral songs of Peace and Home had replaced the dirges which underlie the march of glory. Grant had his headquarters in the Barbour house in Culpeper, now the site of the county jail. At this time he was in his forty-second year, having gradu- THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS 47 ated at West Point in 1843. I am not vain enough to think that anything I may say will add to the world’s knowledge of him. Several of his personal aides, and many admirers, have written books about him which like sconces throw their beams on his per- sonality and remarkable career, but neither they as friends or the predacious critics who have driven their beaks fiercely into him, have yet revealed to me the source of the fascinating mystery in his greatness. When he came to the Army of the Potomac — I remember the day well — I never was more surprised in my life. I had expected to see quite another type of man: one of the chieftain -type, surveying the world with dominant, inveterate eyes and a certain detached military loftiness. But behold, what did I see? A medium-sized, mild, unobtrusive, incon- spicuously dressed, modest and naturally silent man. He had a low, gently vibrant voice and steady, thoughtful, softly blue eyes. Not a hint of self-con- sciousness, impatience, or restlessness, either of mind or body; on the contrary, the centre of a pervasive quiet which seemed to be conveyed to every one around him — even the orderlies all through the cam- paign were obviously at their ease. I often looked at him as I might have looked at any mystery, as day after day I saw him at his headquarters, es- pecially after we had reached City Point, — the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, and Cold Harbor, with their frightful losses, lying behind us. 48 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS There was nothing in his manner or his tone or his face that indicated that he had ever had anything to do with the victories of Fort Donelson, Vicksburg, and Missionary Ridge, or that his unfinished task, so momentous for the country, troubled him. There was certainly something evoking about him. What of the earth, earthy, what of exceeding greatness, what dim constellation of virtues, were looking out of that imperturbable but sadly earnest face? At one time, and not long before the period dealt with, lean Want had sat at his table. Few tried companions frequented his door or cheered his fireside then. The war comes on, the spirit of the age, as I believe, in the guise of Opportunity knocks at his door, and without powerful friends to back him, and with no social or political influence to clear the way for him, in less than four years, never courting advancement, never resenting malevolent criticism or ill treatment, tempted always, there he was aloft in the country’s eye the winner of its telling victories, a Lieutenant- General in command of all the armies of the North, and with the destiny of the Republic hanging on him ! Has Genius ever shown her transcendency more mas- terfully? It is needless for me to add that, marvelous as this career had been, the future was to unfold it, rising far above the level of wonder. If his antagonist Lee be the culmination of the gentleman and soldier of our land, and of all lands, Grant made the splendor THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS 49 of his background for him by putting into the hith- erto hard face of war two humanizing features, chiv- alry’s posies so fragrant with glory, magnanimity and modesty in the hour of Victory. There was one man on Grant’s staff whose name should not be forgotten ; in fact, it ought to be carved on every monument erected to Grant, for it was through him, Colonel John F. Rawlins, his chief of staff, that Grant’s good angel reached him her steady- ing and uplifting hand. He was above medium size, wore a long black beard, and talked in a loud, em- phatic voice. Sincerity and earnestness was the look of his face. He had on his staff three of my West Point ac- quaintances, Comstock, Babcock, and Porter. Com- stock had been one of the instructors in mathematics; Babcock and Porter had been in the corps with me. Captain Hudson of his staff I have good reason for remembering; for I was playing “seven-up,” with him and the late Admiral Clitz of the navy, w T hen my ordnance depot at City Point was blown up by a torpedo brought down from Richmond, and placed by a couple of daring Confederates clothed in our uniform on the deck of a barge loaded with artillery ammunition. Our innocent game was going on in the tent of Captain Mason, who commanded Grant’s escort. First came the explosion of the depot, that shook the earth and was felt for miles; then a solid shot tore through the mess chest. I doubt if a game 50 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS of cards ever ended quicker than that one. We fairly flew from the tent, and at once came under a shower of bursting shells and falling wreckage. One of the barge’s old ribs, that must have weighed at least a ton, dropped right in front of Clitz. Changing his course, he uttered only one remark, the first half of the 35th verse of the 11th chapter of the Holy Gospel of Saint John. Then, with eyes on the ground, and wondering, I suspect, what would come next, he passed at great speed right by Grant, who in his usually calm voice asked, “Where are you going, Clitz?” The admiral hove to, and then streaked it for his war vessel, and we never finished the game. The youngest and nearest my own age on Grant’s staff was “Billy” Dunn, one of the best and truest friends I ever had. He had reddish hair and naturally smiling eyes, and died not long after the war. Peace, peace be on the spot where the brave and sweet- hearted fellow sleeps! The looming gravity of the situation North and South, which I have tried to depict, left no doubt, I think, in the minds of Grant and Lee, that the com- ing campaign called on Lee to give Grant a crushing defeat at the very outset of the campaign ; or at least a blow that would send him reeling back across the Rapidan, leaving him stunned and helpless for months, as Burnside and Hooker had been left before him. For he knew, and every observer of the times THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS 51 knew, that such a defeat would give to the dastard Peace Party, on whom the last hope of the Con- federacy hung, immediate and bold encouragement to declare “the War a failure,” and at the coming presidential election, Lincoln’s administration, pledged to its continuance, would be swept away. In that case, every leader and private in the Confederate Army knew that, once their inwardly despised friends got hold of the helm, under the cowardly cloak of humanity they would ask for an armistice. That granted, the goal would be reached and their weary Confederacy, weighted down with slavery, would be at rest. The children of the leaders of the Peace Party of the North ought to thank God for balking their fathers’ incipient treason; for where would their present pride of country be? The last hopes then of reaching a harbor called on Lee for a vic- tory; our country’s destiny on Grant, for the com- plete destruction of Lee’s army; for until then there could be no peace with safety and honor. Little would it avail or does it seem necessary for me to discuss the military problem that confronted these two great Captains. What they might have done by throwing their armies this way and that I ’ll leave to the bass-drum wisdom of theoretical strategists. The moves they made were determined primarily, as in all campaigns, by the natural features of the country, the safety and facility of obtaining supplies, and the exigencies of their respective governments. 52 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS As has been said, Grant’s and Lee’s armies were on the Orange and Alexandria, now the Southern, Railroad. Each was about the same distance from his capital, whose capture meant in either case the end of the war. The Confederacy would have its place among nations if Lee took Washington, its death beyond resurrection if Grant took Richmond. Grant’s headquarters at Culpeper were about sixty miles southwest from Washington; Lee’s at Orange Court House, sixteen or eighteen miles farther south, were in the vicinity of seventy miles northwest from Richmond; in geometrical terms, the armies were at the apex of a flat isosceles triangle, its base a line running almost due north and south from Washing- ton to Richmond. Twenty-odd miles to the west, beyond the camps of both armies, rose in matchless splendor the azure sky-line of the Blue Ridge, behind which lies the Valley of the Shenandoah, Lee’s gate- way for his two invasions of the North, and availed of by him for repeated strategical movements whereby he forced the Army of the Potomac to fall back for the safety of Washington. We all see now that a point convenient to the Baltimore and Ohio road at the foot of the valley should have been forti- fied, garrisoned, and guarded as tenaciously as Wash- ington itself. Down from this beautiful range come the Rappa- hannock and the Rapidan, — rivers whose names we shall repeat so often, — which, after flowing through THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS 53 many an oak and chestnut wood and by many a smiling plantation, meet in the northern belt of the Wilderness, about twenty miles as the crow flies east of Culpeper, and nearly the same distance west of Fredericksburg. These rivers, the Rappahannock somewhat the larger, the Rapidan the faster, hold rich secrets of the struggle, for many a night the armies camped on their banks, and many a time crossed and recrossed them, sometimes in victory, and after Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville in dismal defeat. And now that I speak of them, I see them flowing in their willow-fringed channels and I hear their low musical tongues once more. ‘The country through which they run, and our corps’ camps during the winter of 1863-4, can best be seen from the top of Mt. Pony, a wooded detached foothill of the Blue Ridge, that rises abruptly near Culpeper. From its top, looking north, the railroad is seen bear- ing on from the Rappahannock, through an undu- lating farming section, that is green and lovely: first past Elkwood, then Brandy, and by one plantation after another, on into the old and attractive town of Culpeper. Somewhat to the northeast, four or five miles away, and about equidistant from Brandy and Culpeper, is a hamlet of a half-dozen age-worn houses called Stevensburg, sitting at the foot of a bare hill that looks like a giant asleep. It is Cole’s or Lone Tree Hill, so called from a single tall primeval tree that spread its leafless limbs against the winter’s morning 54 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS and evening skies. On and around this hill were the camps of Hancock. A short while before we moved, Sheridan assembled the second and third divisions of his cavalry near Stevensburg. Custer had his headquarters in the Barbour House, and Wilson at the old Grayson Manor, known as Salubria, where Jefferson on many an occasion was a guest and where Lady Spottswood is buried. Stevensburg, like so many of the old dreaming country towns of Virginia, has proud memories of distinguished sons. From the northwest comes into the little village the road from Brandy, and from the west that from Culpeper; both are mighty pleasant ones to follow in May, when the rolling fields on either hand are dotted with herds of grazing steers and the meadow- larks are piping their clear, high, skyey notes. When we set off for the Wilderness, Meade and his staff, followed by the Sixth Corps, came down the one from Brandy; Grant and his staff, followed by Warren with the Fifth Corps, on that from Culpeper. At the village these roads enter the main one that was built in Washington’s boyhood to connect Stevensburg with Fredericksburg. This old highway is narrow, and its course from Stevensburg is almost due east, sometimes skirting lonely clearings but warping its way most of the time through sombre woods, woods with a natural deep silence, but flaming here and there with clumps of azaleas in their season. At Ely’s Ford it crosses the Rapidan, which three or four THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS 55 miles farther on falls into the Rappahannock. At Sheppard’s Grove, midway between Stevensburg and Ely’s Ford, a road branches off to Germanna Ford on the Rapidan. Alone in the woods along this road, and standing close by it, is a little frame house painted white. In its narrow dooryard and under each window to the right and left of the door is a yellow rose-bush, and on passing it lately, attracted by the beautiful roses then in full bloom and the open door, I ven- tured to stop and make a call. I discovered that a pensioner, one of our old cavalry soldiers, lived there. He was not at home, but his wife, a frank, naturally pleasant gray-haired woman, seated in her rocking- chair, told me that she was born near by, her people rankly Southern, and that she fell in love with her Yankee husband while he was a sentinel at her father’s house. After the war — and she remembered the volleys in the Wilderness well — her lover came back, they were married, bought the little farm, built the house, and transplanted the roses from the old home: and as I rode away I thought of the red rose of Lancaster and the white rose of York. About a mile and a half beyond their little clear- ing is Germanna Ford on the Rapidan. From there runs a road to Stevensburg that crosses on its zigzag way a pretty brook and passes through the famous Willis plantation. All the roads that I have men- tioned, and over which we moved, are intersected by 56 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS many country roads that are but little more than tracks through the woods and fields. There are two streams flowing through the land- scape that spreads from Mt. Pony, which I should like to mention, for I am indebted to them for many a pleasant murmur, and because their mingled waters, pouring over the dam at Paoli Mills, now known as Stone’s, told me where I was in the still hours of the night, when misled by a guide while carrying Grant’s first despatches from the Wilder- ness. They are Jonas and Mountain runs. The former, much the smaller, rises in the fields beyond Brandy, the latter among the foothills of the Blue Ridge. They meet near Lone Tree Hill, and Moun- tain Run winds on northeastwardly to the Rappa- hannock, its course through stretches of oak, pine, and cedar forest, where wild turkeys breed and red- birds sing. When I was down there the other day, the miller at Clarico’s Mill, three or four miles above Stone’s, told me that a tame turkey, perfectly white, had joined a flock of wild ones and roamed the neigh- boring woods with them, — which suggests that our natures, like theirs, perhaps, are not changed by the feathers we wear. Finally, before leaving Mt. Pony there is one more feature to which I wish to call attention. To the south, after traversing a gently sloping country sprinkled with farms and woods, the fences between the fields pomponed by small dark green cedars, the THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS 57 eye catches the top of a blue veiled peak. It is Clarke’s Mountain, beyond the Rapidan, and was Lee’s signal station. But the particular feature to which I wish to direct the reader’s eye lies east of Clarke’s Moun- tain, a vast expanse of forest green, in spots almost black, and reaching clear to the distant circling hori- zon. Gaze at it long and well, for that is the Wilder- ness, and when I saw it last from the top of the moun- tain great white clouds were slowly floating over it. In its wooded depths three desperate engagements were fought between the Army of the Potomac and the Army of Northern Virginia, — Chancellorsville, Wilderness, and Spotsylvania, — in which, first and last, over sixty thousand men, whose average age did not exceed twenty-two years, were killed and wounded. A circle described from Piney Branch Church on the Catharpin road with a radius of five miles will take in all these fields. What is known as the "Wilderness begins near Orange Court House on the west and extends al- most to Fredericksburg, twenty -five or thirty miles to the east. Its northern bounds are the Rapidan and the Rappahannock, and, owing to their winding channels, its width is somewhat irregular. At Spot- sylvania, its extreme southern limit, it is some ten miles wide. There, as along most of its southern border, it gives way to a comparatively open country. This theatre of bloody conflicts is a vast sea, so to speak, of dense forest — a second growth more than 58 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS a century old. It is made up chiefly of scrubby, stubborn oaks, and low-limbed, disordered, haggard pines, — for the soil is cold and thin, — with here and there scattering clumps of alien cedars. Some of the oaks are large enough to cut two railroad ties, and every once in a while you come across an acre or two of pines some ten to twelve inches in diameter, tall and tapering, true to the soaring propensities of their kind. But generally, the trees are noticeably stunted, and so close together, and their lower limbs so intermingled with a thick underbrush, that it is very difficult indeed to make one’s way through them. The southern half of this lonely region may be designated as low or gently rolling; but the northern half, along the rivers, is marked by irregularly swell- ing ridges. Where the battle was fought, which is at about the heart of the Wilderness, and especially on Warren’s front, the surface of the ground resem- bles a choppy sea more than anything else. There, like waves, it will heave, sometimes gradually and sometimes briskly, into ridges that all at once will drop and break in several directions. Soon recover- ing itself, off it will go again, smoothly ascending or descending for a while, then suddenly pile up and repeat what it did before, namely, fall into narrow swales and shallow swamps where willows and alders of one kind and another congregate, all tied together more or less irrevocably by a round, bright-green, bamboo-like vine. THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS 59 There is something about the scrawny, moss- tagged pines, the garroted alders, and hoary willows, that gives a very sad look to these wet thickets; and yet, for a few weeks in May and June, from them a swamp honeysuckle, and now and then a wild rose, will greet you joyously. As might be expected where the trees stand so thickly as they do in the Wilderness, a large number are dead. Here and there a good- sized oak has been thrown down by a storm, smashing everything in its way and pulling up with its roots a shock of reddish-gray earth, making a bowl-shaped pool on whose banks the little tree-frogs pipe the solitude. Others in falling have been caught in the arms of their living competitors and rest there with their limbs bleaching, and now and then is one stand- ing upright, alone, with lightning-scored trunk and bare, pronged limbs, dead, dead among the living green. The woods everywhere abound in tall huckle- berry bushes, from whose depending limbs hang racemes of modest, white, bell-shaped flowers. As in all the woods of Virginia, there are many dogwoods scattered about. Both they and the huckle- berries were in full bloom when the battle was going on, the dogwoods, with outspread, shelving branches, appearing at times through the billowing smoke like shrouded figures. I wonder how many glazing eyes looked up into them and the blooming bushes and caught fair visions ! Running through the Wilderness its entire length 60 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS is what is known as the Fredericksburg and Orange Court-House Turnpike, a famous post road in the old stage days. Leaving Fredericksburg, it bears almost due west till it reaches the heart of the Wil- derness; there it crosses Wilderness Run, and then, diverting its course slightly to the south of west, aims straight for Orange Court House, some eighteen miles away. At the time of the war the stage-day glory of the road and its old taverns, Dowdall’s at Chancellorsville, the Wilderness overlooking the run of the same name, Robertson’s at Locust Grove, was all gone; most of the stables and some of the houses were mere ruins, and the road-bed itself lapsed into that of a common earth road. When the system of plank roads came into vogue, about 1845, one was built a few miles south of, but more or less paralleling, the Turnpike. It is known as the Orange and Fredericksburg Plank road, and at the time of the battle was in about the same forlorn state as its old rival, the Pike. If the reader has interest enough in the narrative to consult a map, he will see the relation of these roads to each other at the battle- field, and will be able to locate three other roads, namely the Brock, Germanna Ford and the Flat Run roads, also two runs, Wilderness and Caton’s, and the Lacy farm. These are the natural features in the richly crimsoned damask, so to speak, of the battle of the Wilderness. v The Lacy farm is a part of a once large domain THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS 61 known as Elkwood, and has what in its day was a stately homestead. Its fields, leaning against a ridge, all face the morning sun. The two runs, Wilderness and Caton’s, may well be called Warrior Runs, for at their cradles and along their voiceless banks more men lost their lives, and more blood mingled with the leaves that fall around them, than along any two runs in our country, I believe. Caton’s is much the smaller and heads among the swales, in the angle between the Germanna Road and the Pike. It loiters down through the woods with many feathery branches till it meets the Germanna Ford road, and then runs alongside of it to within a few rods of the Pike, when it strikes across and falls into Wilderness Run; some- time before they part, the road and the cowslip- gilded stream are in a narrow crease between two ridges. Wilderness Run drains all the trapezoid be- tween the Pike, the Plank and the Brock roads, or, in other words, the battlefield. After leaving its cradle, around which so much youthful blood was shed, it flows noiselessly under willows and alders, gleaming in the sunlight and moonlight past the Lacy house, on to the Rapidan. The clearings throughout the Wilderness, save the Lacy farm and the openings about Chancellorsville and Parker’s store at the time of the war (and it is almost as true now), are few and small. Many of them are deserted, and their old fields preempted by briars, sassafras, dwarf young pines and broom, be- 62 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS neath whose dun, lifeless tops the rabbits, and now and then a flock of quail, make their winter homes. There are several of these little clearings in the battlefield, but the lines so ran in reference to them that they did not allow the artillery of either army to play a part. These lonely places are connected with one another and the roads by paths that are very dim and very deceitful to a stranger. Their real destination is known only to the natives, and the lank cattle that roam the woods, getting a blade here and a blade there, oftentimes up to their knees in the swales and swamps for a tuft. The lonely kling- klang-klung of their bells on a May morning is pen- sively sweet to hear. This whole mystery-wrapped country is a mineral region, holding pockets of iron ore and streaked with lean insidious veins of gold-bearing quartz. On ac- count of these ores Colonel Spottswood, for whom the County of Spotsylvania is named, became the owner of large tracts of the Wilderness. He uncov- ered the ore-beds, built iron furnaces, and converted the primeval forest into charcoal to feed them. Some of the pits, and many of the wood roads from them and the ore-beds to the furnaces, are still traceable. All this was at an early day, as far back as the reign of King George II; for the colonel speaks of him in his deeds as his Sovereign Lord. The present timber aspect is due entirely to the iron furnaces and their complete destruction of the first noble growth. THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS 63 My mind never turns to those long-since cold fur- naces that a mantled figure, mysterious but very real, does not arise before me, and which, like a portentous note, now and again keys the narrative. Lo! there it is, its uplifted hand pointing toward a resurrected procession of dim faces, and as they move in ghostly silence I hear it saying : By the labor of slaves chiefly those iron furnaces were reared; it was they who mined the ore, cut down the woods, and faithfully tended the lonely smouldering pits (in the solemn hours of the night, alone in the woods, what a vo- cation that was for reflection on the rights and wrongs in life, — some of the pits were not far from where Stonewall Jackson and Longstreet received those fateful volleys from their own men); they wdio at last tapped the stacks of their molten, red metal, metal that sooner or later found its way, some into the holy uses of bar-iron and utensils, and some, alas ! into cruel manacles clasping possibly the wrists of a Spottswood slave who after long days of enforced and unpaid labor had more than once in the dead hours of night sat before the pit, his cheek resting in his broad hand, looking with gentle eyes plead- ingly into the face of his hard fate. Who knows what happened there, what heart- breaking, due to slavery and to slavery alone, and which the Wilderness was wutness to or moved by mournings of far distant exiles! Is our fellow mor- tal robed in green and called Nature nearer to us than 64 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS we realize? And was there a Spirit of the Wilderness, that, as tears gathered in eyes of fathers and mothers over separation from children and home, recorded an oath to avenge the wrong? Else why did the Wilder- ness strike twice at the Confederacy in its moments of victory? Who knows! Ill I am free to confess that the strategy, grand tactics, and military movements of the Civil War, stirring as they were, are not the features which engage my deepest interest, but rather the spirit which ani- mated the armies of North and South. That, that is what I see. And while my mind’s eye is gazing at it with emotion, on my ear fall the sounds of ring- ing trowels in the hands of workmen rearing a new wing to the old battlemented Palace of History, an addition not to house the tale of soldiers engaged, soldiers killed and wounded, or to preserve the records of the charge of this regiment upon that, or the slaughter of one division by another. No, no, not the multitude of dead, or the pictures of their glaz- ing eyes and pleading, bloodless hands, shall engage the pen that fills the records of that new wing. We do not know what the genius of history will treasure there, yet we know that on its hearth a fire will burn whose flames will be the symbol of the heroic pur- pose and spirit that beat in the hearts of the pale, handsome youths who strewed our fields. And where the beams from those flames strike against the walls, new ideals will appear, and up in the twilight of the arches will be faintly heard an anthem, an an- them of joy that new levels have been reached by 66 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS mankind in gentleness and in love of what is pure and merciful. Wars that will not add material for this extension of the old Palace ought never to be fought. So then, before the movements begin and our blood mounts, let us in peaceful, thoughtful mood take a view of our enemies, not of their numbers or position, but fix our attention rather on Lee’s char- acter and the spirit of his army, two ethereal but immortal elements. True, what we are gazing upon is not so clearly defined as the Army of Northern Virginia in camp on the banks of the Rapidan, but the everlasting things that appeal to us are never quite distinct; and yet how real they are and how they long for expression in Art, Worship, Charity, Honor, and high chivalric deeds. But be all this as it may, what was it that so ani- mated Lee’s army that, although only about one-half as strong in numbers as we were, they came near overthrowing us in the Wilderness, and held their lines at Spotsylvania, although we broke them sev- eral times? In all seriousness, what sustained their fortitude as they battled on, month after month, through that summer, showing the same courage day after day, till the times and seasons of the Confeder- acy were fulfilled? Well, to answer this, I know no better way than to propose a visit to the Army of Northern Virginia, say on the night of January 18, 1864. But before THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS 67 setting off on our quest, let us recall that, through either exhaustion, mismanagement, or unavoidable necessity, supplies for man and beast were, and had been, so meagre that there was actual suffering, and not forget that it was an unusually severe winter. The snow from time to time was four and six inches deep, and again and again it was bitter cold. We do not know what the weather was on that particular night of January 18, but in the light of the following letter to the Quartermaster-General of the Confed- eracy, does it seem unfair to assume that snow cov- ered the ground, and that the wind was blowing fiercely? Or does it seem unfair to fancy that Lee, on hearing it howl through the cedars and pines near his headquarters, thought of his poorly clad, half-fed pickets shuddering at their lonely posts along the Rapidan, and took his pen and wrote to the Confed- erate Quartermaster-General? Headquabters Army of Northern Virginia, Jay 18th, 1864. General: — The want of shoes and blankets in this army continues to cause much suffering and to impair its efficiency. In one regiment I am informed that there are only fifty men with serviceable shoes, and a brigade that recently went on picket was com- pelled to leave several hundred men in camp who were unable to bear the exposure of duty, being destitute of shoes and blankets. Lee’s correspondence seems to show that this state 68 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS of affairs continued, and that repeated pleas were made both for food and for clothing. Whatsoever may have been the response to them throughout the winter, those who saw the contents of the haversacks taken from the dead or wounded in the Wilderness will remember that they contained only a few pieces of corn-bread and slices of inferior bacon or salt pork. Well, in this want do you find any explanation of Southern fortitude? No, but it helps us to appreciate it truly. With this prelude, let us go on with our visit. And as we breast the fierce wind, and tramp on through the snow from camp to camp, what is it that we hear from those houses built of logs or slabs? Lo, men are preaching and praying earnestly; for during those bleak winter nights, so have the chaplains recorded, a great revival was going on; in every brigade of the sixty odd thousand men, the veterans of Gaines’s Mill, Fredericksburg, and Gettysburg were on their knees asking God to forgive their sins, to bless their far-away homes and beloved Southland. One of the officers of a battery tells us in its history that right after retreat they always met for prayer and song, and that when the order came to march for the Wilderness, while the teams stood ready to move, they held the battery long enough to observe their custom of worship. In those sacred hours when the soldiers of North- ern Virginia were supplicating their Creator through THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS 69 his Son to forgive them all their sins, and imploring his hand to guide them on in the paths of righteous- ness, I think we find at least profoundly suggestive material for the answer to the question: Whence came the spirit that animated and sustained their fortitude through those eleven months of battle? The sense of peace with God is as much a reality as the phenomenon of dawn or the Northern Lights. Moreover, hear what Carlyle says about an idea: “Every society, every polity, has a spiritual prin- ciple, the embodiment of an idea. This idea, be it devotion to a man or class of men, to a creed, to an institution, or even, as in more ancient times, to a piece of land, is ever a true loyalty; has in it some- thing of a religious, paramount, quite infinite char- acter; it is properly the soul of the state, its life; mysterious as other forms of life, and, like those, working secretly, and in a depth beyond that of consciousness.” Do not the losses and sufferings of the Southern armies and people tell us that there was an idea, some- thing of a religious, paramount, quite infinite char- acter, possessing the South? If they do not, go stand among the graves in the Confederate cemetery at Spotsylvania, and you certainly will hear from the tufted grass that a principle was embodied in an idea. I In seeking for the answer to our question there is one thing more to be mentioned, — the strength that came to the Army of Northern Virginia through the 70 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS personality and character of Lee; a strength so spiritual and vital that, although he and most of his army are in their graves, it still lives, preserving and consecrating the memories of the Confederacy. I sincerely believe that with him out of the Rebellion, so-called, its star that hangs detached but glowing softly over those bygone days would long since have set. Two forces contributed to his ascendency, one fortuitous, of the earth earthy, the other fundamental and celestial, that of ideals. By birth he belonged to one of Virginia’s noted families and by marriage he was connected with Washington, Mrs. Lee being the granddaughter of Mrs. Washington. Thus he had the advantage of the regard which prevailed throughout the South for distinguished ancestry supported by wealth, character, and attainments. Furthermore, nature in one of her radiant moods had made him the balanced sum in manners and looks of that tradition of the well-bred and aristocratic gentleman transmitted and engrafted at an early age through the Cavaliers into Virginia life. More- over, she had been generous with her intellectual gifts, bestowing abilities upon him of the very high- est order. But for his military prowess he had something vastly more efficacious than ancestry or filling the mould of persistent traditions. He had the generative quality of simple, effective greatness; whereby his THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS 71 serenely lofty character and dauntless courage were reactive, reaching every private soldier, and making him unconsciously braver and better as a man. So it is easy to see how the South’s ideal of the soldier, the Christian, and the gentleman unfolded, and was realized in him as the war went on. His army was made up chiefly of men of low estate, but the truth is that it takes the poor to see ideals. Taking into account, then, these mysterious yet real forces, religion, martial skill, and exalted char- acter, we have all the elements, I think, for a com- plete answer to the question we have raised. But now, let the following extracts from Lee’s letters leave their due impression of what kind of a man he was at heart; for it is by these inner depths of our nature that we stand or fall, whether we were born, as he was, in the same room of the palatial mansion of Stratford where two signers of the Declaration of Independence were born, or as Lincoln, in a log cabin in Kentucky. The first was written to his son Custis on the 11th of January, 1863, just about a year be- fore our fancied visit to his camp : — Camp, 11th January, 1863. I hope we will be able to do something for the servants. I executed a deed of manumission, em- bracing all the names sent me by your mother, and some that I recollected, but as I had nothing to refer to but my memory I fear many are omitted. It was 72 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS my desire to manumit all the people of your grand- father, whether present on the several estates or not. Later, he sent the following : — I have written to him [a Mr. Crockford] to request that Harrison [one of the slaves] be sent to Mr. Eacho. Will you have his free papers given him? I see that the Va. Central R. R. is offering $40 a month and board. I would recommend he engage with them, or on some other work at once. ... As re- gards Leanthe and Jim, I presume they had better remain with Mrs. D. this year, and at the end of it devote their earnings to their own benefit. But what can be done with poor little Jim? It would be cruel to turn him out on the world. He could not take care of himself. He had better be bound out to some one until he can be got to his grandfather’s. His father is unknown, and his mother dead or in unknown parts. 1 In a letter to his son, W. H. F. Lee, who had just been released from captivity, and whose wife Char- lotte had died : — God knows how I loved your dear, dear wife, how sweet her memory is to me. My grief could not be greater if you had been taken from me; and how I mourn her loss! You were both equally dear to me. My heart is too full to speak on this subject, nor can THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS 73 I write. But my grief is for ourselves. She is brighter and happier than ever, — safe from all evil and await- ing us in her heavenly abode. May God in His mercy enable us to join her in eternal praise to our Lord and Saviour. Let us humbly bow ourselves before Him, and offer perpetual prayer for pardon and forgive- ness. But we cannot indulge in grief, however mourn- fully pleasing. Our country demands all of our strength, all our energies. ... If victorious, we have everything to hope for in the future. If de- feated, nothing will be left us to live for. This week will in all probability bring us work, and we must strike fast and strong. My whole trust is in God, and I am ready for whatever He may ordain. May He guide, guard, and strengthen us is my constant prayer. Your devoted father, R. E. Lee. In the foregoing reference to Lee, and to the spirit of his army, I trust there is some food for reflection, and somewhat that is informing. For I cannot make myself believe that a true history of the war can be written, fair to the South and fair to the North, that does not try at least to make these spiritual forces real. Surely due measure cannot be given to the gal- lantry of the soldiers of the North, who won victory for their country at last, if we do not realize what they had to overcome in the almost matchless cour- age of their adversaries. 74 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS But let no one be deceived, — Lee’s soldiers were not all saints, nor were ours. In his, as in all armies, there were wretches guilty of most brutal conduct, — wretches who habitually rifled the dead and wounded, — sometimes under desultory firing, as when our lines after assaults were close, — crouching and sneaking in the darkness, from one dead body to another, thrusting their ogreish hands quickly and ruthlessly into pockets, fumbling unbeating breasts for money and watches, and their prowling fingers groping their way expectantly along the pale, dead ones for rings. Thank God! the great mass of the armies, North and South, respected the dead, and turned with aversion from those ghoulish monsters, the barbarous and shameful outcome of bitter and prolonged war. But there are vermin that breed in the darkness of the cellar walls of cathedrals and lonely country churches; and yet a holy spirit breathes around their consecrated altars, and in the voices of the bells and the tops of the spires catch the first gleam of dawn. So, so it is, and so, so it was with both armies that went into the Wilderness. IV Everything being ready. Grant, on Monday, May 2, directed Meade to put the army in motion at mid- night of the following day for the lower fords of the Rapidan. Grant at the same time notified Burnside, then along the railroad north of the Rappahannock, to be ready on the 4th to start at a moment’s notice for Germanna Ford. The orders to carry this into effect were written by Humphreys, Meade’s Chief of Staff, and were sent to the corps commanders the same day, who at once, in compliance with them, placed guards around all the occupied houses on or in the vicinity of their line of march, to prevent in- formation being carried to the enemy that the army was moving. Early on Tuesday morning the depots at Brandy began to ship back to Washington. It was a very busy day for me and for every one else in charge of stores. Trains were backing in to be loaded with surplus stores; fresh troops, infantry and cavalry, were arriving and had to be supplied at once, whole regiments in some cases, with arms and equipments. Teams stood, waiting, the drivers clamorous for their turn to load with ammunition or delayed supplies; others under the crack of their drivers’ whips, quickly taking their chance to unload condemned stores, and 76 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS all more or less impatient because they could not be served immediately, so as to get back to their com- mands who were preparing to move. If, in the midst of the hurly-burly, you had gone out where the condemned stores were received, I believe that you would have seen and heard much to amuse you. These stores were usually sent in charge of a corporal or sergeant, and were tallied by a couple of my men. One of them, Corporal Tessing, it would have delighted you to see, he was such a typical, grim old regular. His drooping moustache and imperial were a rusty sandy, streaked with gray, his cheeks furrowed, his bearing and look like a frowning statue. The other, Harris, his senior, was a mild, quiet, open-eyed, soft-voiced man, with modesty and uprightness camped in his face. Well, if the stores came from a regiment of cavalry, the corporal in charge, booted and spurred, — and such an air! — would pick up a few straps, some of them not longer than a throat-latch, and possibly having attached to one or two of them an old nose-bag, would announce brazenly to Tessing or Harris who would be tallying, “two bridles, three halters, and four nose-bags.” If an infantryman, he would throw quickly into a pile an old wrinkled cartridge-box, a belt or two, and a bayonet-scabbard, and sing out, “five sets of infantry equipments complete.” If an artilleryman, he might point with dignity to a couple of pieces of carefully folded, dirt-stained, scarlet THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS 77 blankets, and in a voice of commercial deference observe, “three horse-blankets.” And so it was with everything their commanding officers were responsible for: they tried to get receipts for what was worn out, what had been lost, and now and then for what they had traded off to a farmer or sutler. If you could have seen Tessing’s face as he turned it on some of those volunteer corporals when they tried to beat him! He rarely said anything to the young rascals; now and then, however, he ad- dressed the very unscrupulous in tones, terms, and looks that could have left but little doubt as to what he thought of them. They never disputed his count, but pocketed their receipts, and off they went as light-hearted as birds. He and the old sergeant lost their lives at the explosion of the depot at City Point: the former was literally blown to atoms; how and where I found the sergeant is told in “The Spirit of Old West Point.” Heaven bless their memories, and when I reach the other shore no two hands shall I take with warmer grasp than the hands of these two old soldiers; and, reader, I believe they will be glad to take mine, too. Count the stores as carefully as they might, there was sure to be a generous allowance, so that by the time we reached City Point I was responsible for a vast amount of stuff that was n’t there. But let me confide that, when the depot exploded, all those absent stores had in some mysterious way gotten 78 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS to the James; and I am free to say that I loaded them, and everything under the heavens that I was charged with and short of, on that boat or into the depot- buildings, and thereby balanced the books to the complete satisfaction of everybody, and I believe with the approval of Honor and Justice. At last all. was done at Brandy, and a little be- fore midnight the train with my ordnance supplies on board was under way for Alexandria; its engine, old Samson, laboring heavily. I waved good-bye to my faithful Regulars and tired colored laborers, and turned in. That night all the camp-pickets were called in, rations and ammunition issued, and perfect silence maintained after taps sounded. During the afternoon of Tuesday, the Second Division of cavalry under Gregg, then at Paoli Mills, moved southeastward to the road already described connecting Stevensburg and Fredericksburg. He struck it at Madden’s, and followed it eastward till he came to Richardsville, a hamlet about two and a half miles from Ely’s Ford. There he went into bivouac, with orders from Sheridan to keep his command out of sight as much as possible. About ten o’clock p. m. a canvas pontoon train that had been brought up from the Rappahannock drew into his sleeping-camp, rested till midnight, and then, preceded by an ad- vanced guard, set out for the river. When daylight broke they were at the ford, and Gregg, after laying THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS 79 the bridge, one hundred and fifty feet long, moved on up with his cavalry to Chancellorsville. Meanwhile Hancock at midnight awakened his great Second Corps, and at two a. m. set off with it from Lone Tree Hill, to follow Gregg. His troops kept in the woods and fields till they came to Madden’s, so as to leave the road free from Stevensburg to that point for Warren. The Madden’s referred to is an old farmhouse on a gentle knoll, with some corn-cribs, log-stables, and huddled fruit trees where chickens and turkeys roost, all overlooking a flat field to the west that is dotted with blackened stumps of pri- meval oaks. It is about a third of the stretch from Stevensburg to the river. Dawn had broken, and the morning star was paling, when the head of the Second Corps reached the bluffy bank of the Rapidan at Ely’s Ford. There it halted for a moment while the wooden pontoon bridge that accompanied it was laid. The river spanned, the corps filed down and began to cross into the Wilderness. Hour after hour this bridge pulsed with the tread of Hancock’s twenty-seven thousand men, veterans of many fields. The swell- ing bluffs offer more than one point where in fancy the reader might sit alone and overlook the moving scene. I wish for his sake that with one stroke of this pen, as with a magic wand, I might make it real. The river flowing on in sweet peace, glimmering with the morning sun; accumulating masses of in- 80 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS fantry waiting for their turn to join the never- ending column in blue blossomed by the colors, colors that had flashed their crimson on many a field; the bridge rumbling under the heavy wheels of the batteries; guns, men, and colors crossing over the river to win glory at last for their country. Yes, there go the men and the guns against whom Pickett made his mighty charge and who hurled him back into immortality. There go the men and guns who within ten days will carry the Bloody Angle at Spot- sylvania. Oh, gallant Second Corps, led on by Webb, Birney, and Smyth; Hays, Brooke, and Carroll; Miles, Barlow, and Gibbon, my heart beats as I recall your deeds of valor! Having crossed, they took the sadly quiet country road which makes its way through thickety sombre pines and surly oaks and by ragged forlorn openings, to their old battlefield of Chan- cellorsville, where so many of their comrades were sleeping their last long, long sleep. Hancock with his staff reached Chancellorsville by nine-thirty, his last division about three p. m. Some of his troops had marched over twenty-three miles, which, inasmuch as they carried three days’ rations, their muskets, and fifty rounds of ammunition, — under a hot sun and with not a leaf stirring, — was a hard tramp. On Hancock’s arrival, Gregg moved on several miles to the south, along the old Furnace road which just about a year before Stonewall Jack- son had taken to reach the Brock road and from there THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS 81 to strike the right of Hooker’s army, posted over the identical field where Hancock’s corps had now gone into bivouac. A reference to this last, fateful move of Jackson will be made when we come to place the army before the reader’s eye as night fell that first day, and after all had reached their allotted camps. Gregg picketed heavily on the roads coming from the direction of Hamilton’s Crossing where Sheridan under misinformation had located the bulk of the Confederate cavalry. And now, leaving Hancock at Chancellorsville, let us turn to Wilson and Warren; the former com- manded Sheridan’s Third Cavalry Division. At dark on Tuesday, his pontoon train took the road for Germanna Ford. When it got within quick reaching distance, a half-mile or so, of the river, it halted in the thick woods. It was then ten o’clock, a moonless but beautiful starlit night. At three o’clock the Third Indiana Cavalry, under Chapman, cautiously drew near the ford, waited till dawn appeared among the trees, then hurried down, forded the river, and brushed away the startled Confederate pickets of the First North Carolina Cavalry who had their reserve in the old, briery field overlooking the ford. Meanwhile, the bridge material was brought for- ward, and Wilson was on hand with the rest of his division, which included Pennington’s and Fitzhugh’s batteries of light artillery. By half-past five — the sun rose at 4.49 — two bridges, each two hundred 82 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS and twenty feet long, were thrown, the three thou- sand horsemen meanwhile fording the river, and by six o’clock all the trains and batteries of the cavalry division had crossed, and the head of Warren’s Corps, which had marched from the vicinity of Culpeper at midnight, was drawing near. The infantry in sight, Wilson pushed on, up toward the Lacy farm, and the Fifth Corps, Ayres with his Regulars in the lead, be- gan to cross. The troops, once they gained the bluff, threw themselves down and rested by the roadside while they ate their breakfast, and then followed Wilson up the narrow and deeply over-shadowed road. The Sixth Corps began its march at four o’clock from beyond Brandy for Stevensburg. There it fell in behind Warren, and followed him to Germanna Ford. Sheridan left the first division of his cavalry, under Torbert, to mask the upper fords of the Rapi- dan and to look out for the rear of the army as it moved away from its winter-quarters. Later he with his staff threaded the infantry, and after crossing the river at Germanna established his headquarters on Wilderness Run, about midway between the ford and Chancellorsville. Several hours before Warren and Hancock began their march the enormous supply-train, in bands of from twenty to two hundred wagons, headed east- ward on lanes and roads for Richardsville. They were rumbling by my tent at Brandy all through the THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS 83 night. Grant’s, Meade’s, and the different corps head- quarters-trains, and half of the ammunition and am- bulance trains moved with the troops. The sun had just cleared the tree-tops when Meade with his staff came by, and I mounted my horse, saddled and groomed by my colored boy Stephens, and joined them. The whole army was now in mo- tion, and I cannot convey the beauty and joy of the morning. The glad May air was full of spring. Dogwoods with their open, enwrapped blossoms, that have always seemed to me as though they were hearing music somewhere above them in the spring skies, violets and azaleas, heavenly pale little houstonias, and the richly yellow primroses, which here and there beautify the pastures and roadsides of this part of old Virginia, were all in bloom, and the dew still on them. Never, I think, did an army set off on a campaign when the fields and the bending morning sky wore fresher or happier looks. Our horses felt it all, too, and, champing their bits, flecking their breasts at times with spattering foam, bore us proudly. When we gained the ridge just beyond Stevensburg, which commands a wide landscape, an inspiring sight broke on our eyes. To be sure, we had been riding by troops all the way from Brandy, but now, as far as you could see in every direction, corps, divisions, and brigades, trains, batteries, and squadrons, were moving on in a waving sea of blue; headquarters and regimental 84 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS flags were fluttering, the morning sun kissing them all, and shimmering gayly from gun-barrels and on the loud-speaking brass guns, so loved by the can- noneers who marched by their sides. Every once in a while a cheer would break, and on would come floating the notes of a band. As I recall the scene of that old army in motion that morning, its brigade, division, and corps, flags, some blue, some white, and some with red fields, whipping over them, with its background of Pony and Clarke’s Mountain, and away in the west the Blue Ridge looming with her remote charm, a solemn spell comes over my heart, and it seems as if, while I look back through the Past at the magical pageant, I hear above me the notes of slowly passing bells. The troops were very light-hearted, almost as joyous as schoolboys; and over and over again as we rode by them, it was observed by members of the staff that they had never seen them so happy and buoyant. The drummer-boys, those little rapscal- lions, whose faces were the habitual playground of mischief and impudence, were striding along, caps tilted, and calling for cheers for Grant, or jeering, just as the mood took them; but there was illumina- tion in every soldier’s face. Was it the light from the altar of duty that was shining there? No one knows save the Keeper of the key of our higher natures, who some day will open the doors for us all. Soon after we left Stevensburg, to my surprise, THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS 85 General Hunt, by whose side I was riding, suggested that we take it easy, and let the rest of the staff go ahead, for it never was comfortable to keep up with that fox- walk of Meade’s horse; so we fell to the rear, and I really felt proud to have him ask me to ride with him, for he was so much older, and held such a high place at headquarters and in the army gen- erally. We struck across the country, and while watering our horses at a run of considerable flow, — it rises well up among the oak timber of the old Willis plantation, one with the greatest domain of any along the Rapidan, — Hunt’s eye fell on the violets that strewed its banks, and he insisted that we dismount and pick some of them. The violets here, and those in the Wilderness, are large and beautiful, the two upper petals velvety and almost a chestnut brown. As we lounged in the refreshing shade, he manifested so much unaffected love and sentiment for the wild flowers and the quiet of the spot, — the brook was murmuring on to the Rapidan near by, — that the stern old soldier whom I had known was translated into an attractive and really new acquaintance. I do not remember ever to have seen him smile, yet I never read the story of Pickett’s charge, or recall him at the Wilderness or Spotsylvania, without having that half-hour’s rest on the banks of the run come back to me. The road we were on, the old Stevensburg plank, and the one from Madden’s which had been taken by 86 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS two of Warren’s divisions, meet at Germanna Ford, both roads availing of short narrow ravines to get to the water’s cheery edge, for the Rapidan here is flow- ing right fast. Under the open pines on the bluff we found Warren, Meade, and Grant, with their head- quarters colors. They and their staffs, spurred and in top boots, all fine-looking young fellows, were dismounted and standing or lounging around in groups. Grant was a couple of hundred yards back from the ford, and except Babcock, Comstock, and Porter, he and all of his staff were strangers to the officers and the rank and file of the army. His head- quarters flag was the national colors; Meade’s, a lilac-colored, swallow-tailed flag having in the field a wreath inclosing an eagle in gold; Warren’s Fifth Corps, a blue swallow-tail, with a Maltese cross in a white field. Down each of the roads, to the bridges that were forty or fifty feet apart, the troops, well closed up, were pouring. The batteries, ambulances, and am- munition trains followed their respective divisions. Of course, in the three years of campaigning many officers, of all branches, — and I honestly believe I knew every captain and lieutenant in the artillery with the army, — had become acquaintances and personal friends of my own as well as of members of the various staffs assembled; and warm greetings were constantly exchanged. Hello, Tom! Hello, Bob! Good-morning, Sandy, old fellow, and how THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS 87 did you leave your sweetheart? How are you, John, and you, too, Mack, dear old boy! And on with their radiant smiles they went. If the reader could take his place by my side, on the bare knoll that lifts immediately above the ford, and we could bring back the scene; the Rapidan swinging boldly around a shouldering point of dark- ened pines to our right, and on the other side of the river the Wilderness reaching back in mysterious silence; below us the blue moving column, the tat- tered colors fluttering over it in the hands of faithful- eyed, open-browed youths, I believe that the reader would find an elevated pleasure as his eyes fell on the martial scene. And if we could transport our- selves to the banks of the James, and should see the army as I saw it on that June day, heading on after it had fought its way through the Wilderness and Spotsylvania and by Cold Harbor, leaving behind those young faces whose light now gives such charm to the procession all hidden in the grave, I believe that both of us would hear, coming down from some high ridge in our spiritual nature, the notes of a dirge, and our hearts with muffled beats would be keeping step as the column moved over the James. But, thank God! that scene of June is not before us now. No, we are on the Rapidan, it is a bright May morning, the river is gurgling around the reef of black projecting boulders at our feet, and youth’s 88 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS confident torches are lit in our eyes, and here comes the small band of Regulars. That solid-looking man, with an untended bushy beard, at their head, is Ayres. The tall slim man with that air of decision, stalking walk, drooping moustache and sunken cheeks, who commands the division, is Griffin, one of my old West Point instructors. At Gettysburg, when Longstreet’s men had carried the Peach Orchard and broken Sickles’s line, and were coming on flushed with victory, driving everything before them, Griffin’s Regulars, then under Sykes and Ayres, were called on and went in. They were only 1985 strong, but they fought their way back, leaving 829 killed or wounded. Out of the 80 officers in one of the small brigades, 40 were among the killed or wounded. Reader, let me tell you that I never think of the Regulars without a feeling of pride and affection for them all. For the first real soldier I ever saw, the one who conducted me — on reporting at West Point, a light-haired, spare, and rather lonely looking boy — to the barracks that were to be my home for four years, was a Regular; moreover, all of my springtime manhood was spent as an officer among them, and let me assure you that if in the other world there shall be a review of the old Army of the Poto- mac, I shall certainly fall in with the Regulars. And here, brigaded with them, comes a regiment, the One Hundred and Fortieth New York, to which. THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS 89 for the sake of a boyhood’s friend who fell at their head, I wish you would uncover. It is Pat O’Rorke’s, a cadet and sojourner at West Point with me, to whom this pen has referred on another occasion. That regiment followed him up the east slope of Round Top, and there looking out over the field is a monument which tells with pride the sacrifices it made. Ryan, “Paddy” Ryan, — so Warren called him when some one of the staff asked him who that young officer was that had just tipped his cap to him smiling as he rode by, — Ryan, a graduate of West Point, tawny-haired and soldierly, is leading it now. At the close of the next day, the first of the Wilderness, of the 529 of the One Hundred and Fortieth who went into action up the turnpike, cheer- ing, only 264 reported with the colors. The rest were in the hospital wounded, or lying dead under the stunted, sullen pines; a few were on their way to Southern prisons. And there, just coming on the upper bridge, is another regiment in the same division, the Twentieth Maine, a worthy companion of the One Hundred and Fortieth and the Regulars. Its record at Round Top, where it was on the left of O’Rorke, under Chamber- lain, is thrilling; and it was still under that same scholar, soldier, and gentleman, a son of Bowdoin, at Appomattox, when the overthrown Confederate army came marching along, under Gordon, with heavy hearts, to stack their arms, and say farewell 90 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS to their dearly loved colors. Chamberlain ordered his line to present arms to their brave foes. Gordon, who was at their head, with becoming chivalry wheeled his horse, and acknowledged duly the unex- pected and touching salute. Yes, the guns you see them bearing now were brought to a present, and those old battle-torn colors were dipped. It was a magnanimous and knightly deed, a fit ending for the war, lifting the hour and the occasion into the com- pany of those that minstrels have sung. I feel glad and proud that I served with an army which had men in it with hearts to do deeds like this. The total killed and wounded of this regiment in the war was 528. That large man, fifty-four years old, with silvered hair and nobly carved features, is Wadsworth who has only about forty-eight hours to live, for he was killed Friday forenoon, and the writer has every reason to believe that he bore the last order Warren ever gave him. But before I reached him, his lines were broken, and our men were falling back in great confusion, and he was lying mortally wounded and unconscious within the Confederate lines. His bri- gade commanders are Cutler and Rice, the latter a Yale man who, when dying a few days after at Spotsylvania, asked to be turned with his face to the enemy. In Wadsworth’s division is the Iron Brigade of the West, made up of Seventh and Nine- teenth Indiana, Twenty-Fourth Michigan, First THE BATTLE OF TEE WILDERNESS 91 New York, Second, Sixth, and Seventh Wisconsin. They too were at Gettysburg, — in fact, the fate of that day pivoted on their bravery, — and proudly may they tread those bridges to-day. Those troops just ahead of the battery that is now coming on to the lower bridge are the rear of the Maryland brigade. Its front is with that head- quarters flag you see in the column over the top of wallows and trees on the other side of the river. It is known as the Iron Brigade of Maryland, and is made up of the First, Fourth, Seventh, and Eighth Maryland. If ever you should visit the field of Spotsylvania, you will find standing in the Spindle farm, wdthin reach of the evening shadows of an old wood, and amid tufts of broom-grass, a gray rectangular stone, and on one of its faces you will read “Maryland Brigade,” and on another this legend, a copy of an order given by Warren, then in the road about where Sedgwick was killed the following morning: “8th May 1864. Never mind cannon, never mind bullets, press on and clear this road,” — meaning the road to Spotsylvania, that lies but a mile and a half beyond. On the south face is, “Nearest approach on this front.” I saw the troops with my own eyes as they tried gallantly to carry out Warren’s order, wondering at every step they took how much longer they could stand it under the withering cross-fire of artillery and 92 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS musketry ; and the whole scene came back to me viv- idly as I stood by the stone the other June day. And I ’ll confess freely, it came back with a sense of pen- siveness such as always attends a revisit to one of the old fields. I got there about the same hour as that of the charge, and the day resembled exactly that of the battle, one brimming with glad sunshine; that kind of a May morning when new-shorn sheep look so white in the fields, the brooks ripple so brightly, and joy is in the blooming hawthorn. But there, by the stone, all was very still, — silence was at its highest pitch. Huge white clouds with bulging mountain-tops, pinnacled cliffs, and gray ravines were floating lazily in the forenoon sky, and across the doming brow of one of them whose shadow was dragging slowly down the timbered valley of the Po, a buzzard far, far above earth’s common sounds, was soaring half-careened with bladed wing. There were no men or herds in sight, the only moving thing was an unexpected roaming wind. Suddenly the leaves in the near-by woods fluttered a moment, and then the broom-grass around waved silently as the wandering wind breathed away. My left hand was resting on the stone, and a voice came from it saying, as I was about to go to other parts of the field, — to where brave, sweet-hearted Sedgwick laid down his life and our batteries had stood, — “Stay, stay a while ! I stand for the men you saw marching across the Rapidan, who after facing the volleys of the THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS 93 Wilderness were called upon to move on at last under the severe order, ‘Never mind cannon, never mind bullets, but press on and clear this road.’ Here many of them fell. Stay a while, I love to feel the warmth of a hand of one who, as a boy, served with them. Do not go just yet, for, here alone throughout the long days in the silence of the dead broom, I am sometimes lonely.” And so, dear reader, I might call your attention to deeds like theirs which have been done by about every one of the veteran regiments that cross the river this morning, but something tells me that I ought to refrain, and proceed with the narrative. As soon as the last of his troops were across — it was well on toward noon — W’arren mounted his big, heavy, iron-gray horse and, followed by his staff, the writer among them, started up the Germanna Ford Road for the Lacy farm and the opening around the Wilderness Tavern. Warren’s adjutant-general was Colonel Fred Locke; his chief surgeon, Dr. Milhau, whose assistant was my friend. Colonel Charles K. Winne of Albany, New York, — and may every day of his declining years be sweet to him. Warren’s chief personal aide, and one of the very best in the army, was Washington Roebling, the builder of the Brooklyn Bridge, and a man whose fame is wide. Warren’s brother Robert, a boy of my own age, was also an aide. I find, by referring to my book of dispatches, that I sent my camp blankets to him at Culpeper the night before we moved. Besides 94 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS those mentioned there were eight or ten other officers connected with the staff; so that, when we were under way on the narrow road, followed immediately by headquarters guards, couriers, and servants, we made quite a cavalcade behind the general. After all these years there are only three distinct memories left of the march. First, its seeming great length, — and yet it was only about four and a half miles. But the eye met nothing to distract it; to be sure now and then there was a field, and on the right- hand side, and not far apart, were two little old houses. When passing over the road last May, the houses were gone, a superannuated cherry tree was trying to bloom, and a feeble old rheumatic apple tree had one of its pain-racked, twisted boughs decked in pink and white. But the most of the way the road’s course is through stunted oaks, lean, strug- gling bushes, pines with moss on them, obviously hopeless of ever seeing better days, the whole scene looking at you with unfathomable eyes. Second, the road was strewn with overcoats which the men had thrown away. The wonder is that they had carried the useless burden so far, for the day was very warm, with not a breath of air; moreover, they had been march- ing since midnight, and were getting tired. The other memory is almost too trifling to record, but, as it was the only time I burst into a hearty laugh in all the campaign, I shall be loyal to it, and give it a place alongside of the stern and great events. THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS 95 About half-way to the Lacy house we come to Flat Run, which steals down out of the woods and heads right up where the battle began. Its tributary branches are like the veins of a beech-leaf, frequent and almost parallel, coming in from both sides, and bordered all the way with swamp or thicket. When we reached it, and while several of us with rein relaxed were letting our horses drink, my friend Winne approached on our right hand. The wagons and batteries ahead of us had ploughed through, deepening and widen- ing the deceitful stream into a mud-hole. Winne’s horse, rather thirsty, and undoubtedly looking for- ward with pleasant anticipations of poking his nose into refreshing water, had barely planted his fore feet in it before he turned almost a complete somer- sault and landed Winne full length in the water. When, to use the language of the New Testament, he came up out of the water, his cap had disappeared, and he certainly was a sight. Well, heartlessly and instantaneously we youngsters broke into howling delight. Thereupon Wynne’s lips opened and his lan- guage flowed freely, marked with emphatic use of divine and to-hellish terms both for us and his poor brute, which was fully as much surprised as any one at the quick turn of events. The doctor’s address soon reduced our loud laughter to suppressed giggles, which brightened our way for a good many rods, and which still ripple along the beach of those bygone years. 96 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS When Griffin’s division, leading the advance of Warren’s corps, reached the Pike, it moved out on it for a mile or more to the west, the road rising steadily, and there in the woods beyond the leaning fields of the Lacy farm it went into bivouac. Griffin pitched his tent alongside the old road and just at the edge of the woods. Little did he or his men dream, as they rested after their long march, — how sweet the fragrance of the boiling coffee, how soft the pine needles under hip and elbow, how refreshing every soft breeze on the forehead, how still the woods and with what lovely serene delight the sunshine sifted down through the intermingled branches of the trees ! — yes, little did Griffin or his men dream that Early’s Confederate division of Ewell’s corps would go into bivouac along the same road and only three miles away. Crawford’s division of Warren’s corps, next in the column, on gaining the Pike took the grassy Parker’s Store Road, which winds up Wilderness Run through the Lacy plantation. He halted near the mansion and made it his headquarters for the night. The house is about a half mile from the Pike, faces the east, and has some venerable trees in the door- yard. Wadsworth, next in line, camped opposite Craw- ford on the east side of the run, picketing toward Chancellorsville. The regiment sent on this duty was the Second Wisconsin, Cutler’s brigade, and its THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS 97 adjutant, G. M. Woodward of La Crosse, Wisconsin, says that where he established the line of pickets the ground here and there blazed with wild azaleas, and at first presented no evidence that it had ever been the scene of battle; dismounting he soon found scat- tered in every direction the debris of war — knap- sacks, belts, bayonets, scabbards, etc. Farther on he saw what appeared to be a long trench about eight feet wide, filled up and mounded, its edges sunken and covered with grass, weeds, and wild flowers. This picket-line ran undoubtedly through Stonewall Jackson’s field hospital of just a year before, to which he was carried when wounded. Robinson, who brought up the rear of the corps, camped on the Germanna Road, the middle of his division about where Caton’s Run comes down through the woods from the west. Some of the batteries parked on the Lacy farm, others with the trains in the fields back of the de- serted old Wilderness Tavern. This old stage-house, indicated on all the maps and mentioned many times in orders and reports, was a two-storied, hewn-log house in its day, standing on the north side of the Pike, at the top of the ridge about three hundred yards east of Wilderness Run. It overlooked all the Lacy estate, and had the reader stood in its lonely dooryard as the sun was going down and the shadows of the woods were reaching into the fields, the men of Crawford’s and Wadsworth’s divisions, all preparing 98 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS their evening meals, the smoke of their little fires lift- ing softly over them, would have been in full view below him. From the same point, should some one have directed his eye to a banner with a white field and a red Maltese cross in the centre, a mile or so to the west, at the edge of the woods, it would have been Griffin’s. Warren made his headquarters near the Pike, on the bare ridge which separates Wilderness and Ca- ton’s runs, and about opposite the knoll that Grant and Meade occupied during the battle. At supper that night he was in fine spirits, cheerier at heart, I believe, than ever afterwards, unless it was on the field of Five Forks just before he met Sheridan, who, in that passionate moment, then and there peremp- torily relieved him, just as the veterans of the Fifth Corps, whom he had led so often, were cheering him over the victory he had helped to win. Sheridan’s harsh dealing with him, however, was not wholly un- studied; for Warren’s relations with Grant, which felt their first strain in the Wilderness and at Spotsyl- vania, had been at the breaking-point, and Sheri- dan knew it. Moreover, Grant during the day had sent his trusted aide Babcock to him, with authority to relieve Warren in case he should not come up to the mark. In fact, then, and in extenuation of Sheridan’s conduct, who knows all that Babcock said, or his look and tones? But that awful hour of storm for Warren has long since drifted by, and THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS 99 his saddened mind found the grave’s repose. I have no doubt, however, that when they finally met in the other world, the impulsive Irishman asked and received his pardon. After supper I filled my pipe and sat alone, on an old gray rail-fence near by, till the sun went down and evening deepened into a twilight of great peace. A brigade camped up the run was singing hymns and songs that I had heard at home as a boy; and, probably with feelings deeper than my own, the timber of the Wilderness listened also. Slowly out of the sky bending kindly over us all, — woods, the Lacy fields, the old tavern, and murmuring runs, — the light faded softly away and on came night. Sedgwick’s divisions were in bivouac along the Germanna Ford Road as far as Flat Run; Getty next to Warren, then Wright, in the old Beale plan- tation fields; and behind him, just this side of the river, Ricketts, who had crossed the Rapidan about a quarter of four. Sheridan had pitched his headquarters a third of a mile or so east of the Sixth Corps, near the work- ings of an old gold mine; orderlies, with his cavalry corps flag, were stationed on the Germanna Road to show the way to his camp. Custer, perhaps the lightest-hearted man in the army, with whom as a cadet I whiled away many an hour, was back just this side of Stevensburg, his brigade guarding the rear of the army and especially the trains at Rich- 100 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS ardsville. Davies, with another brigade of cavalry, was at Madden’s; in fact, all of Sheridan’s first division was posted from the Rapidan to the Rap- pahannock at eight o’clock that beautiful May night. Wilson with the Third Division was at Parker’s store, one brigade picketing up the Plank Road to the west and front, the other to the east and south. When I was there last May, a couple of apple trees were in bloom, and on the roadside I met an old Confederate whose tawny beard was streaked with frost. “Can you tell me where General Wilson was camped?” I asked. He replied, “Stranger, he was camped all around over that field and all around yonder,” waving his hand sweepingly; “but I was off with Rosser’s cavalry. It is very quiet now, sir.” And so it was. The trains were crossing at Ely’s and Culpeper Mine fords and going into parks near Chancellors- ville. Grant and Meade, after crossing the river, estab- lished their headquarters near a deserted house whose neglected fields overlooked the ford. At 1.15 p. m., Hancock and Warren having met with no opposition in their advance, Grant telegraphed for Burnside to make forced marches until he reached Germanna Ford. There is reason to believe, it seems to me, that it would have been better had Burnside been brought up nearer before the movement began. For, as it THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS 101 was, his men were nearly marched to death to over- take us; and as a result, they were altogether too fagged out for the work they were called on to do the morning of the second day. The same criticism, how- ever, can be made on Lee’s failure to bring Long- street within striking distance. Though, to be sure, in his case, he did not know whether Grant would cross the Rapidan at the fords above or below him; if above, then Longstreet was just where he would have needed him. I have always suspected that Lee feared a move on that flank more than on his right, for there the country was so open that he could not conceal the paucity of his numbers, as in the Wilder- ness. But, however this may be, while Hancock’s, Warren’s, and Sedgwick’s men on our side, and Hill’s and Ewell’s on Lee’s, were resting around their camp-fires, Burnside’s and Longstreet’s were still plodding away, long after their comrades in the Wilderness were asleep. Such, then, were the move- ments and the camping-places of the Army of the Potomac on the 4th of May. Meanwhile the enemy had been moving also. Ewell reports that, by order of General Lee, his corps and division-commanders met him on Monday, May 2, at the signal station on Clarke’s Mountain, and that he then gave it as his opinion that Grant would cross below him. It was the last time that Lee and his valiant subordinates ever visited that charming spot, with its wide, peaceful view. If ever the reader 102 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS should be in that vicinity, I hope he will not fail to go to the top of the mountain. At an early hour on Wednesday it had been re- ported from various sources to Lee that Grant was under way. By eight o’clock this news was fully con- firmed and he transmitted it through the proper channels to his corps-commanders, with orders to get ready to move. Sorrel, Longstreet’s adjutant- general, at nine o’clock notified General E. P. Alex- ander — a soldier and a gentleman whose name will last long — as follows: “Many of the enemy’s camps have disappeared from the front, and large wagon- trains are reported moving through Stevensburg. The lieutenant-general commanding desires that you will keep your artillery in such condition as to enable it to move whenever called upon.” It was the artil- lery that under Alexander tried to shake our lines at Gettysburg before Pickett’s charge. The same despatch was sent to Longstreet’s division-command- ers, Field and Kershaw. The former was our in- structor in cavalry at West Point, and rode at the head of the troop that escorted Edward VII, when as Prince of Wales he came to West Point in the fall of 1860. It is reasonably clear that by eleven o’clock at the latest Lee was convinced that Wilson’s and Gregg’s crossings of the Rapidan were not the beginning of a raid, or a feint to cover an advance up the river, but the opening of the campaign. Apparently he THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS 108 seems not to have hesitated, but set his army of sixty-odd thousand men in motion for the Wilder- ness, taking the precaution to leave Ramseur with three brigades at Rapidan station, to meet any pos- sible danger behind the mask of our cavalry under Custer. Ewell, who commanded his Second Corps, consisting of Rodes’s, Johnson’s, and Early’s divi- sions, was to draw back from the river to the Pike and, once there, to march for Locust Grove, some eighteen miles to the eastward and within, as has been related, three miles of where Griffin camped. His Third Corps, A. P. Hill’s, at Orange Court House, was to take the Plank Road for Verdierville or beyond. It had about twenty-eight miles to go. Longstreet at Gordonsville and Meehaniesburg was first ordered to follow Hill, but later, at his sug- gestion, he took roads south of the Plank leading into the Catharpin, which strike the Brock Road, the key of the campaign, at Todd’s Tavern. From his camp to where his men met Hancock the morning of the second day, east of Parker’s store, was forty-two miles. None of Lee’s corps got well under way before noon; and by that time over half of Hancock’s and all of Warren’s were across the river. It was after dusk when Ewell passed through Locust Grove; and the bats were wavering through the twilight over the heads of Hill’s men as they dropped down to rest at Verdierville. Longstreet’s veterans, those who in the previous autumn smashed our lines at Chickamauga 104 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS and who left so many of their dead at Knoxville, were still on the march. Sometimes, when alone before my wood-fire, my mind floating over the fields of this narrative, and one after another of its scenes breaking into view, I have been conscious of wishing that with you, reader, at my side, I could have stood near their line of march. I should like to have seen those men, — and so would you, — the heroes of the Peach- Orchard and Round Top at Gettysburg, as well as of Chickamauga. I should like to have seen also the North Carolinians of Hill’s corps who, with the Virginians, made Pickett’s charge. But above all I should like to have seen the face of the officer who, on the succeeding night, hearing the pitiful cries for water of our wounded in Griffin’s front, could stand it no longer and crawled over the breastworks, notwithstanding the persistent fire from our lines, made his way to where one of our wounded men lay, took his canteen, and, groping to a little branch of Wilderness Run, filled it and brought it to his stricken enemy and then went back to his own lines. If ever the spirit of that Good Samaritan should come to my door, he shall have the best chair before my fire; I’ll lay on another stick of wood and let its beams kiss his manly face as we talk over those bygone days. Yes, I wish that with a reader who would enjoy such a scene I could have stood under a spreading-limbed tree on the roadside and seen Field and Kershaw, THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS 105 Ewell and Gordon, Heth and Alexander, march on their way to the Wilderness. Stuart began to draw in his cavalry toward Ver- dierville as soon as he knew of our movement. The regiments which had wintered in the vicinity of Hamilton’s Crossing and at Milford on the Freder- icksburg and Richmond Railroad directed their march by way of Spotsylvania ; Rosser set out from Wolf Town in Madison County, passed through Orange Court House, and camped beside Hill. Fitz Lee came in from the neighborhood of Gordonsville and bivouacked on the Catharpin, near enough to go to Rosser’s aid the next morning. Lee encamped in the woods opposite the home of Mrs. Rodes, near Verdierville. Able critics have blamed him for fighting Grant in the Wilderness. They maintain that he might have avoided all of his losses there by going at once to Spotsylvania, and entrenched, for they assume that Grant would have followed the same system of re- peated assaults that he did after the Wilderness, and that he would have met with severer repulses. It will be conceded, knowing Grant as we do, that in all probability he would have gone straight at his adver- sary, and that no works which Lee could have thrown up at Spotsylvania or elsewhere would have daunted him: the appalling record of that battle-summer would certainly seem to justify such a conclusion. And, by the way, one among the reasons which con- 106 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS tributed to make it so deadly may be found possibly in the fact that Grant came to the army with an impression that in many of its big engagements under McClellan, Pope, Hooker, and Meade, it had not been fought to an end. However this may have been, long before we got to the James River the grounds for a like impression, I think, were gone. At any rate, go ask the slopes before the Confederate works at Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor, and Petersburg what they think about it, — if they even dream that the Army of the Potomac was not fought to its limit. Perhaps there was a better way than Grant’s way of handling the gallant old army but I find no fault : I am only sorry so much blood had to flow. We are in the habit of thinking it was' a war between North and South; not at all, it was between two mutually antagonistic forces vastly older than our country — it was the final death grapple on this earth of Freedom and Slavery, and the sacrifice of sons North and South had to be made, bringing many tears. In regard to the wisdom of Lee fighting in the Wilderness, I think we can be sure of one thing, — that his decision was not the result of sudden im- pulse. For what he should do with his army, little as compared with Grant’s, when spring should open, had no doubt been weighed and re-weighed, as night after night he sat before his green-oak fire at the foot of Clarke’s Mountain. His critics, moreover, will THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS 107 agree that he was too good a tactician not to know that, if he should adopt the defensive from the out- set and go to Spotsylvania, Grant could flank not only that position but any position he might take between there and Richmond. Again, those who find fault with him for fighting in the Wilderness will have to acknowledge, we believe, that he was too good a general not to realize that any backward steps he might be forced to make, for any reason whatsoever, would have a bad effect on the spirit of his army. Of course, he knew that sooner or later in the campaign he would have to assume the offen- sive, and take his chances. It is obvious that in case of defeat, the nearer Richmond he should be the more serious might be the results: he had had one experience of that kind at Malvern Hill, which is within ten miles of Richmond, and I am sure he never wanted another like it; for all accounts agree, and are confirmed by what I have heard from Con- federates themselves, that his army and Richmond were on the verge of panic. In justification of the plan that he followed, where is there a field between the Rapidan and Richmond on which his sixty-five thousand men could have hoped to attack Grant’s one hundred and twenty thousand under such favorable conditions? where his numbers would be so magnified in effectiveness, and Grant’s so neutralized, by the natural difficulties and terror of the woods? — for dense woods do have a 108 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS terror. Again, where on the march to Richmond would the Army of the Potomac, from the nature of the country and the roads, be more embarrassed in the use of its vastly superior artillery, or in concen- trating its strength, if battle were thrust upon it suddenly? Save right around Chancellorsville, the region was an almost unknown country to our people, while to Lee and his men it was comparatively familiar. He himself was thoroughly acquainted with its wooded character, paths, runs, and roads. Moreover, he knew the military advantages they afforded, for he had tested them in his campaign against Hooker. Taking all this into account, then, it seems to me that in planning his campaign to strike at Grant just when and where he did, he planned wisely. For it presented the one good chance to win a decisive victory, which, as I have said before, was absolutely necessary to save the life of the Confederacy. It is true Lee failed to win the victory he had planned and hoped for. But little had he reckoned upon a second intervention of Fate: that the spirit of the Wilder- ness would strike Longstreet just as victory was in his grasp as it had struck Stonewall. Reader, if the Spirit of the Wilderness be unreal to you, not so is it to me. Bear in mind that the native realm of the spirit of man is nature’s king- dom, that there he has made all of his discoveries, and yet what a vast region is unexplored, that re- THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS 109 gion along whose misty coast Imagination wings her way bringing one suggestion after another of miraculous transformations, each drawing new light and each proclaiming that nature’s heart beats with our own. A little before sundown, when all were in camp for the night. Grant issued his orders for the next day. Sheridan was to move with Gregg and Torbert against the enemy’s cavalry, who at that hour were supposed to be at Hamilton’s Crossing, and who, as a matter of fact, were not there at all. Wilson, with his Third Cavalry Division, was to move at 5 a. m. to Craig’s Meeting House, on the Catharpin Road, the one that Longstreet had chosen for his approach. Warren was to take Wilson’s place at Parker’s store; Sedgwick to move up to Old Wilderness Tavern, leaving one division at Germanna Ford till the head of Burnside’s corps appeared; in other words, he was to occupy Warren’s present position with his whole corps across the Pike. Hancock was to ad- vance by way of Todd’s Tavern to Shady Grove Church on the Catharpin Road, and from there, about three and a half miles south of Warren, throw out his right and connect with him at Parker’s store. Of the infantry, Hancock had by far the longest march to make, about twelve miles; the others only very short ones, not more than three or four miles. The trains were to be parked at Todd’s Tavern. None of the moves, as we have stated, were 110 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS long, or apparently any part of a well-defined series of movements, but, rather, precautionary. They neither seriously threatened Lee’s communications with Richmond, nor indicated an active offensive, but were clearly made with a view to allow Burnside to overtake the army, and to get the big, unwieldy supply-trains a bit forward; for there was practically only one narrow road, and not a very good one at that, from where they were then halted to Todd’s Tavern. It was for these reasons, I think, that Grant’s orders did not push the army on clear through the Wilderness the second day. But whatsoever may have been the reason, there is something very strik- ing in his repetition of Hooker’s delay of the year before. All vitality (and bluster, for that matter) was Hooker till he reached the heart of the Wilder- ness, but no sooner was he there than he became mentally numb and purposeless as though he had breathed some deep, stagnating fumes. A year, almost to a day, the army marched again, briskly and cheerily, to the heart of the Wilderness; and before its bivouac fires had died down, — indeed, before the sun had set, — the orders for the follow- ing day seemed to indicate that the lotus in the fateful region’s gloom was again at work. While aides are carrying the orders to their respective des- tinations for the next day’s march, the day ends, and twilight comes on. After night had set in, Meade, having disposed of THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS 111 all his current official duties for the day, came over from his headquarters — they were only a few steps away — and joined Grant before a large camp-fire made of rails. Grant’s staff withdrew to a fire of their own, and left them alone. Meade was Grant’s senior by about ten years, and the paths of their lives had run widely apart; un- clouded sunshine had fallen richly on Meade’s, adversity’s blasts had blown fiercely across Grant’s. They were practically strangers to each other as they met at this camp-fire, and we may credit Meade, as he took his seat in its mellow blaze, with a wandering curiosity, a keen interest to fathom the medium sized diffident man with the marvelous career. He would not have been human without it; for as Grant had risen in his mighty flight, there had drifted to him as to every old officer of the army, minute details of the awful eclipse under which he had left it and the hard, honest trials he had met in supporting his family. Knowing ourselves and our fellow men as we do, it is not unreasonable then to imagine Meade, a man of the world, of cultivation, and at home in society and clubs, following Grant’s motions and speech with the unobtrusive yet keen observation of men of his class; or to imagine Grant having to meet from him, as from all his old fellow officers of the army, that searching look which had met him invariably since his emergence from obscurity. But I can easily see Meade’s curiosity disarming, and his noble, fiery 112 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS nature breathing naturally and strengthening in the soothing influence of Grant’s deep calm; every ut- terance of his low vibrating voice gliding modestly from one grasp of a subject to another, every tone simple and un-self-conscious, every thought as dis- tinct and fresh as a coin from the mint. I have no doubt that Grant’s naturally sweet, modest nature, together with the auguries, which were all good, made Meade’s first camp-fire with him a pleasant one; and that, before its flames and in the wild charm of the place, was born the spirit of loyal codperation which he showed to his chief on every field and clear to the end. Our country owes a great deal to both of these men; justice, but not more than justice, has been done to Grant. Meade has never had his due. As I look back and see his devotion day and night in that last great campaign, his hair growing grayer, and the furrows in his face deeper, under its trying burden, and then, when it is all over and the cause is won, see him relegated to the third or fourth place in official recognition and popular favor, I feel deeply sorry, knowing, as I do, how the country’s fate hung in the balance when he was called on to take com- mand of the Army of the Potomac. I hope his last hour was comforted, that there came to him out of the Past the cheers of his countrymen, greeting his victory at Gettysburg. After his death it was found that his system had THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS 113 never recovered from the wound he received at Charles City Cross Roads. From all accounts they were both cheery over having the army across the Rapidan. Anxiety over their first move was all gone. The stubborn resistance that Lee might have offered to their crossing of the river had not been made; and now that they were well established on his flank, he would be forced to decisive action: he would either have to fight it out at once, or fall back and ultimately undergo a siege. In the way they misconceived w T hat Lee would do, there is almost a suggestion of fatality. For although there is no absolute corroborative evidence to sup- port the conclusion, yet the movements show that what they expected was this: that he would hastily withdraw from his works and place his army to receive, but not to give, attack. Hooker had yielded to the same illusion. In forecasting his Chancellors- ville campaign, he had imagined that when Lee at Fredericksburg found that he was on his flank at Chancellorsville, he would fall back from Fredericks- burg and contest the way to Richmond. The differ- ence between the results in Hooker’s case and in Grant’s was wide: the former was driven from the field in almost utter disaster; Grant met Lee’s attack in the Wilderness, threw him back, and pushed on undaunted. Had Meade and Grant, — as they sat there, the stars over them and the Rapidan swirling along, now and 114 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS then breaking into a gurgle, — had they known that Ewell was within three miles of Warren, it would have been, I think, quite another camp-fire, and Meade might never have gained those first fine im- pressions of Grant which were so honorable to him and so valuable to the country, for whose sake, I sincerely believe, Fortune so turned her wheel that they might be made that night. It is a matter of singular interest that all this time Lee’s position was barely suspected, and his purpose entirely unknown to either of them. And how it all came about is one of the mysterious features of the Battle of the Wilderness. Let me state the circum- stances, and I promise to make the account as short and comprehensible as I can. Wilson, with his third division of cavalry, reached the Lacy farm about half-past eight in the forenoon ; halted, and sent patrols westward and southward, that is, out on the Pike toward Locust Grove and along the county road to Parker’s store. At noon, when the head of Warren’s corps bore in sight, he set off for Parker’s, first sending orders to the scouting party on the Pike to push out as far as Robertson’s Tavern (now, and by the Confederates during the war, called Locust Grove) and, after driving the enemy away from that place, to ride across country and join the division in the neighborhood of Par- ker’s store. Wilson, with the bulk of his division, THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS 115 on arriving at the store about two o’clock, sent a strong reconnoissance up the Plank Road, with di- rections to keep an active lookout for the enemy. In a despatch to Forsythe, Sheridan’s chief of staff, dated 2.10 p. M., he said, “I send herewith a civilian, Mr. Sime, a citizen of Great Britain. He says he left Orange yesterday 2 p. M. ; Longstreet’s corps lies between there and Gordonsville; passed at the latter place; Ewell and Hill about Orange Court House. Troops well down toward Mine Run [about half-way between the Lacy farm and the Court House], on all the roads except this one [the Plank] ; none on this nearer than seven miles to this place. I have sent patrols well out in all directions, but as yet hear of nothing except few light parties scattered through the by-roads.” Sheridan sent the following despatch to Meade, — the hour not given, but presumably toward sundown : “I have the honor to report that scout sent out the first road leading to the right from Germanna Ford went as far as Barnett’s Mill at or near Mine Run [Barnett’s Mill is on Mine Run], found the enemy’s pickets. Also the scout sent out on the second road to the right [the Flat Run Road that intersects the Pike where the battle began] went to within one-half mile of Robertson’s Tavern, found a small force of the enemy’s cavalry on picket. It was also reported that a brigade of rebel infantry was sent down to Barnett’s Mill or Mine Run yesterday.” 116 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS These scouts referred to were probably individ- uals in Confederate uniform, for Sheridan always kept a group of these quiet, daring men about him on whom he called for hazardous service. At 7.40 p. m. Wilson again reported to Forsythe: “I have executed all orders so far. My patrols have been to the Catharpin Road. Did not see Gregg, and only two of the enemy; also to within one mile of Mine Run on Orange Pike [Plank?] skirmishing with small detachments of the enemy. Patrol to Robertson’s Tavern not yet heard from.” Ten minutes later, or at 7.50 p. m., Wilson sent this despatch to Warren: “My whole division is at this place [Parker’s store], patrols and advanced par- ties well out on the Spotsylvania and Orange roads. No enemy on former, and but small parties on this. Drove them six miles or to within one mile of Mine Road. Patrol from here toward Robertson’s not yet reported. Rodes’s division reported to be stretched along the road as far as twelve miles this side of Orange. Will notify you of any changes in this direction.” Here we have all the recorded information that Meade could have received of the enemy up to when he joined Grant at his camp-fire. Probably the reason' why "Wilson’s report as to Rodes’s position made no impression on Humphreys or Meade — for it must be assumed that it reached them — was because they interpreted it as meaning THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS 117 his winter-quarters, which was nothing new, for prisoners and deserters had given them that infor- mation during the winter, and they had so located him on a map kept for the purpose. Their interpreta- tion accounts, too, for neither Warren nor Sheridan making any further suggestion to Wilson as to Rodes’s whereabouts. The fact is that at that very hour of 7.50 p. M. he was bivouacked just behind Johnson’s and Nelson’s battalion of artillery two miles south of Locust Grove, and the head of Hill’s corps was east of Verdierville. There is but one explanation for this mysterious indifference in the presence of an enemy, namely, that Grant and Meade were possessed with the idea that Lee, as soon as he should find that we had crossed the Rapidan, would hasten from his lines to some position beyond the Wilderness. No fog ever drifted in from the sea, wrapping up lighthouses and headlands, that was deeper than this delusion which drifted in over the minds of Grant and Meade, and, so far as I know, over corps and divi- sion-commanders as well. But how about Wilson’s patrols? And especially that one he had sent toward Locust Grove? This is probably what happened. It got to Locust Grove before noon, having scattered into the by-roads and paths the videttes of the First North Carolina cavalry whom they had brushed away from the ford at daybreak. From there I assume they went on to 118 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS Mine Run, which they found glinting brightly down through the old fields from one clump of willows to another. Beyond the run, and in full sight, rose Lee’s breastworks of the year before, not a flag fly- ing on them or a soul in them. All was peaceful at Mine Run. After a while, having scouted up and down the run as far as Barnett’s Mill on the north, and off toward the head of the run on the south, they rejoined the main patrol at Locust Grove. No one disturbed them, and there they waited till they saw the sun approaching the tree-tops, and then they obeyed their orders and struck off through the woods for Parker’s store. The chances are that their dust had barely settled before on came Ewell. Had they stayed at Locust Grove a few hours longer, what would have happened? Why, the orders issued at 6 o’clock would have been countermanded at once. Warren and Sedgwick would have struck at Ewell early in the morning, and Hancock, instead of going to Todd’s Tavern, would have reached Parker’s store by sun-up, and probably before noon a great victory would have been won. Is there nothing mysterious in all this? Knowing the situation as we now do, does it not add interest to that camp-fire of old rails, before which Grant and Meade are sitting smoking? Does it not give a weird echo to the bursts of laughter of their staffs? Laugh on, gay children of fortune! and meanwhile the spirit of the Wilderness is brooding. THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS 119 Lee’s camp-fire was in the woods opposite the house of a Mrs. Rodes near Yerdierville; and it must have been a cheery one, for General Long, his military secretary, says that at breakfast the following morn- ing he was in unusually fine spirits, chiefly over the fact that Grant had put himself in the meshes of the Wilderness, just as Hooker before him had done, giving him the one chance to overbalance his one hundred and twenty thousand men. From Grant’s headquarters to Lee’s was, as the crow flies, between nine and ten miles; and a circle with its centre where Warren was in camp and a radius of six miles would have taken in the bulk of ours and half of Lee’s army. And yet the Army of the Potomac lay down to rest, unconscious that they were almost within gunshot of their old foe! Happily all of their camps were on less gloomy and fated ground than Hancock’s. His were on the old battlefield of Chancellorsville, and some of his regiments found themselves on the identical lines where they had fought in that engagement. The ground around their camp-fires, and for that matter everywhere, was strewn more or less with human bones and the skeletons of horses. In a spot less than ten rods square, fifty skulls with their cavern- ous eyes were counted, their foreheads doming in silence above the brown leaves that were gathering about them. In sight of a good many of their camp- fires, too, were half-open graves, displaying arms and 120 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS legs with bits of paling and mildewed clothing still clinging to them : — oh, war’s glory, this is your re- verse side ! — On all hands there were tokens of the battle: shriveling cartridge-boxes, battered and rick- etty canteens, rotting caps and hats, broken artil- lery-carriages, barked and splintered trees, dead, or half-dead, dangling limbs, and groves of saplings, with which the woods abound, topped by volleys as if sheared by a blast. Of course, there was line after line of confronting, settling breastworks, whose shal- lowing trenches nature was quietly filling with leaves and dead twigs. All these dismal reminders met the eyes of Hancock’s men until they were closed in sleep. I do not know how it would have affected others, but I think that if I had been sitting before one of those camp-fires, night having well come on and the whippoorwills, of which there are thou- sands that make their homes in the Wilderness, re- peating their lonely cries, and the fire drawing to its end should have suddenly kindled up as fires do, — and mortals, too, sometimes before they die, — and thrown off a beam into the darkness upon one of those skulls, it seems to me that I should have felt a low, muffling beat in my heart, and heard the rap of life’s seriousness at its door. Hancock’s tent was in the old peach-orchard. (What is there about a peach-orchard that war should choose it for the scene of battles? There was the battle of Peach-tree Creek near Atlanta, the THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS 121 Peach-Orchard at Gettysburg, and now Hancock is in the old peach-orchard at Chaneellorsville, where the battle raged fiercest. Does war love the red blos- som, or did the blood of some noble-hearted soldier quicken the first peach-bloom of the world?) It is reasonable to believe that the whole disastrous scene of the year before must have passed in review before Hancock. But the feature of the battle that would come back to him, I think, with most vividness, and make the deepest impression on him as a corps-com- mander, was the flank attack that Stonewall Jackson made. In fact, judging from his own reports of the first two days’ fighting at the Wilderness (which took place within less than three miles of where he slept) , he not only thought about it, but dreamed about it. For, the entire time he was fighting Hill, he was haunted with the fear, paralyzing a great share of his customary aggressive and magnetic usefulness, that Longstreet would come up on his left by way of Todd’s Tavern and give him a blow on his flank such as Jackson had given Howard. I wonder, Reader, if the ghost of Stonewall did not really come back? You see, it was about the anniversary of the night on which he received his mortal wound, and the old armies that he knew so well were on the eve of meeting again. What should be more natural than that he should come to this side of the river, that river whose beckoning trees offered such sweet shade to the dying soldier? Did 122 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS I hear you say that you thought he did? Whylo! here he is on the field of Chancellorsville, looking for his brigade, — for his old legion of the Valley. Let us draw near. “They are not here, Stonewall; these men you see are Hancock’s men.” And now he goes to the peach-orchard, for no soldier ever took part in a battle who does not have a longing to see the ground the enemy defended. He approaches Hancock’s tent, — they had known each other in the old army, — with his right hand — his left arm you remember was amputated two inches below the shoulder — he draws the walls softly, and looks in on the gallant friend of other days. Perhaps it was then that Hancock dreamed Longstreet was on his flank. ! Stonewall closes the tent and seems to ponder; is he debating where he shall go next? Shall it be off to where he parted with Lee to make his great flank movement via the old Furnace Road where Gregg’s cavalry outposts, saddled and bridled, are now dozing, or shall it be back to where he met the fatal volley? The latter has won. If you will follow him, so will I, for the road, the woods that border it, and the spot to which he is going, I know right well. And now that he has reached there his lips seem to move; is it a prayer he is offering? Or is he addressing some aide, telling Hill as on the night of the battle to come up and Pender to push right on? Abruptly, and with almost a gasp, he fastens his astonished gaze on a cowled figure that has emerged GENERAL MAP OF THE WILDERNESS SCALE C' MILES 0 12 3 1 - Where Longstreet was'wounded 2— -Where Stonewall was mortally wounded THE BATTLE OF TEE WILDERNESS 123 from the trees and is looking at him. Is it the Spirit of the Wilderness, whose relentless eyes met his as he fell, and does he read in their cold depths the doom awaiting Longstreet? Who knows his thoughts as he turns away from the fated spot and sets off up the Orange Plank Road, for his melan- choly heart yearns to be with Lee and his valiant corps once more. And now he has reached the junc- tion of the Orange and the Brock roads which is in the midst of woods; the stars, although hazy and dim, light the crossing a little and he halts. Down the latter, up which he rode on his historic march, he looks long and wistfully; is he expecting his old corps again? Deep is the silence in the slumbering woods. A little bird in its dreams utters one strain of its lonely wood-note and then is still; and now instead of oncoming troops across the Brock Road from east to west, the direction Stonewall is going, and with the soft pace of a phantom, flits the cowled figure, turning her face hastily toward him as she enters the sullen oaks. With a sigh he moves on to- ward Parker’s store, and when he draws near where Mahone’s men fired on Longstreet, something on his left attracts his attention and he pauses suddenly. Whose hands are those pulling aside the bushes and overhanging limbs? Lo! there again is the Spirit of the Wilderness, with the same ominous, relentless look. A moment’s glance is exchanged. The figure withdraws, the branches swing back into 124 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS place, and the ghost of Stonewall moves on, with troubled brow. Hark! he hears something. It draws nearer, and now we can distinguish footsteps; they sound as if they were dragging chains after them through the dead rustling leaves. Presently, off from the roadside where two oaks press back the tangle, admitting a bit of starlight, Stonewall sees a gaunt, hollow- breasted, wicked-eyed, sunken-cheeked being. Be- hold, she is addressing him! “Stonewall, I am Slav- ery and sorely wounded. Can you do nothing to stay the Spirit of the Wilderness that, in striking at me, struck you down?” “No, no,” says the ghostly commander, impa- tiently waving the staring creature away. “Your day, thank God! has come. To-morrow morning Lee will strike, but it will not be for you.” “And is this history?” comes a peevish voice from the general level of those who are as yet only dimly conscious of the essence and final embodiment of History. Yes, it is a little sheaf out of a field lying in one of its high and beautifully remote valleys. Such then is the chronicle of the first day of the campaign. And now it is midnight; all save the sentinels are asleep, and the whippoorwills are still chanting. V At Warren’s headquarters we breakfasted early, and at 5 a. m., just as the sun had cleared the tree-tops, he sent the following despatch to Humphreys : — “My command is just starting out. As I have but little ways to move, I keep my trains with me in- stead of sending them around by the plank road, which I fear might interfere with the main trains, which I understand to be those to be assembled at Todd’s Tavern.” A half-hour later he notified Getty, camped back at Flat Run on the Germanna Road, that Griffin, in conformity with Meade’s orders of the night before, would hold the Pike till he (Getty) got up. At the same time he sent word to the officer in charge of the pickets in Griffin’s front not to withdraw till the column got well in the road on the line of march to Parker’s store. He then mounted his big, logy dapple- gray, wearing as usual his yellow sash of a major- general, and started to follow Crawford and Wads- worth, who from his camp he could see were already under way, passing the Lacy house. Just as he was reaching the Pike, — we had not left camp three minutes, — a staff officer, riding rapidly, met him and, saluting, said that General Griffin had sent him 126 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS to tell General Warren that the enemy was advancing in force on his pickets. I do not believe that Warren ever had a greater surprise in his life, but his thin, solemn, darkly sallow face was nowhere lightened by even a transitory flare — Hancock’s open, handsome countenance would have been all ablaze. There was with Warren at this time, as I recall, only Colonel Locke, Dr. Winne, the general’s brother Robert, and Lieutenant Higbee, an aide who had been on his staff for a good while, and who was a very brave man. Warren first turned to me and said, “Tell Griffin to get ready to attack at once”; then, for some reason, perhaps because of my youth and inexperience, he told Higbee to take the message, and at once notified Meade as follows : — “6 a. m. General Griffin has just sent in word that a force of the enemy has been reported to him coming down the turnpike. The foundation of the report is not given. Until it is more definitely ascertained no change will take place in the movements ordered.” (And now he yielded to one of his weaknesses, referred to by Grant in his Memoirs, namely, inform- ing his commanding officer what should be done. He had another and more fatal one, that of comment- ing at times unfavorably, regardless of who were present, on the orders he received.) “Such demonstrations are to be expected, and show the necessity for keeping well closed and pre- THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS 127 pared to face Mine Run and meet an attack at a moment’s notice. G. K. Warren.” Before the above despatch left headquarters an- other aide came in and Warren added: — “6.20. Bartlett (Griffin’s advanced brigade) sends in word that the enemy has a line of infantry out advancing. We shall soon know more. I have arranged for Griffin to hold the pike till the 6th corps comes up at all events. G. K. W.” He then sent this order to Griffin : — “Push a force out at once against the enemy, and see what force he has.” Even Warren had not quite thrown off the delu- sion that Lee was falling back; but within three hours, like a fog, it lifted, not only from his mind but from Meade’s and Grant’s also. Griffin, on receipt of these orders, forwarded them to Bartlett, who sent at once the Eighteenth Massa- chusetts and Eighty-third Pennsylvania, the former on the right, the latter on the left of the Pike. When they reached the pickets, still on their posts of the night before, skirmishers were thrown out, who promptly engaged those of Ewell, driving them back, and quickly ascertaining that the enemy was there in strong force. On this reconnaissance Charles H. Wil- son of Wrentham, Company I, Eighteenth Massachu- setts, was killed, the first to fall in the campaign. He was only eighteen years old, and the son of a farmer. In a short time after these orders were sent to 128 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS Griffin, Meade with his staff came up hurriedly to Warren, and, hearing what he had to say, exclaimed emphatically, “If there is to be any fighting this side of Mine Run, let us do it right off.” I have seen many statements as to what Meade said, but I was within ten feet of him, and recall with distinctness his face, his language, and its tones. Meade then sent this despatch back to Grant, who was still at his camp waiting for Burnside. It was received at 7.30 a. m. “The enemy have appeared in force on the pike, and are now reported forming line of battle in front of Griffin’s division, 5th Corps. I have directed Gen. Warren to attack them at once with his whole force. Until this movement of the enemy is developed, the march of the corps must be suspended. I have, therefore, sent word to Hancock not to advance beyond Todd’s Tavern. I think the enemy is trying to delay our movements and will not give battle, but of this we shall soon see.” (General Meade, may I ask when Lee ever declined battle with you? All your doubts on this point will soon be removed, however; for he is right on you and means to deliver a blow, if he can, that will send you reeling, as he sent Hooker, back across the Rapidan.) Grant, on receipt of this unexpected news from Meade, replied, “If any opportunity presents itself for pitching into a part of Lee’s army, do so without giving time for disposition.” THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS 129 Meanwhile Warren, having hurried aides off to Crawford and Wadsworth, the former to halt, the latter to move up on Griffin’s left, established his headquarters at the Lacy house. From there he sent this message, dated 7.50 a. m., to Griffin: — “Have your whole division prepared to move for- ward and attack the enemy, and await further in- structions while the other troops are forming.” He then rode, and I went with him, to Wadsworth, who had halted about a mile beyond the Lacy house. Where we overtook him there was an old chimney that probably marked the home of one of Major Lacy’s overseers. I remember it very distinctly, for one of Warren’s staff having observed that a bare little knoll near the chimney would be a good place for a battery, he observed coolly that when he wanted advice from his staff he would ask for it. I have always thought that it was an uncalled-for snub on the part of Warren, but a great deal must be excused when a battle is pending; I doubt, however, if Grant or Sedgwick or Thomas under any stress ever spoke to a young officer or soldier in a way or tone that made him uncomfortable. Wadsworth was just forming his division, to the right of the Parker’s Store Road which at that point and for quite a distance runs almost west, following up the main branch of Wilderness Run. Warren said to him, “Find out what is in there,” indicating the deep woods. And did they find something? Yes, in- 130 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS deed they did — many their eternal rest. We then went back to the Lacy house, and Warren soon set off to see Griffin. By the time Warren’s aide overtook Crawford (it was just eight o’clock), the head of his division had reached the Chewning farm which lies somewhat beyond where Wadsworth was forming. The ground from the run rises up sharply to its rather high, dipping, and swerving fields, which, when I saw them last, were beginning to clothe themselves in spring- time green. The heaving plateau is on swings east- ward around the valley of Wilderness Run, like the rim of a great kettle, falling away at last in the angle between the Brock and the Plank roads into many zigzag, swampy ravines, the heads of the easterly branches of the Run. Two roads connect Chewning’s with the Plank, one through the woods to the Store about a mile south; the other follows the rim of the kettle for a while and then breaks away to the Widow Tapp’s. Let any one stand on the rolling fields now and he will recognize at once their value to us could we have held them. In acknowledging the receipt of Warren’s orders, Crawford said : — “There is brisk skirmishing at the store between our own and the enemy’s cavalry. I am halted in a good position.” The cavalry he saw were the Fifth New York, THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS 131 five hundred strong, whom Wilson had left to hold the place till Crawford should arrive. They were not skirmishing, however, with cavalry, but with the head of Heth’s division of Hill’s corps — the same one that opened the battle of Gettysburg. And here is what had happened. On Wilson’s departure for Craig’s Meeting House, Colonel Hammond, a very gallant man, in command of the Fifth New York, sent two companies under Captain Barker of Crown Point, New York, to scout the road toward Verdier- ville. He had not covered more than two miles before he ran up against Heth marching leisurely in column. The Captain, a resolute man as you can readily see on looking into his steady dark eyes, dismounted his men, formed them as skirmishers across the road, and notified Hammond, who at once came up with the rest of the regiment. Of course they were driven back, but not without making a fine stub- born resistance and meeting with heavy losses. By the time Crawford reached Chewning’s, Hammond had been pushed to Parker’s store. Roebling then with Crawford hastened to the store, and Ham- mond told him that perhaps he could hold on fifteen minutes longer, whereupon Roebling hurried back to Crawford; but it was too late for him to inter- pose behind Hammond. Moreover, a heavy skir- mish line from Heth’s leading brigade was being thrown out toward him. He formed one brigade facing toward the store, the other west, and by that 132 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS time Hammond had been driven from the store and Heth with his main column was slowly following him, unmindful apparently of Crawford’s position on his flank. When Crawford’s despatch, quoted above, reached corps headquarters, Warren was still with Griffin; and it was sent to Meade, who, judging from the indorsement he put upon it, — “I have sent to Wilson, who I hope will himself find out the move- ment of the enemy,” — was not even at that early hour — it was just after nine — in a very good humor. Had Warren’s orders to Crawford been delayed twenty or thirty minutes in delivery, the entire day’s operations would have been changed, for his advance would have brought him into immediate contact with the Confederate infantry and Lee’s plans would have been disclosed at once. It is all conjecture what would have been the moves Grant would have made in that case, but the chances are, however, that Hancock would have been diverted to the junction of the Brock and Plank roads; that Getty would have been pushed immediately to the Chewning farm, and with Hancock forcing his way to Parker’s store, and those open fields firmly in our possession, it would have made Lee’s position very critical. If Warren, after giving Wadsworth his orders to find out what was in the woods to the left of Griffin, had continued up the road to Crawford, his quick eye would have THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS 133 taken in the strength and importance of the Chewn- ing plateau at a glance, and he would have repeated his brilliant coup on Round Top by bringing Wads- worth right up to hold it as he had brought up O’Rorke. But that was not to be; fate had decided that Lee and not Grant was to hold these fields. Warren, on reaching Griffin, impressed with the seriousness of the situation as he saw it in front of him and practically ignorant of that in front of Crawford, ordered Wadsworth to connect with Griffin’s left and Crawford to join Wadsworth’s left as quickly as possible. When this order came to Crawford, Roebling, who was then with him, sent in all haste this despatch to Warren : “It is of vital importance to hold the field where General Crawford is. Our whole line of battle is turned if the enemy get possession of it. There is a gap of half a mile between Wadsworth and Crawford. He cannot hold the line against attack.” 1 Warren’s only reply was curt. Crawford was to obey the orders he had received. Meanwhile, Warren in a despatch dated 10.30 had directed Wadsworth to “Push forward a heavy line of skirmishers followed by your line of battle, and attack the enemy at once and push him. General Griffin will also attack. Do 1 I beg to acknowledge my obligations to Col. Washington A. Roeb- ling, Warren’s chief of staff, for the valuable aid his notes have given me ; and to Prof. Theodore Lyman, son of Col. Theodore Lyman, Meade’s most confidential staff officer, who has allowed me to consult his gallant father's notes of the battle. 134 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS not wait for him, but look out for your left flank.” This injunction as to Wadsworth’s left flank was obviously due to Warren’s fear that, owing to the character of the country, Crawford’s division might be delayed in joining him. This order to Wadsworth is so inconsistent with what actually transpired that it can only be ac- counted for by the fretful nagging which had be- gun on Warren from headquarters, and by the fact that Griffin, Ayres, and Bartlett, having visited their skirmish lines and discovered that the enemy were in strong force, were averse to moving unpreparedly, and had so notified him. Colonel Swan of Ayres’s staff, whose account is altogether the clearest and most comprehensive yet written of that part of the field, says he went back to Warren at least twice, at Griffin’s behest, to report the gravity of the situa- tion, and that Warren used sharp language to him the second time. Colonel Swan says, “I remember my indignation. It was afterwards a common report in the army that Warren had just had unpleasant things said to him by General Meade, and that General Meade had just heard the bravery of his army questioned.” The ground for the latter might have been some heedless remark from one of Grant’s aides who had come with him from the West. But however this may be, such was the situation and its feverishness at eleven o’clock on Warren’s front. It should be THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS 135 said that while Wadsworth and Crawford were trying to get into line Griffin had thrown up some pretty strong breastworks, for he was feeling the weight of the force in his front. And now let us leave the pestered Warren and see what was going on elsewhere. As soon as Grant could communicate the necessary orders to Burn- side as to the disposition of his troops at the ford, he came to the front with all speed: it was then about nine o’clock. On his arrival he found Meade and Sedgwick standing near the Pike, and after a short consultation he and Meade pitched their headquar- ters near by, on a knoll covered with pines from four to seven inches in diameter, the ground strewn with needles and bits of dead limbs. It is now part of an open leaning field, with here and there an old tree dreaming of the past; and nearly opposite, on the Pike, is a little frame chapel, its bell on Sunday mornings pealing softly over it. They had barely dismounted before news of im- portance besides Crawford’s first despatch came in. Captain Michler of the engineers, whom Meade had sent to reconnoitre to the right of Griffin, had been suddenly fired on while making his way through the thickety heads of Caton’s Run. After satisfying him- self that trouble was brewing, he hurried down the Flat Run Road to its junction with that from Ger- manna, and notified Meade of the situation. Wright, with his division of the Sixth Corps, was moving 136 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS along unconscious of danger; but as soon as he heard Michler’s story he formed his division, facing it west, and soon orders came to move up and join the right of Griffin. He had to advance through about the most broken and confusing district of the Wilderness; his left, under Upton, having to cross all the branches of Caton’s Run, which are densely packed with bushes, vines, and low-limbed trees. Meanwhile, to the wonder of headquarters, no news had come from Wilson; but it is easy of expla- nation. Not having received counter-instructions and the enemy having made no demonstration, he had set off promptly for Craig’s Meeting House on the Catharpin Road. His division got there at eight o’clock; and shortly after its leading brigade engaged Rosser and drove him westward several miles. Rosser was soon reinforced, and pushing Wilson back got possession of the road to Parker’s store, thus cutting him off from communicating with Meade. Every little while, however, as the morning had worn on, wounded men had come down Wilderness Run from the gallant Hammond’s command, all telling the same story of the advance of Hill toward the Brock Road. Meade realized his danger; with the junction of the Brock and Plank roads in Lee’s possession, Warren’s position would be turned and Hancock at Todd’s Tavern completely isolated from the other corps. So about half-past ten Getty, who had been lying near headquarters, with the third THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS 137 division of the Sixth Corps, — waiting, shall I say, for the delusion to lift that Lee was retreating? — was ordered to move thither with all haste, and head off Hill. At the same time Hancock, who, dismounted, was resting in a pine grove beyond Todd’s Tav- ern, was told to come up without delay and support Getty. Meanwhile Winne and the other surgeons were busy locating their hospitals and getting ready for what they knew was coming. And by ten o’clock the yellow flags of the first, second, and third di- visions of the Fifth Corps were flying on the ridge east of Wilderness Run; that of the third was first near the Lacy house, but later moved back with the rest; those of Wright’s and Rickett’s divisions of the Sixth Corps were behind them respectively to the east of the Germanna Road; that of Getty, and later those of Hancock’s corps, were pitched near Lewis Run among the fields of the Carpenter farm, which when I saw them last were in blading corn. Sheridan had made an early start for Hamilton’s Crossing, but finding he was on a wild-goose chase, turned back toward Todd’s Tavern, and, fortunately, his leading division under Gregg reached there just in time to relieve Wilson, who after severe fighting had been driven rapidly by Rosser and Fitz Lee from the right of Lee’s advance. The absence of any news from Wilson, the threat- ened danger on the Plank and Brock roads, and the 138 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS delay of Warren, all added to the intensity of the situation; and impatience at Meade’s and Grant’s headquarters grew apace as the sun rose higher. Again and again inquiries were made of Warren when Griffin would move, and each time with more edge, for no one at headquarters shared his conviction that the situation called for a thoroughly organ- ized and formidable attack; why, it was only a rear guard! Moreover, had any one of the eager, self- sufficient headquarters staff tried to put a division or even a regiment in line, he would soon have real- ized the difficulties and would have had abundant charity for Warren. It is true that the delay that morning was almost inexplicable. But once a division left the roads or fields it disappeared utterly, and its commander could not tell whether it was in line with the others or not. As it turned out, they were almost as disconnected when they struck the enemy as if they had been marching in the dark. Yet it took nearly four hours to get ready to form, and when the orders came to go ahead, divisions were still looking for each others’ flanks. By half-past eleven Meade, with Heth advancing every minute toward the Brock Road, could stand the delay no longer, and, whether or not Wright was abreast with Griffin, “Send him ahead!” was the firm command from headquarters. The situation, then, on our side, thirty minutes before the battle began, is as follows: Bartlett’s THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS 139 brigade of Griffin’s division is forming in two lines of battle on the south of the Pike. The first line is the Eighteenth Massachusetts and Eighty-third Penn- sylvania, the latter next the road; the second line, the One Hundred and Eighteenth Pennsylvania and Twentieth Maine, the First Michigan deployed as skirmishers. Ayres is moving up by the flank of regi- ments in column of fours, through the tangled cedars and pines on the right of the Pike, the One Hundred and Fortieth New York, Pat O’Rorke’s old regiment, on the left of the first line, and then the Regulars. In the second line, its left on the Pike, is the One Hundred and Forty-sixth New York, then the Ninety- first and One Hundred and Fifty -fifth Pennsylvania. Upton’s men, the left of Wright’s division of the Sixth Corps, are elbowing their way through a tangle like that Ayres is -worming his way through, trying to overtake and connect with him. In fact when I was there last spring Upton’s ground seemed to me the worse, but both were bad enough. Wright’s second brigade, made up entirely of troops from New Jersey, is on Upton’s right and across the Flat Run Road (they too were in the network of undergrowth). Wright himself is close behind them on the road and Sedgwick, the best wheel horse, so to speak, in the army team, is in the corner of the old Spottswood field where the Flat Run Road leaves the Germanna Ford. Wadsworth, mounted on his iron gray, lighter in color than Warren’s, is following up his division that 140 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS is trying to advance in line of battle to join Bartlett’s left. Cutler is on the right with the Iron Brigade, the Twenty-fourth Michigan on its left. Stone is in the centre of the division. Rice on the left. Daniel W. Taft, a brave, one-armed Vermont veteran, who was with Rice in the Ninety -fifth New York, tells me that, as they advanced, a wild turkey, the first and only one he ever saw, broke from a thicket ahead of them. I The Maryland brigade of Robinson’s division is in reserve behind Stone, Robinson’s other division ready to support Griffin. Getty at the head of his division has reached the junction of the Brock and Plank roads. He was there just in time, for with his staff and escort, al- though under fire of the tall North Carolinians who had driven Hammond back, he held them off till Wheaton coming up at run formed across the Plank Road, saving the key of the battle-field. There were bodies of Confederate dead within less than two hundred feet of this vital point. Hancock, urged by orders from Meade, is riding rapidly ahead of his corps up the Brock Road to join Getty. His troops are coming on, too, as fast as they can, sometimes at double-quick, but all are greatly delayed by artillery, trains, and horsemen, the road being very narrow and bordered by such thick woods that they cannot draw off into them to clear the way for the infantry. For three or four miles this side of Todd’s Tavern THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS 141 the road is packed with his sweltering troops, for it is very hot in the still woods. The main heavy supply trains that had followed Hancock’s troops to Todd’s Tavern have faced about and are making all speed for Chancellorsville, where the artillery re- serve is going into park. Wilson is being roughly handled but his pursuers are suffering too. Sheridan, under a cloud of trail- ing dust, is returning from his wild-goose chase (and by the way he had the effrontery to claim that it was Meade’s fault and not his that the march had been made, — in fact, his orders were based on his own report of the location of the Confeder- ate cavalry, — which if borne in mind, as well as Meade’s temper, may account in part for the char- acter of their future relations). At headquarters, anxiety with Meade and Humphreys is increasing over Hill’s move toward the Brock Road. The eagle spirit in Meade is up, and a captious wonder per- vades his and Grant’s staff why Warren does not at- tack. No one seems to know or care whether Upton is alongside of Griffin or not; even up to that hour a good many of the wise ones among them were pretty sure that there was nothing very serious in front of Warren. Burnside’s corps suffering with heat is marching as fast as it can for Germanna Ford, the rear of the column, Ferrero’s colored division, is on the other side of the Rappahannock. 142 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS The batteries in the Lacy fields and on the over- looking ridge east of Wilderness Run stand hitched ready to move, the buglers following their captains as they go from section to section of their batteries, the gunners lying down or leaning against their well- loved pieces. There is one battery close behind Griffin. Ammunition-wagons from the various sup- ply-trains have drawn out and taken positions as close as they dare to their respective brigades. The ambulances, too, have come forward and are wait- ing for their pale passengers. At last Meade’s imperative orders have reached Warren, Griffin’s lines are moving, and every one at headquarters is in momentary expectation of hearing the first volley. One who has never been through it cannot realize the tensity of that hour in the Wilderness: we knew it was the beginning of the end, victory for us at last or victory for them. Grant is sitting with his back against a young pine, whittling and smoking, his modest, almost plaintive, face as calm as though he were sitting on a beach and waves were breaking softly below him. The sun is in the meridian, not a cloud marbles the sky, and Wilderness Run is glistening down through the fields. In the woods not a living leaf is stirring, and the dead ones are waiting to pillow softly the maimed and dying. “The mortally wounded will be so thirsty!” says a spring beauty blooming on the bank of the little run that crosses the Pike in front of THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS 143 Griffin. “And some of them I know will cry for water,” observes a violet sadly. “And if they do, I wish I had wings, for I ’d fly to every one of them,” exclaims the brooklet. “We know you would, sweet- heart,” reply violet and spring beauty to their light- hearted companion of the solitude. “And if one of them dies under me. I’ll toll every bell that hangs in my outstretched, blooming branches,” declares a giant huckleberry -bush warmly. “But hush! hush!” cries the bush, “here they comel’k VI And now let us take a quick survey of what had gone on meanwhile in Lee’s lines. Lee himself with a blithe heart had breakfasted early at his camp near Verdierville on the Plank Road. At eight o’clock the night before, he had sent this despatch to Ewell through his Adjutant-General, Taylor: “He wishes you to be ready to move early in the morning. If the enemy moves down the river (that is, toward Fredericksburg) he wishes to push on after him. If he comes this way, we will take our old line [that is, the one of the autumn before at Mine Run]. The general’s desire is to bring him to battle as soon now as possible.” The reason for bringing Grant to battle at once may have been strengthened by a despatch that he had received from Longstreet during the forenoon, in response to one he had sent him as to Grant’s movements. “I fear,” says Longstreet, “that the enemy is trying to draw us down to Fredericksburg, Can’t we threaten his rear so as to stop his move? We should keep away from there unless we can put a force to hold every force at West Point in check.” Longstreet doubtless had in mind the possibility of Butler’s command, then organized at Fort Munroe, being carried to the mouth of the Pamunkey. \ ) THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS 145 Heth and Wilcox, who had bivouacked on the Plank Road, the former this side of Lee, the latter beyond, were setting out leisurely for Parker’s store. Anderson’s, Hill’s other division, was still back on the upper side of the Rapidan, the other side of Orange Court House, but under orders to come for- ward. Ramseur of Rodes’s division, Ewell’s corps, who with his own brigade and three regiments of Pegram’s had been left to resist any crossing between Rapidan station and Mitchell’s ford, was making a reconnoissance toward Culpeper, so completely had his old West Point friend Custer bluffed him all through the afternoon while we were moving. Longstreet, having marched from four o’clock of the previous day and a good share of the night, was now at Brock’s Bridge over the North Anna and already under way again. Stuart, Rosser, and Fitz Lee were assembling their cavalry beyond Craig’s Meeting House, — at least twenty odd miles from Hamilton’s Crossing, where the general orders of the night before had placed them. R. D. Johnston’s brigade of Ewell’s corps which had lately been sent to guard the bridges over the North and South Anna were on their way back stepping fast: they claim they made the march of 66 miles in 23 hours, but I don’t believe it. That kind of time can be made going from a fight but not to it. When dawn came on, it found Ewell’s corps arous- ing; all of his troops save Rodes and Ramseur were 146 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS along the Pike, Edward Johnson’s division in ad- vance and within a few miles of Griffin. The First North Carolina cavalry, whom Wilson had scattered away from Germanna Ford in the morning, by dusk had re-collected and gone on picket ahead and around Ewell’s infantry; and just after sunrise they began feeling their way down the Pike, toward Warren. If they had held back a while, Griffin’s pickets would all have been withdrawn to rejoin the moving column, and Ewell could have sprung on Warren most viciously. Major Stiles, in his “Four Years under Marse Robert,” a book of living interest, gives us a glimpse of the early morning up the Pike. He says: “I found him [General Ewell] crouching over a low fire at a cross roads in the forest, no one at the time being nigh except two horses, and a courier who had charge of them, and the two crutches. The old hero, who had lost a leg in battle, could not mount his horse alone. The general was usually very thin and pale, unusually so that morning, but bright-eyed and alert. He was accustomed to ride a flea-bitten gray named Rifle, who was singularly like him, if a horse can be like a man. He asked me to dismount and take a cup of coffee with him.” Ewell told the major, while they were drinking their coffee, that his orders were to go right down the road and “strike the enemy wherever I could find him.” '< About eight a. m., after his corps was moving. THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS 147 Ewell sent Major Campbell Brown of his staff to report his position to General Lee. Lee sent word back for him to regulate his march down the Pike by that of Hill on the Plank Road, whose progress he could tell by the firing at the head of his column; and that he preferred not to bring on a general engage- ment before Longstreet came up. Either Colonel Taylor had misunderstood Lee, or Lee for some rea- son had changed his mind. Had he not done so and tried to put his plans of the night before in execution, another story would certainly have been written of the campaign. Hancock would have been stopped long before he had made Todd’s Tavern, and his corps would have been swung over into the Brock Road, which would have effectually stalled off Hill. And although Ewell might at first have staggered Warren and Sedgwick, he never could have driven them from the ridge east of Wilderness Run where they would have been rallied; for Hunt would have had it lined with artillery, and it would have been another Cemetery Ridge for the Confederate in- fantry. That the chances of war are fickle, I own, but I sincerely believe that if Lee had struck at us early that morning he would have suffered a terrible defeat before sundown, and, instead of the blithe heart at sunrise, when twilight came on he would have carried a heavy one. For Mahone, Anderson, Ramseur, Johnston, and Longstreet would have been beyond reach to give a helping hand to Ewell and 148 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS Hill. So I am inclined to think that Colonel Taylor misunderstood Lee: which in a measure is confirmed by his moves that morning, all pointing to a manifest desire not to precipitate a general engagement. For does any one suppose that Hammond’s five hundred men could have held Hill’s veterans back had they known that Lee wanted them to go ahead? Strangely and interestingly enough, Lee’s chances, owing to changing his mind, were growing better and better the farther and farther away Hancock and Wilson were moving from the strategic key of the field. But the truth is that Lee that forenoon knew but little more about Grant’s movements than Grant knew about his. However that may be, Ewell, after hearing from Lee, regulated his march accordingly, slowing up Jones, of Johnson’s division, who was in the lead, and who had felt Griffin’s and Wadsworth’s videttes south of the Pike, having pushed the latter nearly to the western branch of 'Wilderness Run. When he got to the Flat Run Road which crosses the Pike diagonally, as will be seen by consulting the map, Ewell sent the Stonewall brigade (James A. Walker, who must not be confounded with Henry H. Walker of Hill’s corps) down it to the left. Soon, through his field-glasses, from one of the ridges that straggle across the Pike just this side of its intersection by the Flat Run Road, he caught sight of Getty threading his way up across the leaning field east of Wilderness THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS 149 Run. Thereupon he halted Jones and sent Colonel Pendleton of his staff to report his position to Lee and ask instructions; and no doubt Pendleton told Lee about the column of troops seen moving toward the junction of the Brock and Plank roads. While Pendleton was away, and our people showing more and more activity and earnestness, Johnson, com- manding Ewell’s leading division, began to arrange his brigades in line as they came up. Now in those days there was an old field (it has since grown up) about five-eighths of a mile east of the crossing of the Pike by the Flat Run Road. It was narrow, deserted, occupying a depression be- tween two irregular ridges, and extended both sides of the Pike which crossed it a little diagonally nearer its southern end. The east and west sides sloped down to a gully in the middle, the scored-out bed of a once trembling primeval wood-stream; in its palmy days the Pike crossed it on a wooden bridge. The field was known as the Saunders or Palmer field, and was about eight hundred yards long north and south, and four hundred yards wide. It was about the only open, sunshiny spot along the four and a half to seven or eight miles of our battle-line, if we include Hancock’s entrenchments down the Brock Road. The last crop of the old field had been corn and among its stubble that day were sown the seeds of glory. The woods were thick all around the field, but the ground east and north of it* in the angle 150 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS between the Pike and the Flat Run Road was very broken, its low humpy ridges cradling a network of marshy, tangled places, the birthplace of mute lonely branches of Caton’s Run, and everywhere crowded with cedars and stunted pines. In truth, I know of no place in the Wilderness where nature seemed more out of humor than right here in the making of it. Johnson drew Jones back to the west side of the field, his left resting on the Pike, his line of battle stretching off into the woods. He posted Steuart’s brigade on the other side of the road, then Walker’s and then Stafford’s as they came up; their fronts reaching from the Pike northward almost, if not quite, to Flat Run itself. Millidge’s battery was posted at the junction of the roads. Dole and Battle were getting into posi- tion on the right of Jones, and coming on behind them was Rodes. J. B. Gordon, the eagle of Ewell’s corps, was coming down the old Pike, ready to plunge wherever the smoke of battle rose. Lee repeated to Pendleton the same instructions as before, not to bring on an engagement until Long- street was up. Obviously Lee had greatly under- estimated the distance Longstreet had to cover. Pendleton got back to Ewell about 11.30. By that time Kirkland’s brigade of Heth’s division, Hill’s corps, followed by Cooke, had driven Hammond almost to the Brock Road. Scales of Wilcox’s di- THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS 151 vision of the same corps was standing off Crawford, while Lane and Thomas were getting into position in front of McCandless, who was trying to connect with Wadsworth. Such was about the situation of both armies at 11.30 a. m. Griffin’s and the right of Wadsworth’s division formed about three-quarters of a mile east of the old field. In the formation for the advance, Sweitzer’s brigade of Griffin’s division had given place on the left of Bartlett to Cutler, of Wadsworth’s division, and had formed in reserve behind Bartlett. On Cut- ler’s left was Stone, then Rice. The Maryland bri- gade of Robinson’s division was in reserve behind Stone and Rice. From the Pike to the left of McCand- less it must have been fully a mile and three-quarters, and all through thick woods. Wadsworth’s brigades and their supports were or- dered by Warren to move by the compass due west. Now a compass is a trusty friend and has guided many a ship steadfastly and truly through darkness and storm on the open sea, but it is out of its element and worse than nothing as a guide for an army fighting in woods like those of the Wilderness. It was natural though for Warren, the skillful engineer, to rely upon it, but under the circumstances, and with the woods as they were, it was utterly impracti- cable. The first one hundred yards of underbrush, and then one of those briar-tangled ravines, and all reliance on the compass was gone. Self -protection, if 152 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS nothing else, called on the regiments and brigades to try to keep in touch with each other, whatever the compass might say. As a matter of fact, only one of the commands was guided by it, — McCandless, who had the opening of the Chewning fields on his left to help him. But it ended in taking him away from everybody, and in coming mighty near to causing him to lose his entire brigade. For Wadsworth’s peo- ple on McCandless’s right naturally swung toward the Pike, thus leaving a wide gap between him and Rice. Well, as already stated, when they began to move, it was almost noon. The troops tried at first to advance in line of battle from the temporary works which had been thrown up while the reconnaissances and preparations had been going on; but owing to the character of the woods, they soon found that was out of the question, and had to break by battalions and wings into columns of fours. So by the time they neared the enemy, all semblance of line of battle was gone and there were gaps everywhere between regi- ments and brigades. Regiments that had started in the second line facing west found themselves facing north, deploying ahead of the first line. As an ex- ample of the confusion, the Sixth Wisconsin had been formed behind the Seventh Indiana, with orders to follow it at a distance of one hundred yards. By run- ning ahead of his regiment, the colonel of the Sixth managed to keep the Seventh in sight till they were close to the front; but when the firing began, the THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS 153 Seventh! set out at double-quick for the enemy and disappeared in a moment; and the next thing was an outburst of musketry and the enemy were coming in front and marching by both flanks. But there was almost the same state of affairs on the other side, except that the Confederates, being more used to the woods, observed the general direc- tion better and handled themselves with much more confidence and initiative than ours, when detached from their fellows. For instance, the Forty -fifth North Carolina, of Daniels’s brigade, having lost all connection with the rest of its brigade, stumbled right on to Stone or Rice, and before they knew it were within a few rods, only a thickety depression between them. Ours were the first to fire, but the aim was too high and scarcely any one hurt; the return volley, however, so says the regiment’s his- torian who was present, was very fatal, and our men broke, leaving a row of dead. Cases of this kind could be repeated and re-repeated of what took place in the Wilderness; and I am free to say that, as I walked through the woods last May, looking for the old lines, more than once I halted with a feeling that some spectral figure, one of those thousands who fell there, would appear suddenly and ask me where he might find his regiment. As a proof of the savage and unexpected encounterings, a line of skeletons was found just after the war, half-covered in the drifting leaves, where some command, North- 154 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS era or Southern, met with a volley like that of the Forty-fifth North Carolina, from an unseen foe. It is the holding of the secrets of butchering happenings like these, and its air of surprised and wild curiosity in whosoever penetrates the solitude and breaks its grim, immeasurable silence, that gives the Wilder- ness, I think, its deep and evoking interest. The woods being somewhat easier for Bartlett’s troops to move through than for those in front of Ayres, he gained the eastern edge of the old field quite a little ahead. His first line no sooner came out into the light than Jones, from the woods on the other side of the field, opened on it. Our men dashed down to the gully and then up the sloping side at them, and at once became hotly engaged. As the second line cleared the woods, Bartlett rode galloping from the Pike, flourishing his sword and shouting, “Come on, boys, let us go in and help them.” Meanwhile Cutler, on Bartlett’s left, with his Iron Brigade, made up of western regiments, whose mem- bers were more at home in the woods than their brothers of the East, had gotten considerably ahead of Bartlett’s men, and swinging more and more toward the Pike at every step, struck Jones’s and the left of Dole’s brigade, and, going at them with a cheer, smashed through, capturing three battle flags and several hundred prisoners. In this attack Battle’s bri- gade directly behind Jones was so severely handled, also by Cutler and Bartlett, that it fell back in THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS 155 great confusion with Jones’s broken regiments for a mile or more. Dole’s right held on, and Daniels, moving up and going in on his left, met Stone’s and Rice’s bewildered commands, some of whom were really firing into each other, and soon stopped all their headway. -‘-.I When Ewell witnessed Jones’s and Battle’s over- throw, he hastened back to Gordon, who was just arriving from his bivouac beyond Locust Grove, and implored him to save the day. Gordon moved his strong brigade well to the south of the road; they formed quickly, and at his stirring command dashed at Cutler’s and Bartlett’s men, who, by this time, were in great disorder, besides having met with severe losses. As showing their jumble, the Seventh Indiana, that started on Cutler’s extreme left, had fought its way clear round to the Pike, while the Sixth Wisconsin, that tried to follow it, found itself deep in the woods beyond one of the wandering branches of Wilderness Run, at least a quarter of a mile away from the Seventh. A company of the Twentieth Maine, that had started in Bartlett’s sec- ond line, came out on the Pike a half-mile west of the field; and, behold, on their return, they were be- yond a Confederate line of battle advancing toward their first position. This little command, only seven- teen of them, now behaved so well that I think they deserve mention as well as the exploits of brigades and corps. The lieutenant, Melcher, gave the order. 156 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS “Every man load his rifle and follow me.” Having drawn near the Confederates, intent under fire from our broken men in front, Melcher formed in single rank, he on the right, his first sergeant on the left, and taking deliberate aim, fired, and then with a shout charged. Their attack was a surprise and could only have happened in the Wilderness. With two killed and six wounded they fought their way through, using sword and bayonet, but brought off thirty-two prisoners which were turned over to the provost marshal. Suppose every company in the army had had officers and first sergeants like that! Such was the state of our lines when Dole’s, and those of Battle’s and Jones’s brigades that had ral- lied, went in with Gordon, all giving their wildest “rebel yell.” And, reader, let me tell you I heard that rebel yell several times; and if you had been there, with the scary feeling one is apt to have in strange, deep woods, the chances are about even, I think, that your legs would have volunteered to carry you to the Lacy farm, or for that matter to the other side of the Rapidan. I mean only that that would have been your first feeling as you heard them coming on; but I dare say you would have faced the enemy right well. Well, as I have said, what was left of Rice, Stone, and the Maryland brigade, — all somewhat shaky, if not already falling back under the advance of Daniels, — Gordon, Dole, and Battle struck just at THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS 157 the right time, and practically sent everything flying, but the dead, before them. Bartlett’s troops fell back, in great disorder, to the east of the old field and the works they had made in the morning; most of Cutler’s and those on the left did not stop till they reached the Lacy farm. There, after great exertion, Wadsworth, who was deeply mortified and in high temper, rallied them. I recall very distinctly their condition, for I was right among them. f Jones and his aide. Captain Early, a nephew of the distinguished Confederate General Early, were killed trying to rally their brigade. I happened to be at Grant’s headquarters that afternoon or the next morning, just after the news of his death was received, and overheard some one ask, “What Jones is that?” Ingalls, our chief quartermaster, exclaimed with sur- prised regret, “Why, that is Jones, J. M.; we called him ‘Rum’ Jones at West Point.” There is a stone on the south side of the Pike, about a mile and a quarter west of the old field, marking the spot where he fell. Roebling, who was coming back from Crawford, says in his notes : — “I found the little road (the Parker’s store road) crowded with stragglers and large crowds of soldiers pouring out of the woods in great confusion and al- most panic-stricken. Some said they were flanked, others said they had suddenly come upon the enemy lying concealed in two lines of battle in the thick 158 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS underbrush, and that our men had broken at the first volley. Cutler’s brigade came back in good order bringing a number of prisoners; the 2nd Division Baxter’s brigade came back in much less confusion.” Mr. G. M. Woodward, adjutant of the Second Wisconsin of Cutler’s brigade, writes me that just after he had given orders for the regiment to break ranks, and fall back to the Parker’s Store Road from which they had moved, all the field officers and two of the captains being either killed or wounded and the regiment outflanked by Gordon’s or Dole’s coun- ter-charge, he concluded he would stay behind a little and discover, if he could, the enemy’s line of advance. While peering around, he suddenly heard a deep bass voice: “Adjutant, what be I going to do with this flag?” Turning, he saw Davidson the color-bearer standing bolt upright in the woods, all alone, grasp- ing the flagstaff. Of course Woodward gave the necessary orders which the brave color-sergeant was waiting for, and together, under a rattling fire, they rejoined the regiment. And here, reader, let me bring in a word from my friend Dr. Winne, to whom you have already been introduced; and were you to meet him, you would wish that there were more in the world like him. “When Wadsworth’s demoralized division was re- forming at the Lacy house,” says the doctor in his letter to me, “I saw a wonderful example of the triumph of mind over matter which I have never THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS 159 forgotten; and I can almost see the boy’s face yet. The shattered division was just moving back to the line when I noticed the youngster in his place going to what may have been his death, with pallid face and trembling lips, yet with his head erect and eyes to the front, going to meet Fate like a gentleman and soldier.” I hope, and so do you, reader, that the boy lived through it and on into a good old age, his brave heart ever his cheerful companion, and beating proudly on every fifth of May. As soon as Wadsworth’s men were brought into some kind of order, — and it only took a moment, for once out of the woods and where they could see their colors, all rallied save now and then a man whose heart was not made for war, — I went to the front. And as I reached there Bartlett was reforming, Sweit- zer and Robinson having relieved him and stayed the enemy from advancing. He had been wounded in the cheek, and the blood was trickling down on his breast. His complexion was fair and his hair very black, his hat was off, and I can see his bleeding face, as well as Griffin’s deeply glum one, across all the years. So much for the engagement south of the Pike. Ayres, commanding Griffin’s right wing on the north side of the road, after overcoming annoying and de- laying hindrances, brought his regiments into some sort of line just before they reached the old field, resting his left, the One Hundred and Fortieth New 160 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS York, on the road. By this time Bartlett with Cutler had gotten across the south end of the field and had disappeared pursuing Jones; but Steuart’s men in the woods on the other side of the field, the continuation of Jones’s line, had stood fast, and with their fingers on the triggers were poising among the cedars, scrub- oaks, and young pines, watching Ayres; and as soon as the One Hundred and Fortieth, with their colors flying, came into the field, opened on them with pre- meditated, withering fire. The regiment, under its gallant yellow -haired leader, “Paddy” Ryan, charged down to the gully and up to the woods, losing heavily at every step. Receiving also a bitter cross-fire from their right, they swerved to the left, the color com- pany astride the Pike, and then at close range grap- pled with the enemy. The Regulars to their right, under a murderous fire, crossed the upper end of the field in perfect alignment, entered the woods, and be- gan an almost hand-to-hand struggle. But Walker’s and Stafford’s Confederate brigades, with nothing in the world to hinder, — for the Sixth Corps was not nearly up, — poured deadly vollies into them. The One Hundred and Fifty-fifth and Ninety-first Pennsylvania Volunteers went valiantly to their support. And as the Second, Eleventh, Twelfth, Fourteenth, and Seventeenth Regulars are advancing in the open field under heavy fire, let me say that a steady orderly march like that is what calls for fine courage. It is easy, my friends, to break into a wild THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS 161 cheer, and at the top of your speed be carried along by excitement’s perilous contagion even up to the enemy’s works. But to march on and on in the face of withering musketry and canister, as the Regulars are doing now and as Pickett’s men did at Gettys- burg; or as the Sixth Maine, with uncapped guns, resolutely and silently went up to the works at Marye’s Heights, and, by the way, carried them; or as I saw the colored division marching on heroically at the explosion of the mine at Petersburg, their colors falling at almost every step, but lifted again at once, — I say, that is a kind of courage which sets your heart a-beating as your eye follows their flut- tering colors. Meanwhile Griffin, to help the One Hundred and Fortieth to break the enemy’s line, sent forward a section of Battery D, First New York, a move of great danger, — and the guns never marched with the Army of the Potomac again. The section, under Lieutenant Shelton riding a spirited chestnut and ac- companied by his Captain, Winslow, on a bald-faced brown horse, trotted down the Pike and over the bridge and went into action briskly; the air around them and over the whole field hissing with minie balls. In the edge of the woods, and on both sides of the Pike, at less than two hundred yards away, the One Hundred and Fortieth was fighting almost muzzle to muzzle with the First and Third North Carolina. The first and only round from the sec- 162 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS tion crashed through the woods, ploughing its way among friends and foes, and instead of helping, made it much harder for the brave men. And just then, too, — the One Hundred and Fortieth dreading another round every moment, — on came Battle’s and Dole’s rallied brigades against their left. Pat O’Rorke’s brave men — who helped to save Round Top, the gallant Pat losing his life there — stood the unequal contest for a moment and then broke. The guns now tried to retire from a position to which many thought they should not have been or- dered. But it was too late. Ayres’s second line, which had followed the One Hundred and Fortieth and the Regulars with strong hearts, had been suffering at every step by the bitter and continuous cross-fire from their front and unprotected flank; and by the time they had reached the farther side of the field were so mowed down that they could save neither the day nor the guns. The One Hundred and Forty-sixth of this second line reached the gully as the guns tried to withdraw, but was completely repulsed, and many of them made prisoners. Their horses being killed and officers wounded or captured, and the enemy on top of them, the sun-sparkling guns fell into the hands of the enemy. The brave Shelton was wounded and made a prisoner, his proud chestnut was killed. It was at this juncture that, pursued by Gordon’s, Dole’s, and Battle’s brigades, back came Bartlett’s THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS 163 men, almost in a panic. They rushed into the field and actually ran over the North Carolinians about the guns, many of whom had taken refuge in the gully. The Sixty-first Alabama, of Battle’s brigade, was so close behind our people that they hoisted their colors on the pieces and claimed their capture, till the North Carolinians emerged from the gully and said No! By this time Regulars and Volunteers were driven back with heavy loss to the east side of the field. The victorious Confederates could not pursue be- yond the guns, or even stand there, for Sweitzer’s of Griffin’s, and the First brigade of Robinson’s di- vision, under my friend Charles L. Pierson, a gentle- man, together with our rallied men, now poured such a fire into them from the east side of the field, that they fled back to their lines on the edge of the woods. Meanwhile the gully was full of their men and ours, most of whom were wounded, and who did not dare to show themselves. In an attempt to recapture the guns — whose loss Griffin, the commander of our West Point battery in my day, felt deeply — the Ninth Massachusetts, an Irish regiment, and the Ninetieth Pennsylvania suffered frightfully, adding to the thickly lying dead in the old field. Its last year’s crop, as already told, was corn; and sweeter by far were the rustling of its swaying blades and tasseling tops than the sting- ing flights of the bullets and the cries of the wounded. 164 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS O! violets, innocent little houstonias, flaming aza- leas, broom-grass, struggling pines, cedars, oaks, gums, and sassafras, now dotting the field, when the south wind blows and the stars call out, “This is the fifth of May,” do you break into your mellow speech and commemorate the boys I saw lying there beyond the reach of friendly hands? Yes, I know right well you do: and Heaven bless every one of you; and so says every Northern oak and elm, and so says every poplar and Southern pine that borders the old fields of home. The guns stood there that night and all through the next day, for the fire was so close and deadly from their lines and ours that no one could approach them. When Gordon broke Sedgwick’s line at dusk the following night, to the right of the Sixth Corps, the enemy availed themselves of our confusion to draw them off. On the repulse of Griffin and Wadsworth, Craw- ford was drawn well down on the Parker’s Store Road and began to entrench. Thus by half -past one War- ren’s corps had been thrown back with heavy loss; and all because the Sixth Corps had not been able to connect with it. Upton’s troops did not get abreast of Ayres’s bleeding brigade till three o’clock, and the ground where they had fought had burned over. He drove the enemy from an advanced position — for no one in the Army of the Potomac had greater courage or more soldierly abilities than Upton — and THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS 165 then entrenched. In front and behind his lines were many scorched and burned bodies of our men and of the Second, Tenth, Fourteenth, and Sixteenth regi- ments of Stafford’s Confederate brigade, who, with James A. Walker’s, enveloped the right flank of the Regulars. Brown’s and Russell’s brigades of the Sixth Corps, on Upton’s right, greatly impeded as he had been in their advance through the scrub-oaks, saplings of all kinds, and intermingling underbrush, came in con- flict with Early’s division, which, after the repulse of Griffin, had been pushed well out on Johnson’s left, and, under Hays, Stafford, and Pegram, was ad- vancing between Flat Run and the road of that name. Russell, on the right, gave them a sudden and severe check, capturing almost entire the Twenty -fifth Vir- ginia of Jones’s brigade, which after regaining its hope and courage had been moved to the left. In this engagement, or subsequent ones, for fighting was kept up on and off till dark, Stafford was killed and Pegram severely wounded. As soon as they had driven us back on Griffin’s front, the enemy began to strengthen their entrench- ments and brought guns down to their line. Our men did likewise; so, besides musketry, the field was swept with canister, for they were only four hundred yards apart; off on the right, in Sedgwick’s front, the lines in some places were within pistol-shot of each other. The woods on the Confederate side got on fire and 166 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS burned widely. “Suddenly, to the horror of the liv- ing,” wrote a member of the Seventh Indiana who was lying along the Pike, wounded, about where Jones was killed, “fire was seen creeping over the ground, fed by dead leaves which were thick. All who could move tried to get beyond the Pike, which the fire could not cross. Some were overtaken by the flames when they had crawled but a few feet, and some when they had almost reached the road. The ground, which had been strewn with dead and wounded, was in a few hours blackened, with no dis- tinguishable figure upon it.” Some time after his repulse, Griffin, in miserable humor, rode back to Meade’s headquarters, and in the course of his interview allowed his feelings to get away with him, exclaiming in the hearing of every one around that he had driven Ewell three-quarters of a mile, but had had no support on his flanks. Then, boiling still higher, he censured Wright of the Sixth Corps for not coming to his aid, and even blurted out something so mutinous about Warren, that Grant asked Meade, “Who is this General Gregg? You ought to arrest him.” Meade, however, kept his tem- per and said soothingly, “It’s Griffin, not Gregg, and it’s only his way of talking.” This flurry of Grif- fin’s was a part of the aftermath of the delusion that Lee would not take the offensive; but in view of all the near and remote consequences of that delusion, the most of which are obvious, it is but a wisp. There THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS 167 is nothing in the campaign which approaches the in- terest which that delusion has for me. Sometimes as I ponder over it, I think I hear voices near and yet far away, and something within tells me that they are chanting one of Fate’s old and weird melodies, — and then all is still. It seems probable, with what we know now of the situation, that, if Griffin had not been sent forward till Upton had joined him, Ewell would have been driven far away from where Major Stiles found him boiling his coffee. And I wonder where he would have boiled it the next morning: possibly far back on the banks of Mine Run, or, more likely, on the head- waters of one of the streams bearing off to the North Anna, for Lee would have had to fall back in that direction till he met Longstreet. Wherever he may have breakfasted, for me Ewell has always been an interesting character. Major Stiles tells us that he was a great cook. “I remember on one occasion later in the war,” says the major, “I met him in the outer defenses of Richmond, and he told me some one had sent him a turkey-leg which he was going to ‘devil’; that he was strong in that particular dish; that his staff would be away, and I must come around that evening and share it with him.” The major had a part of the deviled turkey-leg and a happy evening with the general. It was this same grim, kind-hearted old Ewell who reported that Stonewall Jackson once told him that he could not eat black pepper because 168 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS it gave him rheumatism in one of his legs ! It would have been well for soldiers in Banks’s army if Stone- wall had “unbeknownst” eaten some black pepper before he got after them in ’ 62 ; it might have saved them a part, at least, of that awfully hot chase back to the Potomac. They say that Ewell looked very sad as he sat before a camp-fire the night he was captured at Sail- or’s Creek, a few days before Lee surrendered. And now let us turn from Warren, Griffin, and Sedgwick, to Getty, who reached the junction of the Brock and Plank roads about the very hour when Warren began his attack. That historic point might, not only for the sake of the services they rendered that day, but for services on many other fields, be called Getty’s or Hammond’s Crossing. Perhaps a descriptive word or two as to its adjacent natural features will aid the reader to see — and I wish he might hear, also — the stirring events that took place there; for I believe that no crossing of country roads on this continent ever heard, or perhaps ever will hear, such volleys. The roads, the ground of their low banks a dull brick-red, cross each other at a right angle in the midst of dense, silent woods which are chiefly oaks, medium-sized, shaggy and surly, the ground beneath them heavily set with underbrush. The Brock then bears on south some four miles, through whippoor- will-haunted woods, to Todd’s Tavern, and thence THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS 169 on through woods again to Spotsylvania. About half-way between the junction and Todd’s Tavern, the Brock is intersected by a narrow-gauge railroad which runs from Orange Court House to Fredericks- burg. Having reached Parker’s store on its way east from Orange Court House, the railway swings off southerly from the Plank with a long curve, till it comes to the Brock, and then darts across it. When the war came on, its narrow location had just been cleared through the woods, and the roadbed graded. It will be seen in due time what use Longstreet made of this roadbed; how his flanking column under the handsome and gallant Sorrel formed there and swept everything before it to the Plank Road as he charged due northward through the woods, gray and pun- gent with the smoke of battle and burning leaves. From the junction west to Parker’s store is about two and a half miles, and east to where Jackson met his fatal volley on the battle-field of Chancel- lorsville is less than a half-hour’s rapid walk. The spring-head of the most easterly branch of Wilderness Run crosses the Brock a third or a half mile north of the junction. Over dead leaves and dead limbs and around low tussocks, crowned when I saw them last with blooming cowslips, the darkish water comes stealing out of the gloomy woods on the east side of the road, glints at the sun, and then disappears in those to the west. This branch soon spreads into a zigzagging morass falling in 170 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS with others like it which head near the Plank Road and creep northward, separated by low, tortuous, broken ridges, the dying-away of the heaving pla- teau that sweeps around from Chewning’s. The waters of all of them unite at last in Wilderness Run. In these shallow depressions bamboo-like vines abound, tangling all the bushes, but here and there is an azalea amongst them, and, when the battle was going on, dogwoods were in bloom along their banks and on the ridges between them. These alternating ridges and swampy interlaced thickets twill the coun- try, that lies inclined like a canted trough in the angle between the Brock Road and the Plank. It was the scene of very, very bitter fighting, and there many men of both armies were lost. The ground on the south side of the Plank is gently wavy, and about its junction with the Brock may be called dry, level, and firm; but in less than a mile to the west, low ridges are met with like those on the north side, between which are thickety morasses again; but they drain off southward into affluents of Jackson’s Run, one of whose branches is a compan- ion of the Brock Road for a while. These waters saunter their way into the Po and Ny and then on at last into the Pamunkey, while those in the morasses on the north side of the Plank flow into the Rapidan and then into the Rappahannock. The land gener- ally, however, is higher on the south than on the north side of the road, and not nearly so broken; THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS 171 but on either side one can barely see a man thirty yards away. About a mile and three-quarters west of the junc- tion the Plank emerges from the glooming woods into a clearing of twenty or thirty acres; it is a very quiet spot, and over the most of it the broom-grass is wav- ing. The northern edge of this humble little estate follows the abrupt, bulging descents of the Chewning circular ridge which encloses the basin of Wilderness Run. It is the Widow Tapp’s place; her small house, with companion corn-crib and log stable, stand several hundred yards from the road and partly masked by meagre plum and cherry trees. In this old dun clearing Lee made his headquarters during a part of the struggle, and by the roadside just at the border of the woods is the stone with, “Lee to the rear, say the Texans,” inscribed upon it. Getty’s leading brigade, Wheaton’s, on the run, as already recorded, reached the Plank Road by noon, and with all haste deployed astride it, the Ninety-third Pennsylvania on the left, the One Hundred and Thirty-ninth Pennsylvania on the right, and succeeded, after losing quite a number of men, in checking Heth’s advance. As fast as the other brigades of the division came up, they were formed in two lines, Eustis on the right of Wheaton, and the ever-gallant Vermont brigade under Lewis A. Grant on the left. Learning from prisoners that he was confronted by two of Hill’s divisions, Heth’s 172 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS and Wilcox’s, Getty immediately began to throw up breastworks along the Brock Road, to the right and left of the junction. While thus engaged, his troops skirmishing briskly along their entire front, Hancock, preceding his corps at a fast gallop, reined up before him, looking the soldier through and through, — and I can see his high-headed and high- withered sorrel, with nostrils expanded and pride in his mien that he had brought his gallant rider to the scene of action. It took but a moment for Getty to make the sit- uation clear to Hancock, whose animated face that morning, and every morning, was handsomely stern with a natural nobility of manner and an atmo- sphere of magnanimity about him. It was then after one o’clock, and by this time, although unknown to Getty, Warren’s repulse was almost complete. Han- cock at once sent his staff-officers back, directing di- vision and brigade commanders to hurry the troops forward with all possible speed. His martial and intense spirit so imbued his corps, and his relations with it were of such a personal character, that his fervor in the face of the threatening situation was communicated like a bugle-call to the entire column. But on account of the road being blocked by the trains and artillery, the men were greatly impeded in their march. About half-past two, Birney’s, Han- cock’s leading division, bore in sight, and under orders formed hurriedly on Getty’s left, continuing THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS 173 the latter’s line of entrenchments so as to be ready if Hill should come on, which was momentarily expected by Getty. And so, as one after another of his perspiring divisions closed up, each formed on the other’s left and entrenched: Birney, Mott, then Gibbon, and last Barlow, whose division was thrown forward of the Brock Road on some high, clear ground which commanded an immediate sweep of country; and there, save tw T o batteries, Dow’s and Ricketts’s, all the artillery of the corps was massed. Barlow’s line then bowed eastward across the Brock Road, not far from where the railway crosses it. Meanwhile Warren’s repulse had made headquar- ters very anxious, and as early as half-past one, or- ders suggesting an advance had been sent to Getty. But, believing that Heth and Wilcox were both in front of him, and evidently in no mood to yield, and Hancock’s men almost at hand, he used his discre- tion and waited for their coming, his understanding with Hancock being that, as soon as he was ready, they should go forw r ard. In harmony with this un- derstanding, on Birney’s arrival, Getty withdrew Eustis into reserve, moved Wheaton to the north side of the Plank Road, and Lewis H. Grant by flank till his right rested on it. Both brigades, save their heavy skirmish lines, were on the Brock Road behind their temporary works. Birney’s and Mott’s divisions, as soon as their tire- 174 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS some march was over, began, by Hancock’s orders, to throw up a continuation of Getty’s breastworks along the west side of the road. The old works, now s un k to low, flattened ridges, and covered with bushes and saplings, some of which are quite large, seem almost endless as you travel the lonely road to Todd’s Tavern. The news from Griffin’s front growing more and more disturbing, Humphreys, Meade’s chief of staff, at a quarter after two reported the serious results to Hancock, who in reply said that two of his divisions, Birney’s and Mott’s, in conjunction with Getty, would make an attack as soon as they could get ready. This was not the response headquarters had hoped for, but that he would spring to the attack; for the situation demanded it. Minutes followed minutes, worser and worser came the news from Warren, and not a sound from Hancock’s and Getty’s guns. Meade could stand it no longer and sent Colonel Lyman of his staff with a peremptory order to Getty to attack at once, with or without Hancock. It was the same kind of an order in terms and spirit which had sent Griffin ahead without knowing whether Upton was ready to help him. Humphreys, in confirming Meade’s orders to Han- cock to attack, directed him to support Getty with a division on his right and another on his left, “but the attack up the Plank Road must be made at once.” Accordingly Hancock ordered Birney to THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS 175 send one of his brigades, Hays’s to Getty’s right. Hays, that very gallant man, moved as fast as he could up the Brock Road past the junction, but Getty, having caught the spirit of his orders and knowing that he could not wait for any shifting of Hancock’s troops, had given the command forward; and before Hays reached his position his men had cleared their works and were desperately engaged. It was then 4.15 p. m. VII And now, having established our forces at the junc- tion, let us go back and establish theirs; let us go to where Lee had bivouacked in the woods near Mrs. Rodes’s, and follow the train of events which, as the day progressed, had put Heth ready to plunge at Getty; for, as a matter of fact, he was just about to take the offensive when Getty struck at him. The sun rose that morning at 4.48, — I saw it come up, a deep poppy red, — and by the time it started to clear the tree-tops, Lee was breakfasting and his trusty, heavily-built, iron-gray horse, Traveller, stood saddled, ready for him to mount. Lee was fifty odd years old, about six feet tall, nobly hand- some, unmistakably dignified and reserved, his gray trimmed beard darkening as it mounted his sub- duedly ruddy cheeks, and his enlightened, dauntless eyes, a warm brown hazel. As has been said before, he was very cheerful while he breakfasted with his staff. It may be interesting to know that it was his habit in the field not to loiter at the table, but to leave it early, so that his young and light-hearted friends might enjoy its freedom. He conveyed the impression to all of them that morning — how a reli- ant spirit in a commander spreads through his staff! — that at heart he was looking forward to a victory over Grant.- THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS 177 The troops of his small, punctilious, courageous, and mysteriously impressive Third Corps commander A. P. Hill, who had been with him on so many fields, were just moving, and “Jeb” Stuart, his buoyant and reliable cavalry leader who had bivouacked that night in rear of the picket-reserve and some distance beyond the infantry, and, according to his biographer, Major McClellan of his staff, was conducting the advance of Hill’s corps. There are no two of the Confederate generals who are more vitally interesting to me than Stuart and Hill, although I never saw either of them that I know of; they may, however, have visited West Point and passed unnoticed in the stream of young and old officers who were coming and going to their Alma Mater when I was there. But, however it may have been, everything I hear or read of Stuart is ac- companied with a sense of nearness: I catch sight of his fine features, his manly figure, his dazzling, boyish blue eyes, his flowing, brownly auburn beard, and hear his voice ringing with either command or glee. It is said that rarely was his camp-fire lit that he did not make it joyous, his voice leading in chorus and song. And now the mystic bugles of his troopers are sounding taps from the Rapidan to the James in his old camps, and, hark! as they die away, “Jeb” is still singing on, for woods and fields and running streams all love the memory of a happy heart. 178 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS Nature made him a cavalry leader by instinct, and a very sweet character. All of his old army and West Point friends never wearied in testifying to their affection for him. He met his mortal wound just a week after the morning we are dealing with. When told that death was very near he asked that the “Rock of Ages, cleft for me,” might be sung, and with his failing breath joined as they sang around his bed. When in the field he always wore a yellow cav- alry sash, and a felt hat with a black plume. Why Hill has been so interesting is perhaps be- cause there is always something very keen to me in the courteous dignity, care of personal appearance, and a certain guarded self-control, of officers who are small in stature, but naturally “military,” and whose lives and movements are in harmony with all forms of military etiquette. They say he was quiet in manner, but when aroused and angered, was hard to appease. He wore his coal-black hair rather long, and his face was bearded, his eyes rather sunken, and his voice sharp and stern. But what kindles an en- during, historic light about him is that, when both Stonewall Jackson and Lee were dying, he, this little, punctilious, courteous soldier, was in their misting vision. Stonewall said, as he was fading away, “Tell A. P. Hill to prepare for action ”; Lee, like Stonewall, was back on the field and murmured, “Tell A. P. Hill he must come up.” Well, well, flowers of Vir- ginia! go on blooming and blooming sweetly, too, THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS 179 by the grave of each of them as this narrative wends its way. Kirkland’s brigade of North Carolinians of Heth’s division was in front that morning, and moved leis- urely; for Hill had had the same instructions as Ewell, to develop our lines but not to bring on a general battle till Longstreet should overtake them. “Never did a regiment march more proudly and deter- minedly than the Twenty-sixth North Carolina as it headed the column for the battle of the Wilderness. We passed General Lee and his staff.” So says its historian. It was the same regiment that charged at Gettys- burg and lost so heavily on the first day, led by those two fine young men, Burgwyn and “Rip” McCreery, both of whom lost their lives. I wonder if, for the sake of boyhood’s memories which I shared with McCreery at West Point, the reader will consent to allow the current of events to eddy for a moment around him and Burgwyn. At Gettysburg their regi- ment, the Twenty-sixth, waiting for the command, “Forward,” was lying down in the edge of the wheat-field that waved up to McPherson’s woods. After a while Burgwyn, spare, refinedly and deli- cately handsome, gave the long-waited-for com- mand, “Attention!” The lines sprang to their feet, the color-bearer stepped out four paces to the front, and at the command, “Forward!” the regiment, eight hundred strong, moved resolutely across the 180 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS field toward our men, who were standing partially protected by a stone wall. The engagement soon be- came desperate, and after the colors of the Twenty- sixth had been cut down ten times, McCreery seized them and, waving them aloft, led on; but within a few paces he was shot through the heart, and his Virginia blood gushed out, drenching the colors. Burgwyn took them from McCreery ’s flaccid hand, — and again I see that thin, nervous hand sweeping the holy air of the chapel in impassioned gesture as he delivers his Fourth of July oration, — a moment later a minnie ball goes tearing through Burgwyn’s lungs, and, as he falls, swirling, the flag wraps about him. The lieutenant-colonel of the regiment kneels by his side and asks, “Are you severely hurt, dear colonel?” He could not speak, but pressed his friend’s hand softly and soon passed away. The Twenty-sixth, with its gallantly commanded Confederate brigade, finally carried the position; and it adds interest and, I am sure, stirs a feeling of pride in every Northern breast, that the Twenty-sixth’s worthy opponent that day at Gettysburg was the Twenty-fourth Michigan, now present in the Wilder- ness, whose exploit of capturing the colors of the Forty-eighth Virginia has already been given. Nine officers and men carried the flag of that Michigan regiment during the action at Gettysburg; four of them and all the color-guard were killed. The Twenty-fourth was from the shores of lakes Erie THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS 181 and Huron, the Twenty-sixth from the slopes of the mountains of western North Carolina. In one of the North Carolina companies there were three sets of twins, and, when the battle was over, five of the six were lying dead with Burgwyn and “Rip” McCreery. And now to go on with the narrative, Kirkland’s brigade was followed by Cooke’s, also made up en- tirely of North Carolinians, and then came Walker’s and Davis’s brigades, the latter from Mississippi, the former from Virginia. Wilcox with his division followed Heth. While Ewell was marshaling rather cautiously in front of Griffin, Heth kept on slowly down the Plank Road, and every once in a while from the southwest came the boom of Wilson’s guns, who, three or four miles away, on the Catharpin Road, was already engaging Rosser right valiantly. At last Heth was in reach of the Brock Road, but Wheaton’s sudden appearance put a new aspect on affairs. Kirkland pushed his skirmish line hard up, and Wheaton not budging, Heth notified Hill that he had reason to believe a strong force was in his front. Before this news could reach headquarters, Lee, his mind being wholly taken up with what had just happened on Ewell’s front, namely, the over- throw of Jones’s and Battle’s brigades and the sav- age fighting inaugurated on the Pike, had ordered Wilcox to move toward the danger-point. Wilcox left McGowan and Scales to look after Crawford, and pressed northward through the woods with his other 182 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS brigades, Lane’s and Thomas’s. Riding ahead of his troops, he found Gordon, and had barely spoken to him when a volley broke from where he had left his men. The musketry he heard was between his people and McCandless, who, having failed to make any connection with Wadsworth, was moving forward by compass, and, as it proved, right into the arms of Wilcox’s two brigades, which very soon disposed of him, capturing almost entire the Seventh Pennsyl- vania. This case illustrates well the chance collisions which marked the fighting in the Wilderness, owing to the density of the woods. After Warren’s repulse, Sedgwick not threatening seriously, Ewell having entrenched himself firmly and apparently safely before both of them, Lee gave at- tention to the news sent by Heth in regard to our stubborn lines at the junction, and about half-past three he sent this message to him by Colonel Mar- shall, his chief of staff : “ General Lee directs me to say that it is very important for him to have posses- sion of Brock Road, and wishes you to take that po- sition, provided you can do so without bringing on a general engagement.” And here let me make this comment on Lee’s mes- sage. All authorities agree that his orders in every case to those in front that day were qualified by the caution not to bring on a general engagement. Or- ders of this kind are embarrassing; for a corps or di- vision commander never knows how far to push his THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS 183 successes. Their evils had a good illustration at Get- tysburg. There Lee used identically the same lan- guage on the first day; and when Trimble urged Ewell to take advantage of the complete overthrow of our First Corps and follow up our disordered troops and seize the Cemetery Ridge, he replied that he had or- ders from Lee not to bring on a general engagement. Lee’s indeterminate, and therefore hampering orders, I believe, lost him the battle of Gettysburg. Heth replied in effect that the only way to find out whether it would bring on a general engagement was to make the attempt; and while Marshall returned for a reply, he formed his division across the Plank Road in line of battle, ready to go ahead if that should be the command. Cooke’s brigade was in the centre, the F if teenth and F orty-sixth on the right, the Twenty- seventh and Forty-eighth North Carolina on the left of the road. Davis’s brigade, made up of the Second, Eleventh, and Forty-second Mississippi, and the Fifty-fifth North Carolina, was on Cooke’s left. Walker was on the latter’s right, Kirkland in reserve. The line on which Heth’s troops were formed had not been chosen for the special advantages of defense it offered, but rather by chance, for he expected to be the assailant. A better one, however, as it turned out, could not have been selected. It conformed to the low, waving ridges between the morasses, offer- ing splendid standing ground, and was almost invis- ible until within forty or fifty yards. Ready to go 184 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS ahead or ready to hold, there they were when the quick, sharp, cracking fire of the skirmish-line told them that the Union’s defenders were coming. Now let us turn to Getty: it is about half after four, — that hour when the elms in the northern meadows were beginning to lengthen, the cows to feed toward the bars, the thrushes, in the thickets where the dog-tooth violet and the liverwort bloom, to strike their first clear ringing notes, and the benig- nant serenity of the day’s old age to spread over fields and flock-nibbled pastures. It was then that the men from the North, from Pennsylvania, New York, and far-away Vermont, heard the expected order to advance. As they leap over the breast- works, for a moment the scarlet in their colors splash among the fresh green leaves in the edge of the woods, but almost in the twinkling of an eye, the lines of men in blue, the guns, and the rippling flags, disappear. Soon crash after crash is heard, cheers, volleys, and more wild cheers, and in a little while gray smoke begins to sift up through the tree- tops; and in a little while, too, pale, bleeding fellows, limp- ing or holding a shattered arm, some supported by comrades, others borne on litters,, begin to stream out of the woods. ^ Getty, the cool, intellectually broad-based man, moved forward with his men ; between him and them and immediately in front of him was a section (two guns) of Ricketts’s Pennsylvania battery. Within THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS 185 less than a half-mile his troops had met Heth’s al- most face to face, and in the lengthening shadows they plunged at each other. Wheaton’s men on the north side of the road encountered half of Cooke’s and all of Davis’s brigade posted on the hither side of the tangled morasses already mentioned, and in some places, at not more than one hundred and fifty feet apart, they poured volley after volley into each other. And so it was on the south side with the gal- lant Vermonters: they, too, met the enemy face to face; and I have no doubt that the traveling stars and roaming night-winds paused and listened as the peaks in the Green Mountains called to each other , that night, in tearful pride of the boys from Vermont : who were lying under the sullen oaks of the Wilder- , ness; for never, never had they shown more bravery or met with bloodier losses. Hays, who had been sent just as the action began to Getty’s right, after having double-quicked to his position, rested for a moment and then moved for- ward, the Seventeenth Maine on his extreme right. As Davis reached far beyond Wheaton’s right, Hays soon came up against him and joined battle at once. Owing to the nature of the ground, — the zigzagging morasses were between them, — continuous lines could not be maintained by either side, and the re- sult was that wings of regiments became separated from each other; but, together or apart, the fighting was desperate, and it is claimed that Hays’s brigade 186 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS lost more men than any other of our army in the Wil- derness. Hays himself (a classmate of Hancock, both being in the class after Grant’s) during a lull rode down the line of battle with his staff, and when he reached his old regiment, the Sixty-third Pennsyl- vania, that had stood by him so gallantly in re- pulsing Pickett’s charge, he stopped. While he was speaking a kindly word, a bullet struck him just above the cord of his hat, crashing into his brain; he fell from his horse and died within a few hours, and a braver spirit never rose from any field. When Birney sent Hays to Getty’s right, he led his other brigade (Ward’s) to Getty’s left. As soon as Birney moved, Mott was ordered by Hancock to go directly forward with his two brigades from the Brock Road, which would bring him up on Birney ’s left. The fighting became so fierce at once and the musketry so deadly, that aide soon followed aide to Hancock, who was posted at the crossing, from Bir- ney, Getty, Hays, and about every brigade com- mander, calling for help. At 4.30 Carroll was sent for and ordered to support Birney, who, as soon as he came up, advanced him to the right of the Plank Road. Owens’s brigade of Gibbon’s division followed, and was put in on the left and right. Brooke, who had the rear of Hancock’s column as they moved in the morning, and had been halted at Welford’s Furnace on the road from Chancellorsville to Todd’s Tavern, made his way as fast as he could through the woods, THE BATTLE OF TEE WILDERNESS 187 his men quickening their steps as the volleys grew louder; he reached the Brock at 5.30 and at once pushed into the fight, joining Smyth of Barlow’s di- vision, who, being nearer, had proceeded with his gallant Irish brigade to the line of battle to take the place of one of Mott’s brigades that had barely confronted the enemy, when, receiving a couple of volleys at close range, panic seized it and it broke badly, unsteadying for a moment the troops on its right and left; this brigade did not stop till it crouched behind the breastworks it had left along the road. Miles’s and Franks’s brigades of Barlow’s division had become engaged also. At an early hour in the afternoon, Williams’s North Carolina Confederate battery of Poague’s artillery battalion went into position between Widow Tapp’s house and the woods, throwing little epaulements in front of their pieces. As soon as Heth became heavily engaged, Lee, who was close by, having established his headquarters in the old field, sent orders to Wil- cox to return at once to the Plank Road, — for he could not mistake what the volume of the musketry meant, — and directed Scales and McGowan in per- son to go to Heth’s support, Crawford meanwhile having withdrawn from their front, to within a mile of the Lacy house. When McGowan received his orders his brigade had just formed in the Widow Tapp field, and the chaplain of the First South Carolina was holding 188 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS prayer. And there, with the setting sun sweeping them, the roar of Heth’s and Getty’s musketry breaking on them, the clergyman in front of the ranks, their heads bowed on hands grasped one over the other at the muzzle of their guns, he, with uncovered head, palm to palm, and reverently up- lifted face, was praying, as the order came for them to go to Heth’s support. The command, “Attention!” rang out, the officers’ swords lifted quickly, up went the guns, and away marched the brigade. Wilcox, on receipt of the urgent orders, set his two brigades, Thomas’s and Lane’s, in quick motion, filed across the Chewning farm in sight of the signal officers on Crawford’s new line, and then took the wood- road — leaf-strewn and shadow-mottled — that joins Chewning’s and Widow Tapp’s, skirting the abrupt descents to Wilderness Run. Through the timber, and over the tree-tops in the valley, he caught dis- tant views of Grant’s headquarters and the old Wilderness Tavern. He caught sight, too, of Wads- worth moving past the Lacy house. Grant and Meade happened to be at Warren’s headquarters at the Lacy house as our signal officers reported the march of Wilcox’s column. Grant at once ordered a diversion to be made by Warren against Heth’s flank and rear, and inferring from Wilcox’s move that Lee was detaching from Ewell, had ordered Warren and Sedgwick to renew the at- THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS 189 tack on their fronts immediately. Wadsworth, terri- bly chagrined over the conduct of his division in the attack up the Pike, was anxious to retrieve the re- putation of his troops, and asked to be sent against Heth. Accordingly Warren sent him and Baxter’s brigade of Robinson’s division. It was nearly six o’clock as he filed down across the fields, Roebling leading the way. When Wfilcox reached Lee he reported to him what he had seen through the timber, and Lee sent the following despatch at once to Ewell: — May 5 , 1864, 6 p. M. Lieutenant-General Ewell, Commanding, etc. General: The commanding general directs me to repeat a message sent you at 6 p. m. The enemy per- sist in their attack on General Hill’s right. Several efforts have been repulsed, and we hold our own as yet. The general wishes you to hurry up Ramseur, send back and care for your wounded, fill up your ammunition, and be ready to act by light in the morn- ing. General Longstreet and General Anderson are expected up early, and unless you see some means of operating against their right, the general wishes you to be ready to support our right. It is reported that the enemy is massing against General Hill, and if an opportunity presents itself and you can get Wil- derness Tavern ridge and cut the enemy off from the river, the general wishes it done. The attack on Gen- 190 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS eral Hill is still raging. Be ready to act as early as possible in the morning. Yours, most respectfully, C. Marshall, Lieutenant-Colonel and Aide-de-Camp. Of all the despatches in the War Records relating to the battle, this one has more intrinsic interest than any other for me. It not only coordinates the move- ments of Wilcox, Wadsworth, and Sedgwick, but it reveals at a flash the workings of the minds of both Grant and Lee. Let us revert to the situation, il- lumed by the light it throws. Grant and Meade, accompanied by several of their staffs, have come over to Warren’s headquarters at the Lacy house. Grant is mounted on “Egypt,” or “Cincinnati,” a black-pointed, velvety-eared, high- bred bay, and Meade with drooping hat, on his old fox-walk, “Baldy.” While on the lawn under the same old venerable trees that are dreaming there still. Grant is told that a signal officer on Crawford’s line has just seen a column of troops marching rapidly toward Heth, — Locke’s despatch to Hum- phreys confirming the news is dated 5.45 p. m.; with lightning speed, he catches the significance of the news, and moves Wadsworth to fall on Heth’s flank, and at the same time orders Warren and Sedgwick to strike at once at Ewell. THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS 191 Wadsworth is hardly on his way before Wilcox reaches Lee and tells him what he had seen through the timber. Lee’s inferences, the converse of Grant’s, flood in at once: Grant is weakening his line in front of Ewell, and, as the volleys come rolling up one after another from Heth and Getty, Lee tells Ewell to make a dash if he can for the ridge east of Wilderness Run. Could we have anything better than these orders to show the clear-sightedness, quick resolution, swift unhesitating grasp, and high mettle of both Grant and Lee? their instinctive discernment of the signifi- cance of the shifting phases of battle? Grant’s in- domitable will to take advantage of them; Lee’s warrior blood boiling with the first whiff of the smell of battle, and his tendency to throw his army like a thunderbolt out of a cloud at his adversary? And, by the way, that smell of battle always set Lee ablaze, and with his quick comprehension of the immediate moves to be made, augmented by the warmth of his fiery spirit, I think, was the source of the influence he shed around him as he fought a battle. Lee had some advantages over Grant that after- noon. Grant was a stranger to his army, Lee knew his, and his army knew him; Lee was where he could see the field. Grant where he could not; Lee knew the country well. Grant had never before entered its fateful labyrinth. Moreover, Lee knew what he wanted to do, what the fate of the Confederacy called on him to do, and the above despatch of 192 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS Colonel Marshall’s, ringing with its resolute purpose, tells how he hoped to do it. But, but, Colonel Marshall, allow me your ear for a moment: there is a quiet, modest, blue-eyed, me- dium-sized man down on that knoll near the Lacy house, — cut a short vista through these pines behind you, and you can see where he is in the distance, — whom at last at Appomattox you and Lee will meet; and, strangely enough, the ink-bottle you are now using will be used then to draw the terms of surrender; down on the knoll is a gentle-voiced man who has an undismayable heart in his breast, and he will meet you to-morrow morning when Long- street, Anderson, and Ramseur have come, and every morning thereafter, to the end of the Rebel- lion, with blow for blow. Wilcox’s pregnant interview with Lee ended, he put Thomas’s brigade on the left of the Plank Road, and, guided by the continuous roar of musketry, it moved forward toward Heth’s battered lines. Lane’s brigade was to form on Thomas’s left, but just as it reached Hill, Scales, on Heth’s right, was smashed, and Colonel Palmer of Hill’s staff led it thither. At ten minutes of six — the sun dropping toward the tree-tops, and twilight, owing to the density of the woods, gathering fast — Lyman, who had stayed at Hancock’s side to give Meade timely information as to the progress of events, reported: “We barely hold our own; on the right the pressure is heavy. THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS 193 General Hancock thinks he can hold the Plank and Brock roads, but he can’t advance.” Between half-past five and six o’clock the enemy — McGowan’s and Kirkland’s brigades having come in to relieve Heth’s exhausted troops in front of Getty ■ — charged, and for a moment planted their colors beside one of the guns of Ricketts’s section, whose horses had been killed. But Grant’s and Wheaton’s lines, although thrust back momentarily by the sud- den onslaught, braced and drove the Confederates away from the guns. A little later Carroll and Owens, Brooke, Smyth, and Miles came up, and relieved Grant, Wheaton, Hays, and Ward. Carroll then fought his way in the twilight fairly across the now riddled swamp, sent the Eighth Ohio up the south and the Seventh West Virginia up the north side of the road, beyond the disabled section where Captain Butterworth of his staff and Lieutenant McKesson of the Eighth, by the aid of squads from the Eighth Ohio and Fourteenth Indiana, dragged back the guns; Lieutenant McKesson receiving a severe wound. The battle raged on. Wheaton’s men on the north, and the Vermonters on the other or south side of the road, with Ward’s brigade, were still standing up to it, although suffering terribly. The Confederates in front of them had the advantage of a slight swell in the ground, and every attempt to dislodge them had met with slaughter. Birney sent a couple of regiments to their support. About sundown the commanding 194 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS officer of the Fifth Vermont was asked if he thought, with the help of Birney’s men, he could break the enemy’s line. “I think we can,” replied the stout- hearted man. And when Birney’s men were asked if they would give their support, they answered, “We will,” with a cheer. And again they went at the enemy’s line, which partially gave way — it was probably Scales; but so dense were the woods that a break at one point had mighty little moral effect to the right or left, with troops as steady as theirs and ours. When Palmer got back to the road there he found Stuart and Colonel Venable of Lee’s staff sitting on their horses in the dusk, and told them that Lane had become engaged. Venable exclaimed, “Thank God! I’ll go back and tell Lee that Lane has gone in, and the lines will be held.” Yes, and here is what he met, so says the report of the Sixty-sixth New York: “The rebels came marching by the flank, distant about ten paces. It being dark, they were at first taken for friends, but the illusion was soon dispelled, and Colonel Ham- mell gave the order to fire, which was promptly executed, with fatal effect. It proved to be the Seventh North Carolina.” The report adds that they advanced again in line of battle, but were re- pulsed, leaving their dead and wounded. But they did hold the lines. The sun having gone down, darkness soon settled THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS 195 around them all, but the struggle did not end. Never was better grit shown by any troops. They could not see each other and their positions were disclosed only by the red, angry flashes of their guns. Their line stretched from about two-thirds of a mile north of the Plank Road to a distance of a mile and a half south of it. And so, shrouded in the smoke, and stand- ing or kneeling among their dead, both sides kept on. All other sounds having died away, the forest now at every discharge roared deeply. “All during that terrible afternoon,” wrote the historian of the Forty-sixth North Carolina, Cooke’s brigade, “the regiment held its own, now gaining, now losing, resting at night on the ground over which it had fought, surrounded by the dead and wounded of both sides.” The Fifty-fifth North Carolina in Davis’s brigade that had fought Hays took into the action 340 men. At the end of the battle it is related in their history that “34 lay dead on the line where we fought, and 167 were wounded. They were on one side of a morass and we on the other.” The his- torian asserts that the sergeant of the Confederate ambulance corps counted 157 dead Federals the fol- lowing day along their brigade-front. “The record of that day of butchery,” says the same authority, “has often been written. A butchery pure and sim- ple, it was unrelieved by any of the arts of war in which the exercise of military skill and tact robs war of some of its horrors.” 196 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS “At one time during the fighting of the fifth,” ac- cording to the historian of the Eleventh North Caro- lina, Kirkland’s brigade, “the brigade lay down behind a line of dead Federals so thick as to form partial breastworks, showing how stubbornly they had fought and how severely they had suffered.” This statement seems almost incredible, but it will not be forgotten that Kirkland was in reserve when the action began and was not called on till late, so that, as the brigade went in with McGowan, the men had a chance to see the death and destruction that had taken place. This brigade, out of 1753, lost 1080. (The night before Lee’s army was forced formally to lay down its arms and give up its colors at Appo- mattox, the survivors of the Eleventh North Caro- lina of the above-mentioned brigade took the old flag which they had borne at the Wilderness, into a clump of young pines, and there, collecting some fagots, gathered sadly about it in the darkness and burned it.) At the close of the battle this regiment and all the other regiments of Heth’s and Wilcox’s divisions were staggering, and it is highly probable that if the engagement had begun an hour or so earlier, defeat would have overtaken them. Or, had Wadsworth been sent earlier, the chances are that Ileth could not have withstood his flank attack. There was no engagement during the war where the private soldiers of the army showed greater valor THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS 197 than up the Plank Road that afternoon. Bear in mind that they did all their fighting amid the um- brage and terror of the woods, and not under the eye of a single general officer; not one in twenty could see his colors or his colonel. There was none of the in- spiration of an open field with stirring scenes. No, they fought the battle alone, their only companion the sense of Duty who was saying to them, to those obscure boys from the Green Mountains of Vermont, from Connecticut, Pennsylvania, New York, and Ohio: “Stand fast for your country, stand fast for the glory of the old home, for the honor of the gray- haired father and mother.” Let garlands be given, too, to Heth’s and Wilcox’s men, and if I were the son of one who stood there that day under the ban- ner of the Confederacy, I ’d feel proud of my blood. At last, about eight o’clock, the volleys that had been so thundering and dreadful stopped almost suddenly. [No one who was with the Army of the Potomac that night will ever forget the immediate silence; Getty’s and Birney’s scarred and well-tried veterans were led back to the Brock Road, and there, beside its lonely, solemn way, they lay down and rested. And what is this movement of mind and heart? It is imagination lifting the veil from the inner eye, and lo! we see Honor proudly standing guard over them all. Getty’s division on that day and the next met with the heaviest loss experienced by any division during 198 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS the war, and his Vermont brigade of this division lost more men on that afternoon of the fifth than the en- tire Second Corps. Of the officers present for duty, three-fourths were killed or wounded. There is no occurrence of the day that I remember with more distinctness than the setting off of Wads- worth’s command that afternoon. I can see the men now moving down the field in column to the road, and then following it up the run for a piece toward Parker’s store. They formed in two lines of battle and entered the swampy tangles, guided by Colonel Roebling. Their progress, trammeled by the nature of the woods, was slow; within a half-mile or so they struck the skirmishers of Thomas’s brigade of Wil- cox’s division, who had just been posted on Heth’s left. Wadsworth pushed them steadily back, till darkness came on and he had to halt. The extreme right of his line was now nearly at the foot of the abrupt slopes running down from the Widow Tapp’s old field, his left perhaps three-quarters of a mile from the Brock Road. His front was parallel to the Plank Road, a half to five-eighths of a mile from it, the ground about him broken and the woods very dense; and there, on the dead leaves and among spice-bushes, spring beauties, violets and dogwoods in bloom, they passed the solemn night through. The men say, however, as well as those on Hancock’s lines, that they were restless; their position had been reached practically in the dark, and they were so THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS 199 close to the enemy that both spoke in whispers, and all realized the inevitable renewal of the struggle in the morning. Roebling got back to the Lacy house, his most valuable notes tell me, about nine o’clock. When Wadsworth was moving toward Hancock, Russell’s and Brown’s brigade of the first division of the Sixth Corps, on the extreme right of the line beyond Griffin and Upton, made and received coun- ter and vigorous attacks on Ewell’s left, the Confed- erate brigades commanded by Stafford, Pegram, and Hayes. Stafford was mortally and Pegram very se- verely wounded, and the Twenty -fifth Virginia of Jones’s brigade, which had been transferred to the extreme left along with Gordon’s, lost its colors and over two hundred men to the Fifth Wisconsin of Rus- sell’s brigade. And here may I be allowed to say that all the flags save one captured from the enemy in the Wilderness were taken by western regiments. The Twenty-fourth Michigan captured the colors of the Forty-eighth Virginia, the Fifth Wisconsin those of the Twenty- fifth, the Twentieth Indiana those of the Fifty-fifth, the Seventh Indiana those of the Fiftieth Virginia; the Fifth Michigan those of the Thirteenth North Carolina. The Eighth Ohio and the Fourteenth In- diana retook Ricketts’s guns. The men from the West were probably no braver, man for man, than those of the East; but I think their success was wholly be- cause so many of the men were woods-wise. From 200 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS their youth up, both by day and by night, they had roamed through woods under all sorts of sky and in all sorts of weather, and so their depths had no ter- ror for them; like their enemies, they were at home in the timber, and could make their way through it almost as well by night as by day. And I have often thought that perhaps it was this common knowledge of the woods that gave our western armies so many victories. A Confederate line coming on, or rising up suddenly and breaking into their sharp, fierce yells, did not greatly surprise or set them quaking. And yet, although all my boyhood was passed in the grandly deep, primeval forests of Ohio, I am free to own that I never heard that “Rebel” yell in the woods of Virginia that its old fields behind us did not seem at once to become mightily attractive. Reference should be made, as a part of the day’s serious history, to the cavalry engagements under Wilson and Gregg. The former’s encounter with Rosser and Fitz Lee has been mentioned; it was se- vere, and "Wilson, overpowered, had to take his way as best he could to Gregg at Todd’s Tavern, who bristled up, and with Davies’s brigade, the First New Jersey and First Massachusetts Cavalry, met the confident pursuing enemy and drove them back to Corbin’s bridge, but only after a loss of ninety- odd killed and wounded. When night and exhaustion put an end to the fell struggle between Hancock and Hill, it may be said THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS 201 that the first day of the battle of the Wilderness was over. And what a day it had been ! Where now were the plans, hopes, and roseate forecasts which the self-reliant natures of both Grant and Lee had made, as they were looking forward to it the night before? All transmuted into solemn, speechful reality. Grant had telegraphed Halleck as soon as he had crossed the Rapidan safely: “Forty-eight hours now will demonstrate whether the enemy intends giving bat- tle this side of Richmond.” With his intuitive wis- dom, he had predicted truly; yet, as a matter of fact, he did not know or care when or where the battle should begin. He meant to find Lee, clinch, and have it out with him for good and all, wholly undisturbed as usual over possible results. And behold, the day had banished the uncertainties of the night before, and had brought him just where he had wanted to be, in conflict with his famous adversary. But, imperturbable as he was, I feel sure it had brought some disappointment to him, — not be- cause Lee had obviously the best of it, but because he himself had discovered the Army of the Potomac’s one weakness, the lack of springy formation, and au- dacious, self-reliant initiative. This organic weak- ness was entirely due to not having had in its youth skillfully agressive leadership. Its early commanders had dissipated war’s best elixir by training it into a life of caution, and the evil of that schooling it had shown on more than one occasion, and unmistakably 202 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS that day, and it had had to suffer for it. But never, on that day or any other, did an army carry its bur- dens of every kind, and it had many, with a steadier or a more steadfast heart. But I had better leave the battle’s tactics to those who make a special study of military campaigns, ven- turing the following personal incident for the con- sideration of those young, cocksure critics who have never been in a big or a little battle, and who are surprised at the mistakes that Grant and Lee made, and contemplate with supreme satisfaction what would have happened had they been there and in command of either army. One night, some time in the winter before we started for the Wilderness, when I was dining with Duane, Turnbull, Michler, and Mackenzie of the engineers, in their spacious pine- bough-decorated mess room, they discussed Burn- side’s hesitation when Mr. Lincoln, having finally made up his mind to relieve McClellan, offered him the com- mand of the Army of the Potomac. I listened a while, and then piped up that Burnside should not have had any such doubts of himself, that he had been educated for that business and kind of emergency, that it was n’t very much of a job, etc., and wound up — the bottle had moved faithfully, yet with gen- teel moderation — that if I were offered the command I ’d take it. Whereupon my astounded listeners flung themselves back in their chairs and there was some- thing between a howl and a roar of laughter as they THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS 203 threw their eyes, filled with pity and humor, across and down the table at a mere snip of a thin-faced boy. Well, of course, I stuck to it — I should have taken command of the Army of the Potomac. Now if, at the end of that first night, say at nine o’clock, Mr. Grant should have sent for me and said, “I’m thinking of assigning you to the independent command of one of the empty ambulances,” — let alone turning the command of the Army of the Po- tomac over to me, — “and want you to get it safely out of this,” I think I should have said, “Mr. Grant, I’m not very experienced in handling ambulances, and if you can get anybody else I’ll not object,” so dark was the outlook and so deeply had I been im- pressed by the responsibilities that encompassed him. Dear military critics, however vast may be your knowledge of the art of war, and however boldly your youthful confidence may buckle on its sword and parade to the imaginary music of battle, let me tell you that if you are ever on a field where your coun- try’s life is hanging as ours hung on Grant’s, or as the cause of the South hung on Lee’s shoulders, I’ll guarantee that you will not volunteer to take the command of anything, but will wonder that more mistakes are not made. And here answer might be given to the inquiry which is often raised, coming sometimes from those who have been carried away by delving in the tac- 204 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS tics of battle, and sometimes from those who have become warmly interested in its history: namely, what did the officers at corps and army headquar- ters have to say about it among themselves during its progress, and especially at the close of that first day in the Wilderness. In the sense in which the question is asked, nothing, absolutely nothing. For who could possibly have penetrated the rapidly evolving events and seen what the critic sees now so clearly? Who could have told us where the gaps lay between Ewell and Hill, where Longstreet was, and the importance of bringing Burnside’s two divi- sions up to the Lacy farm that afternoon so as to be ready for the next morning? f It is hardly necessary to say that for officers or men to discuss or pass judgment upon the events and conduct of a battle would be death to discipline, and instead of an army, the country would be relying for its life upon a mob. In all my service with the Army of the Potomac, from Chancellorsville to Petersburg, sometimes in the eclipse of defeat, some- times in the very verge of yawning disaster, never did I hear discussion, or more than barely a word of criticism or protest, over any feature of a cam- paign, except after Cold Harbor, and then only for a day. Soldiers and officers see so little of the field that they do not give weight to their immediate sur- roundings or experience. The question of what the officers at headquarters THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS 205 said to each other about the battle in its progress, and how they felt, is a very natural one, and its an- swer may be a minor but essential part of the story itself. I do not know what Grant, Meade, Rawlins, and Seth Williams may have said to each other, or what they may have talked about, but whenever an aide came back from the front and had reported to the General or chief of staff, he would take his place among his fellows, and their first question would be, “Where have you been. Bob, or Tom, or Mack,” “ how is it going up there, old fellow?” For every one, from the time the battle began, was keen to learn its progress. “Been up [or over] to lines. They are holding their own mighty well — Colonel So-and-So [or our dear little ‘Dad,’ or Bill] has just been killed — old General ’s com- mand is catching perfect h — 1, say, fellers, where can I get something to eat [or drink], I’m hungry [or dry] as the dickens.” That is about a fair sam- ple of the conversation at headquarters while a bat- tle is going on, so far as my experience goes. For the information of those who have followed the paths of peace, let me say, without seeming di- dactic, that the commanding general and his corps commanders are rarely where the artists have depic- ted them, on rearing horses, leading or directing amid a sheet of fire. There are times, however, when the artist is true to life: as when Sheridan, seeing Ayres and his Regulars recoiling for a moment under ter- 206 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS rific fire at Five Forks, dashed in; and there and then with those flashing eyes, amid the smoke of battle, he might have been painted. And so too, Warren, for that same day he seized the colors on another part of the field, and led on. But, as a rule, the corps com- mander chooses a position where he can best see his troops as they engage. The test of his genius is in choosing the critical moment when he will join them, and I ’d suggest to my old Alma Mater, West Point, that it should impress upon its future generals the importance of catching the crisis in a battle and showing them the weight of their presence with their troops. In that glowing characteristic Sheri- dan rose above about all of our commanders. Sup- pose McClellan had shown himself and ridden his lines at Gaines’s Mill, or Bragg at Chickamauga, might not the outcome have been different? Owing to the nature of the Wilderness, Grant had few chances to seize opportunities of that kind. At Spottsylvania, the night Upton was making his as- sault and breaking their lines temporarily, he was close up, and I sat my horse not far from him. There were two or three lines of battle within thirty or forty paces of each other and of him. The fire that reached us was considerable; an orderly carry- ing the headquarters standard was killed, and a solid shot struck an oak five or six inches through, squarely, not thirty feet from us, shivering it into broom slivers; but through it all Grant wore the THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS 207 same unperturbed, quiet, but somewhat pleading face. But, to return to the Wilderness and the impress sions it made, it goes without saying that the first day was a disappointing one, and that the desperate character of the fighting and the attendant losses had stamped themselves deeply. There was no de- jection, however, the army from top to bottom was looking forward to the coming day’s trial with reso- lution and hope. Notwithstanding that Lee had repulsed Warren and had badly shaken the morale of his entire corps, and also that of Mott’s division of Hancock’s corps, had held Sedgwick in check, fought Hancock and Getty to a standstill, thrown Wilson back, and brought the formidable movement up with a sudden jarring stop, yet seemingly Grant at the close of the day — and I saw him once or twice — was not troubled, and he issued orders with the same even, softly warm voice, to attack Lee impetuously early the next morn- ing all along his line. If the day had brought some disappointments and anxious foreshadowings to Grant, it must have brought some to Lee also. For he had hoped that when Grant should find him on his flank ready to take the offensive, that he, like Hooker, would be- come confused and undecided, thereby giving Long- street and the rest of his forces time to come up, and to repeat Chancellorsville. The results of the 208 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS day had put another face on his hopes. Grant was neither undecided nor confused; he had made a savage drive at him, and when, at eleven o’clock that night, all the news had come in, Lee undoubtedly was duly thankful that he had held his own, as his despatch to the Confederate Secretary of War dated at that hour shows. He said in reporting the day’s doings: — “By the blessing of God, we maintained our po- sition against every effort until night, when the con- test closed. We have to mourn the loss of many brave officers and men. The gallant Brigadier-General J. M. Jones was killed, and Brig.-Gen. L. A. Staf- ford I fear mortally wounded while leading his com- mand with conspicuous valor.” His greatest blessings, however, were that Warren was not allowed to wait till Wright came up, that Getty had not attacked an hour earlier, and that we had not seized and held the Chewning farm. When the firing ceased on Hancock’s front, to those of us around the Lacy house and at Grant’s headquarters the silence was heavy and awesome. But soon the stars were shining softly and the mer- ciful quiet of night came on; and wheresoever a mor- tally wounded man could be reached who was crying for water and help, — some of them in high, wild de- lirious screams of despair and agony, others with just enough breath left to be heard, alas! too often, only by the bushes around them, — surgeons and friendly THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS 209 comrades, and sometimes their foes, stole to them and did all they could for them. I wonder what was going on in the breast of the Spirit of the Wilderness as the woods darkened. I wonder, too, as the spirits of those youths rose above the tree-tops all through that night, I wonder if they asked which was right and which was wrong as they bore on, a great flight of them, toward Heaven’s gate. On and on they go, following the road Christ made for us all, past moon and stars, — the air is growing balmy, landscapes of eternal heavenly beauty are appearing; in the soft breezes that kiss their faces there is the faint odor of wild grapes in bloom, and lo! they hear a choir singing, “Peace on earth, good will toward men!” And two by two they lock arms like college boys and pass in together; and so may it be for all of us at last. After supper, which did not take place until the day’s commotion had well quieted down, I happened to go into the Lacy house, and in the large, high- ceiled room on the left of the hall was Warren, seated on one side of a small table, with Locke, his adjutant general, and Milhau, his chief surgeon, on the other, making up a report of his losses of the day. Warren was still wearing his yellow sash, his hat rested on the table, and his long, coal-black hair was stream- ing away from his finely expressive forehead, the only feature rising unclouded above the habitual gloom of his duskily sallow face. A couple of tallow 210 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS candles were burning on the table, and on the high mantel a globe lantern. Locke and Milhau were both small men: the former unpretentious, much reflect- ing, and taciturn; the latter a modest man, and a great friend of McClellan’s, with a naturally rippling, joyous nature. Just as I passed them, I heard Milhau give a figure, his aggregate from data which he had gathered at the hospitals. “It will never do, Locke, to make a showing of such heavy losses,” quickly observed War- ren. It was the first time I had ever been present when an official report of this kind was being made, and in my unsophisticated state of West Point truth- fulness it drew my eyes to Warren’s face with wonder, and I can see its earnest, mournfully solemn lines yet. It is needless to say that after that I always doubted reports of casualties until officially certified. Shortly after, Warren, accompanied by Roebling, went to a conference of the corps commanders which Meade had called to arrange for the attack which Grant had already ordered to be made at 4.30 the next morning. I passed through the house, and out to the place where the horses were, in charge of the orderlies. I found mine among others in the semi-darkness of one of the open sheds of the old plantation’s cluster- ing barns, gave him the usual friendly pat, and stroked his silky neck as he daintily selected from the remain- ing wisps of his ration of hay. THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS 211 All the space between the garden, the back of the house, and the barns, was loosely occupied by the bivouacs of the headquarters orderlies, clerks, team- sters, officers’ servants, cooks and waiters of the va- rious messes, provost-guards, etc., who on a campaign form quite a colony about corps and army headquar- ters. The soldiers, in groups of two or three, were sitting around their little dying fires, smoking; some with overcoat and hat for a pillow, already asleep. The black cooks, coatless and bareheaded, were puttering around their pot and kettle fires, with the usual attendant circle of waiters sitting on their haunches, some with their long, sinewy arms embrac- ing languidly their uplifted knees, eyes of some on the fire, chins of some on their breasts and eyes closed, all drowsily listening to some one’s childlike chatter; others on their backs, feet towards the fire, and snor- ing loudly. And around them all, and scattered about, are the baggage and supply-wagons, their bowed white canvas tops, although mildewed and dirty, dimly looming, outlined by being the resting-place for stray beams wandering through the night. The mule teams, unhitched but still harnessed, stand facing each other across the wagon-pole where their deep feed-box is still resting. Some are nosing in it for an overlooked kernel of oats or corn, or a taste of salt, some among the bits of forage that have fallen to the ground, some nodding. Their driver is asleep in or under the wagon, and his rest unbroken by the 212 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS every-once-in-a-while quick rattling of the looped-up trace-chains, as one of his mules lets drive a vicious kick right or left at its army mate. All up and down Wilderness Run, all over the once tilled fields of the Lacy farm and the old, gullied, pine and brier-tufted ones uplifting east of the run, little fires are blinking as they burn low. Some are those of batteries, some of trains, and some, at the top of the ridge, those of the hospitals of the Fifth Corps, where the surgeons, with rolled-up sleeves, are at their humane tasks in the operating tents, instruments by them which they handle with skill and mercy, as one after another the mutilated and perforated bodies of the boys who have been willing to risk their lives for the country are brought in and laid on the table before them, their anxious eyes scrutinizing the sur- geon’s face for a sign of hope as he examines their wounds and feels their fluttering pulses. Heaven bless their memory, all of them, and wherever the dust of one of them lies, I know the feeling mother earth holds it tenderly. And now, reader, it is drawing late. Great, majes- tic, and magnanimous Night has come down, cover- ing the Wilderness and us all in mysterious silence. Let us take a couple of these folding camp-chairs and go out and sit in the starlight on the lawn of the old Lacy house. Here is my tobacco-pouch; fill your pipe, and I ’ll try to convey to you the situation at this hour on the field, and then we will turn in. There THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS 213 are one or two incidents that I ’d like to tell you also, and if I forget to mention them as I go along, I wish, before I get through, that you would jog my memory. Meade’s commodious living tents are pitched on the east side of the Germanna Road, directly oppo- site the knoll which he and Grant have occupied all day. Grant’s are at the foot of the knoll, and a big, balloon-topped cottonwood or poplar waves over the spot still. Their tents are about two hundred yards apart, and Caton’s little warrior Run is between them. Their headquarters tents, flaps thrown back, are indicated by colored lanterns on poles in front of them; and in them a candle or lamp is burning, and on a camp-chair before them, or writing at a table within, is an adjutant-general on duty for the night. Couriers are standing about with their horses sad- dled, and out where the Germanna Road meets the Pike, is a mounted orderly to point the way to aides coming in from the lines, who have occasion to visit headquarters. And let us hope that blessed sleep on her noiseless wings has found her way without the aid of the sentinel at the Pike to the tents of both Meade and Grant. There is no moon, the stars are dim, and all is hushed. The night air is permeated with the odor of freshly-burnt-over woods, for the fire spread widely and is still slumbering and smoking in chunks and fallen trees. Here and there it has climbed up the grape-vines or the loose bark of a dead trunk, and 214 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS aloft throws out little tremulous torch-like flames from their scraggly-limbed tops, pulsing beacons over the dark woods. Single ambulances are still coming and going, and now and then one is picking its way slowly and carefully with its suffering load across the fields. Up the Pike, barely visible by the light that falls from the starry maze, from those lamps that are hung to show our minds the way to Another’s headquarters far, far above Grant’s and Meade’s, both armies are lying behind their newly-thrown-up breastworks, which stretch from Flat Run well across the Pike toward Chewning’s, and are more or less parallel and close. On Sedgwick’s and some of Warren’s front they are within pistol-shot of one another, and all along between them are many dead and wounded, whose cries and moans can be heard, but cannot be relieved, so persistent is the firing. Sedgwick’s head- quarters are on the Flat Run Road not far from where it joins the Germanna. Upton, Brown, Russell, Sha- ler, Morris, and Seymour of his corps, like Griffin, Ayres, Robinson, and Bartlett of Warren’s, are up in the woods close behind their troops, blessed, I hope, with refreshing sleep. Ewell has his headquarters bivouac on the Pike, and I suppose his flea-bitten gray, Rifle, that Major Stiles claimed resembled him, — if so, Rifle must have been a lank, serious-looking horse, with a high broad forehead, rather bony eye-sockets, and lean, THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS 215 scooped-out cheeks, for such were the prominent features of Ewell’s face, — Rifle, more or less visible on account of his chalky color, is not far away, tied to a sapling; and, as his rider has lost a leg, he, out of sympathy or weariness, is probably resting one hind leg on its toe and dreaming. Ewell’s general hospital, his surgeons as busy as our own, is back near Locust Grove, whence at an early hour in the evening a batch of our prisoners, about twelve hun- dred in number, most of them from Warren’s corps, had set out for Orange Court House. In the middle of the night they met Ramseur and Mahone hurry- ing toward the front. Had I been one of the unfortunate prisoners I know that I should have wished over and over again, as I trudged along that night, that I was lying dead back on the field with my fellows, rather than about to face a long term in Confederate prisons, so greatly did I dread them after seeing the wrecks that came down the James from Richmond when I first went to Fort Monroe. Hancock is bivouacked on the Plank Road a short way east (within a hundred yards) of the Junction, and he may or may not be asleep, for, at his inter- view with Meade, the latter cautioned him to keep a strict lookout for his left in the morning — hinting at the possibility of Longstreet striking him in the Stonewall Jackson way. Birney has been told that he is to lead in the morning, and the various brigade 216 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS commanders of his division and Getty’s have had their positions assigned them. Sheridan is at Chan- cellors ville; Wilson and Gregg are so encamped as to cover the roads that come in at Todd’s Tavern. On the Widow Tapp field, dimly lit by the faint starlight, and silent, save that now and then a travel- ing cry from the wounded in the woods passes over it, Lee, Hill, and Wilcox are camped close up to their well-fought, tired troops, and their headquarters are not far apart. Hill is described as sitting alone at a late hour before a small, languishing fire, made of a few round, crossed-over sticks, near one of the guns of Williams’s battery whose right wheel is just on the edge of the road, facing Birney. Wilcox has been to see Hill and asked for permission to withdraw his lines so as to reform them, and the little, punctilious man, who is not very well, has told him to let the men rest. The reason why Wilcox made this request is ex- plained by the adjutant of the Eighteenth North Carolina in his account of the Wilderness. It seems that when Brooke struck Lane’s brigade, the Eight- eenth was badly shattered, and, breaking, disap- peared in the darkness. The adjutant, while seeking it, got lost, suddenly found himself within our lines, and after cautiously making his way to avoid this body of men and then another in the woods, all at once struck the Plank Road, knew where he was, followed it up to our pickets, and then, staking his THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS 217 life against captivity, dashed ahead through them. On reaching the edge of the woods he saw a white horse standing out in the Tapp field and, going closer, recognized it as General Wilcox’s. He sought the general and told him that there was nothing, ab- solutely nothing, between his lines and ours. Wilcox was cross, and would not listen to him, dismissing him sharply with an aside that there was a brigade in front of his line. The adjutant at last found his regiment, told his fellow officers his story, and they, in view of the danger, went to Wilcox and assured him of their adjutant’s truthfulness and good judg- ment. Thereupon Wilcox made his visit to Hill. Later he tells us that he went to see Lee, whose tent was within less than two hundred yards, in reference to the same matter. On his entering, Lee remarked that he had made a complimentary report on the conduct of his and Heth’s division and, holding up a note, that he had just heard from Anderson, that he was going into bivouac at Verdierville, and that he had sent word to him and to Longstreet to move forward so as to relieve the divisions which had been so actively engaged. Longstreet at that hour was bivouacking at Rich- ard’s shop on the Catharpin Road. When we first entered Richmond the following April, the diary of an officer of his corps was picked up in the street by some one of our men, and in it is this entry: — “Thursday, May 5th. Marched at three o’clock 218 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS this morning. Rested after marching thirteen miles, and cooked some rations. After resting a while re- sumed march, marched 20 miles and camped at dark five miles from the battle-field.” That made a total of thirty-three miles, and as the day was exceedingly hot, especially in the woods, the men must have been very tired. Lee’s orders to Longstreet, carried by that crystal aide, Venable, were to move at 2 a. m., the same hour as that Grant had set for Burnside. Longstreet had a mile or two farther to march, but, unfortunately for us, he had not, on this occasion at least, “a genius for slowness,” and was on the very nick of time. The troops on the move then are Ramseur and Mahone on their way to reinforce Lee’s lines, and Ferrero, my old West Point dancing-master, tip- toeing along with his colored division to reach Ger- manna Ford and swell Burnside’s corps. And that now is the story of the night. “But you have not told me,” exclaims my friend, knocking the ashes out of his pipe, “of the personal incidents you asked to be reminded of.” Well, do not fill your pipe again, I ’ll promise not to be long. There is the body of a young officer lying alone in the woods pretty well south of the Plank Road. It is that of Colonel Alford B. Chapman, aged twenty-eight years, of the Fifty -seventh New York. There is a little pocket note-book beside his lifeless hand, and on one of the open leaves he has written his father’s name THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS 219 and address and these words: “Dear Father: I am mortally wounded. Do not grieve for me. My dear- est love to all. Alford.” I do not know, but I doubt if Death anywhere in the Wilderness has met more steady eyes than those of this dying, family-remem- bering young man. Fie was brigade officer of the day, and his duties had called him into the engagement very early; and when, toward dusk, his regiment advanced to fill a gap on account of the lines being extended southward to meet the overlapping of Lane’s big North Carolina brigade, it came across Chap- man’s body, the first it knew of his fate. And while we are on Hancock’s front let me refer to Hays, and, if ever you go along the Brock Road, you will come to a cast-iron gun standing upright on a granite base surrounded by an iron picket fence. It marks the near-by spot where he fell, and is on the right-hand side of the road about where the easterly branch of Wilderness Run crosses it, a little this side of the Junction. He was a very gallant officer, and his lonely monument will appeal to you. There is something illustrative of the man, and mys- teriously prophetic, in a letter he wrote to his wife the morning of the day he was killed: “This morning was beautiful,” said the letter, “for ‘Lightly and brightly shone the sun. As if the morn was a jocund one.’ Although we were anticipating to march at 8 o’clock, it might have been an appropriate harbinger of the 220 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS day of regeneration of mankind; but it only brought to remembrance, through the throats of bugles, that duty enjoined upon each one, perhaps before the set- ting sun, to lay down a life for his country.” It was a translation worthy of the prophets of old that he gave to the notes of the bugles; and the rev- erential, kindly mood — and to think it was his last! — hailing the sun as the harbinger of the day of re- generation of mankind! Oh! the sanity and spread of the primary emotions! The other incidents are these, one of which was referred to early in the narrative, namely, the relief of one of our men on Griffin’s front by a Confederate officer. The circumstances were as follows: the Con- federate, touched by the cries of our men, — he had been trying to sleep, — crawled over the works on hands and knees in the darkness, till he reached a wounded man, who turned out to be a lieutenant of a western regiment, if I remember right, and asked what he could do for him. “I am very, very thirsty, and I am shot so that I cannot move.” The good Samaritan crawled to the little brook, — it wimples still across the old Pike, — filled a canteen and came back with it, and, after propping the wounded man’s head, went his way. A little while afterwards another Confederate came prowling toward the wounded man and, thinking he was dead, began to feel for his watch. The lieutenant remonstrated, but the hard-hearted creature took the watch, saying, “You will be dead THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS 221 before long, and will not need it.” Here we have the extremes of our natures, and how they stand out ! the manly and angelic, the brutish and satanic! I know the name of the prowler; but of the other, the noble fellow, I do not. If I did, it should appear on this page and live as long as I could make it live. This story I got from my friend, Mr. Jennings of the Wilderness, who had it from the lips of the western lieutenant himself, who, a few years ago, came back to the old battle-field, and the first place he visited was the lit* tie brook; and I have no doubt it murmured sweetly all through that night, full of a native happiness at seeing once more its acquaintance of other days . 1 . The other incident is found in the diary of Cap : tain Robert E. Park, Company F, Twelfth Alabama, Battle’s brigade, Rodes’s division. “Crawled ovei* the works with two canteens of water to relieve some of the wounded, groaning and calling aloud in front of the line. Night dark, no moon and few stars, and as I crawled to the first man and offered him a drink of water, he declined; and, in reply to my inquiries, told me that he was shot through the leg and body and was sure he was bleeding internally. I told him that I feared he would not live till morning, and 1 I am indebted to Mrs. and Mr. Jennings for opening their door to me as the day was ending on my last visit to the Wilderness; I was tired, hungry, and chilled, and no stranger ever met a more hospitable welcome. Their house stands nearly opposite where Grant had his headquarters, and while I sat before the crackling fire my eye rested on the spot, over which a cold gray mist was drifting.