It had been almost a year since the horrific battle of Gettysburg, and in the interim President Lincoln had turned command of the Union Army over to General Ulysses S. Grant. Grant would lay out a plan to attack the confederacy on many fronts including Sherman’s march towards Atlanta and an attack on Mobile, and Grant himself would ride with General George Meade’s Army of the Potomac. Their goal was to bring the war back to Virginia and keep the pressure on General Lee and his Army of Northern Virginia. This Overland Campaign would be a war of attrition and would bring the war to new levels of horror but ultimately lead to Lee’s surrender at Appomattox.
On May 4th, 1864 the Army of the Potomac crossed the Rapidan River and engaged Lee’s army in an area called The Wilderness. Apparently the area today bears little resemblance to what it did at the time when new growth underbrush made movement difficult, artillery less effective and confusion the norm. Fierce fighting took place on the scattered farms in the area which allowed for some open space in which to maneuver, but most of the battle took place in the dense forest. On May 6th, the Union Army had taken the upper hand and Lee’s men were in grave danger of being overrun on the widow Tapp’s farm. In a scene from the movies, Longstreet’s reinforcements arrived at just the right moment and Lee was prepared to lead them into battle himself, but the Confederates wouldn’t allow it and moved him quickly to the rear. After two days of heavy fighting neither side had gained a decisive victory. Unlike his predecessors, Grant didn’t pull back but rather pushed forward, ordering a night march towards the town of Spotsylvania Court House. His plan was to get between Lee and the Confederate Capital at Richmond. Sensing this move, Lee ordered his men to move that night as well.
Lee arrived first and entrenched but the Union Army was not far behind. The battle opened with fighting on a low ridge called Laurel Hill. Meanwhile, the bulk of the Confederate army was digging in forming a bowed position called the Mule Shoe Salient. The Union Army soon arrived and began hammering the Confederate defenses. Some of the fiercest fighting of the war took place at a corner of the Confederate defenses we remember as The Bloody Angle. The battle would rage for almost two weeks with heavy casualties on both sides, but again no decisive victor.
If the battles of the Wilderness and Spotsylvania Court House were taken together, they would be the bloodiest battle of the war, bloodier even that what had happened at Gettysburg. The casualties from both sides numbered almost 60,000 dead, wounded, missing or captured. While the Union Army suffered a disproportionate amount of that total, their army was bigger and reinforcements could be brought in. This was part of Grant’s understanding and his plan to end the war. After the battle, he would not withdraw, but push his Army onward to fight again at the North Anna River, Cold Harbor and Petersburg as they edged ever closer to Richmond. I hope to be traveling to those battlefields in two weeks, but next week I will be looking at the last Confederate invasion of the North with trips to Monocacy in Maryland and Fort Stevens which is just a few miles from my house here in D.C. Follow the links below this post to see those stories.
On our trip through The Wilderness and Spotsylvania battlefields we were happy to once again enjoy the History That Doesn’t Suck podcast on these battles. We followed the driving tour laid out by the National Park Service as we went, and found the exhibit shelters particularly helpful and informative since the Visitor Centers remain closed. We finished our visit by following the route taken by Stonewall Jackson’s ambulance as it made its way to Fairfield Plantation from Chancellorsville where Jackson would die of pneumonia on May 10th, 1863.
The photos below come from a recent visit to Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Battlefield Park, which also includes the Battles of Chancelorsville and The Wilderness. Civil War Chronicles will trace the major battles of the Eastern Theater through photos and brief histories. Click on any photo to enlarge it. All photos are available for sale and licensing. For more information, check out the National Park Service’s Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania website HERE.