A Journal of the American Civil War: V6-4: The Battle of the Wilderness

By Theodore P. Savas

Balanced and in-depth military coverage (all theaters, North and South) in a non-partisan format with detailed notes, offering meaty, in-depth articles, original maps, photos, columns, book reviews, and indexes.

The Wilderness revisited – its place in the CW – Stevenson’s Division on Brock and Plank Roads – Avery and the 33rd North Carolina – Death and remembrance of Wadsworth – Brig. Gen. John Marshall Jones – Plashes and ambushes of the Irish in the Wilderness – Preserving the Wilderness

• Language: English
• Publisher: Savas Publishing
• Release date: Dec 31, 2021
• ISBN: 9781954547384

Book preview

Theodore P. Savas

The Wilderness Revisited

The momentous battles that opened the Overland Campaign have long escaped popular and scholarly scrutiny. A plethora of titles on Gettysburg and other earlier actions poured forth almost as soon as the guns fell silent. Yet, the initial clash between Ulysses S. Grant, the new Federal general-in-chief, and Robert E. Lee, commander of the Army of Northern Virginia—the two premier generals tossed up by the Civil War—elicited barely a yawn in the literature for more than a century. This glaring oversight is difficult to comprehend.

The first modern work to appear on the early summer battles of 1864 was Clifford Dowdey’s Lee’s Last Campaign: The Story of Lee and His Men Against Grant—1864 (1960). Although sweeping in scope and beautifully written, Dowdey’s work contains a decidedly Southern slant. Edward Steere’s weighty contribution to the Wilderness literature, The Wilderness Campaign, appeared later that same year. Steere’s splendid effort is more deeply researched and tactically detailed than Dowdey’s, but suffers somewhat from its emphasis on Federal operations. Robert G. Scott’s Into the Wilderness With the Army of the Potomac (1985) followed a generation later, a solid addition to the battle’s historiography but somewhat limited in scope. Noah Andre Trudeau hit the shelves in 1989 with Bloody Roads South: The Wilderness to Cold Harbor, May-June 1864, a generalized and popular treatment that succeeded in bringing attention to the important battles below the Rapidan River.

Finally, Gordon C. Rhea published The Battle of the Wilderness, May 5-6, 1864 (1994). His effort was immediately hailed as definitive, the standard work on the subject. Other historians have followed in the wake carved out by Rhea’s masterpiece, the most notable being Gary Gallagher and his usual crew of excellent writers, all of whom collaborated to produce a stellar collection of essays entitled The Wilderness Campaign (1997). Although a tidal wave of Civil War books continues to be published each year (and some of them are worth reading and owning), there is much fertile ground waiting to be tilled in central Virginia—especially as it relates to the initial clashes between Generals Grant and Lee. Hence, this issue of Civil War Regiments.

Gordon Rhea opens this collection of essays with an important overview entitled The Battle of the Wilderness and its Place in the Civil War. Gordon, the battle’s premier modern historian, examines carefully the armies, leaders, and timing of the fighting to support his thesis that the engagement was one of the most important of the war. In addition to the inaugural Grant-Lee clash, it was the first major battle to feature the extensive use of fieldworks and was well situated to play an important role in the upcoming 1864 presidential campaign. The bloody engagement also revealed to Lee that Grant was a commander who would not quit fighting. When the battle ended on May 6 and Grant marched his troops south in the direction of Spotsylvania the following night, leaving some 18,000 of his own men behind, it was indeed the beginning of the end for the South.

Whereas other Ninth Corps units have been criticized for their failures in the Wilderness, the commendable role of Thomas Stevenson’s men has been largely ignored throughout history. So writes Christopher Kolakowski in Thomas Stevenson’s Division on the Brock and Plank Roads, May 6, 1864. Chris’ effort effectively lifts whatever shroud of obscurity surrounded these Ninth Corps soldiers. Stevenson’s division fought hard and well in the Orange Plank Road sector on the battle’s second day, and one of Stevenson’s brigades under Colonel Daniel Leasure rendered conspicuous service south of the Plank Road in a daring and little-known reconnaissance-attack.

Like Kolakowski, W. Keith Alexander focused his pen on a lesser-known soldier. Keith’s subject, Colonel Clark Moulton Avery and the 33rd North Carolina Infantry, May 5-6, 1864, details the exploits of a Southern officer saddled with a burning desire to earn a brigadier’s star, a wish that would go forever unfulfilled. Avery’s tenacious leadership and the regiment’s willingness to follow him were vividly demonstrated in the conflagration below the Rapidan River, explains Alexander. Their efforts and blood on the morning of May 6, 1864, bought Lee and the crumbling right flank of his army precious time for Confederate reinforcements to arrive and stabilize the desperate situation.

The Death, Retrieval, and Remembrance of Brigadier General James S. Wadsworth in the Battle of the Wilderness, by Eric C. Mink, relates in fascinating detail how one of the richest and most politically-connected men in the nation ended up on the smoky floor of the Wilderness with his brains oozing into Virginia’s soil. For James Wadsworth, the cause for which he fought was worth dying for, Mink explains. His impetuous actions and previous narrow escapes indeed indicate that the New Yorker was willing to face such a fate.

John M. Jones traveled a different road into the Wilderness, but the Confederate general’s ultimate fate was strikingly similar to James Wadsworth’s. The Battles of Brigadier General John Marshall Jones, by Melissa Delcour, sheds considerable light on the officer’s rather peculiar Civil War career and affinity for liquid spirits. Jones’ delayed promotion to brigadier general was conditional, but the Virginian proved himself worthy of General Lee’s trust.

Kelly J. O’Grady offers a unique take on the battle with Plashes and Ambushes: Irish Antecedents and the Fighting in the Wilderness. In the Wilderness, explains O’Grady, the Rebel army girded itself along Grant’s narrow path and sought another opportunity to launch a decisive campaign-ending blow. As the fight ensued though, Lee’s attacks and counterattacks were often small in scale, ambushes rather than sweeping movements, raids rather than stand up fights. This method of attack is as old as warfare itself In fact, Kelly writes, the Irish had waged war in a strikingly similar manner (and with similar results) against English invaders in the sixteenth century. Plashes, he explains, are hedge row barriers used to advantage to tactically ambush the enemy. In the Overland Campaign’s first encounter at the Battle of the Wilderness, the plash and ambush of the Irish and the South would once again yield to an English-style conquest executed ruthlessly by the Union legions of the American Civil War.

Mike Stevens’ preservation essay, In Great Deeds, Something Abides: Preserving the Wilderness, rounds out this compendium. Stevens, the treasurer of the Central Virginia Battlefields Trust (CVBT), writes persuasively that unless all of us raise our collective voices and fight to hold onto the hallowed land that still exists, we will lose it forever. Please read this article twice before you close this book, and then take up your pen, raise your voice—and be heard.

OUTSTANDING NEW

BOOKS FOR SPRING 2000!

April 2000

Breaking the Backbone of the Rebellion: The Final Battles of the Petersburg Campaign

A. Wilson Greene

The first full-length study of the final assaults against Lee’s lines below Petersburg and the dramatic fall of that city and Richmond. This detailed and outstanding battle history is jammed with photos. Maps by George Skoch, Foreword by Richard Sommers. Greene is the director of Pamplin Park Historic Site, the scene of the subject of much of this book. ISBN: 1-882810-48-1. 576pp. Cloth. $34.95

May 2000

The Civil War in Kentucky: Battle in the Bluegrass State

Kent Masterson Brown

The best book on the Kentucky war, written by leading scholars in the field. Authors include John Y. Simon, Charles Roland, Lowell Harrison, Wiley Sword, James Ramage, Kent M. Brown, and others. Topics include battles of Munfordville, Mill Springs, Perryville, Richnond, Morgan’s Raid, Pat Cleburne, the Orphan Brigade, Confederate defense of Kentucky, and more. ISBN 1-882810-47-3.360pp., maps, photos. Cloth. $29.95

June 2000

Lost for the Cause: The Confederate Army in 1864

Steven H. Newton

An original and rigorously researched study on the numbers and units available to the Confederacy in the pivotal year of 1864. Newton has discovered that the South had large numbers of men available it did not know it had in scores of misplaced units, which resulted in squandered opportunities. His conclusions rewrite the history of the war’s most decisive year. ISBN: 1-882810-49-X. 336pp. Cloth. $29.95

Savas Publishing Company

202 First Street SE, Suite 103A, Mason City, IA 50401; 515-421-7135 (phone); 515-421-

8370 (fax); cwbooks@mach3wwcom (e-mail); www.savaspublishing.com (website)

Gordon C. Rhea

The Battle of the Wilderness

and Its Place in the Civil War

Spring of 1864 opened a critical year. In the Western Theater, Union armies had won decisive victories, capturing Tennessee and cleaving off the western portion of the Confederacy by gaining control of the Mississippi River. The architect of these accomplishments was Ulysses S. Grant, hero of Fort Donelson, Shiloh, Vicksburg, and Chattanooga. The picture in the Eastern Theater was not so encouraging for the Union. Robert E. Lee and his Army of Northern Virginia boasted a string of nearly unbroken victories in the Old Dominion. Lee, it is true, had been repulsed at Gettysburg in July, 1863, but Federal commanders had failed to exploit their advantage, and the wily Confederate had slipped away. Now he occupied imposing earthworks in central Virginia along the Rapidan River’s southern bank, unbowed and undefeated. It seemed to a frustrated North that three years of warfare had yielded no discernible gains in the Army of Northern Virginia’s preserve.

What made 1864 important was politics. President Abraham Lincoln faced reelection in November. The rebellion was three years old and showing few signs of ending. Delay worked to the Confederacy’s advantage as the North tired of war. Draft riots in New York were but one manifestation of the Northern public’s mounting impatience. If Lincoln failed to secure military victories, a war-weary North might elect a candidate committed to peace, even if peace meant letting the wayward South go its separate way. The New York Herald astutely observed that Lincoln’s political fortunes, not less than the great cause of the country, are in the hands of General Grant, and the failure of the General will be the overthrow of the President.¹

Southern leaders keenly appreciated Lincoln’s dilemma. The North’s overwhelming preponderance in men and material ruled out the possibility that the South would prevail by force of arms. Conceding to our enemies the superiority claimed by them in numbers, resources, and all the means and appliances for carrying on the war, we have no right to look for exemptions from the vigorous use of these advantages, Lee warned after Gettysburg. But 1864 offered the South an excellent chance to win politically. The trick was to nullify the North’s superior capacity to wage war by undermining the Northern populace’s will to continue the contest. The most effectual mode for achieving Southern independence, Lee urged, was to give all the encouragement we can, consistent with truth, to the rising peace party of the North. The South’s tact was to stalemate Union armies and to win victories on the battlefield. Lieutenant General James Longstreet, commanding the Army of Northern Virginia’s First Corps, bluntly articulated the Confederacy’s war aim. If we can break up the enemy’s arrangements early, and throw him back, he will not be able to recover his position nor his morale until the Presidential election is over, and we shall then have a new President to treat with, he predicted. Longstreet’s recipe for victory was straightforward. Do let us exert ourselves to the utmost of our resources to finish the war this year. Every bullet we can send is the best ballot that can be deposited against [Lincoln’s] election, a Georgia editor reminded his readers. The battle-fields of 1864 will hold the polls of this momentous decision.²

The Easter Theater figured prominently in political calculations. If the Confederacy stood a chance of winning victories, it was there. Cognizant of the stakes involved, President Lincoln summoned Grant to Washington in March, 1864, to assume command of the Union war effort and to stiffen the spines of the Eastern generals. Grant devised a plan that capitalized on the North’s advantage in men and supplies. Forces East and West were to attack in concert, denying the rebels opportunity to exploit their interior lines of communication. Grant’s objective was the destruction of Confederate armies. Once engaged, Union forces were to fight every day, without quarter, until they had battered the rebels into submission.

The day after receiving his lieutenant general’s commission, Grant journeyed to Culpeper Court House to meet Meade. Six years Grant’s senior, the Potomac Army’s commander was notorious for his explosive temper. The temperamental Pennsylvanian offered to step aside so that Grant could appoint someone of his own choosing, but Grant asked the older man to stay. He needed someone who could manage the Army of the Potomac, and by Grant’s estimation, Meade was the best choice. Meade’s drawback was his deliberate style and his hesitancy to initiate offensive operations. Grant, who contemplated a blistering campaign of maneuver and attack, decided to counterbalance Meade’s caution by making his headquarters with Meade’s army. The arrangement also insulated Grant from Washington and its intrigues.

Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant

Generals in Blue

Grant firmed his national strategy as spring unfolded. His friend Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman was to command the major Union force in the West, breaking up the Confederate Army of Tennessee under Gen. Joseph E. Johnston, then getting into the interior of the enemy’s country as far as you can, inflicting all the damage you can against their war resources. After winding up a campaign in Louisiana, Maj. Gen. Nathaniel Banks’ Army of the Gulf was to capture Mobile, then swing north to reinforce Sherman.³

In Virginia, Grant aimed to employ the doctrine of concentration that underpinned his national scheme. Converging armies were to focus irresistible force against the Army of Northern Virginia. Meade and his Army of the Potomac, swelled to 118,000 soldiers by the addition of Maj. Gen. Ambrose E. Burnside’s Ninth Corps, was to cross the Rapidan River and immediately come to grips with the rebels. Lee’s army will be your objective point, Grant directed Meade in words that left no room for misinterpretation. Wherever he goes, there will you go also. At the same time, Maj. Gen. Benjamin F. Butler was to take the Army of the James, nearly 40,000 soldiers strong, from Fortress Monroe and swoop into Richmond from the rear, capturing the Confederate capital if possible, and otherwise swinging around the city to cooperate with Meade against Lee. Simultaneously, two Union forces—the major one under Maj. Gen. Franz Sigel numbering 15,000 troops, and a secondary contingent under Brig. Gen. George Crook—were to march into the Shenandoah Valley from two directions, cutting the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad, closing the fertile valley to Lee’s commissary, and denying the Confederate armies a favorite invasion route, all the while menacing Lee’s left flank.⁴

The scheme looked good on paper, but time would disclose weaknesses. Sigel and Butler owed their positions to political clout and only superficially grasped military affairs. Whether they could sustain their end of the joint operation was anyone’s guess. The Army of the Potomac’s imposing numbers concealed serious flaws. Raw recruits, sprinkled liberally with substitutes, bounty jumpers, thieves, and rouges, bloated Meade’s ranks. The practice of placing new men into new regiments served to magnify their inexperience. Grant estimated that for every five men enlisted, we don’t get more than one effective soldier. In addition, the Union army’s veterans had volunteered for three years. Their terms of service were due to expire, which understandably dulled their appetite for combat.⁵

The command structure of Grant’s expeditionary force also left much to be desired. Grant intended to supervise the general conduct of the war and leave local commanders like Meade to develop their own tactics. But Meade and Grant had very different military temperaments, and how long Grant would tolerate Meade’s deliberate manner was an open question. The addition of Burnside’s Ninth Corps to Meade’s army magnified the problem. Portly Burnside, boldly festooned with side-whiskers, had led the Army of the Potomac during its failed offensives around Fredericksburg in the bitter winter of 1862-1863, and his commission as major general preceded Meade’s. Grant’s solution to this knotty issue of protocol was to let Burnside manage his corps as an independent command, with Grant serving as middleman, an unwieldy arrangement at best. Add to these factors the elusive but important variable of morale—the Potomac Army had a tradition of defeat at the hands of Lee, particularly when fighting in Virginia—and Grant’s success was by no means assured.

The Army of Northern Virginia had every reason to expect victories. By the end of April, Lee had amassed 65,000 soldiers, almost as many as he had taken to Pennsylvania and considerably more than he had wielded to impressive effect at Antietam and Chancellorsville. Morale was high among Lee’s combat-wise veterans. We have more men here now than we have ever had before, and they are all in high spirits, a soldier announced, slightly exaggerating the numbers but not the optimistic frame of mind. I don’t have any fears but what we will give the Yanks the worst whipping they have got if they do attempt to take Richmond. The fact that Grant would be leading the opposing army concerned Lee’s men not a whit. Already they had defeated a succession of Union commanders, and they saw no reason to expect anything different from Lincoln’s latest appointment. U.S. Grant, they quipped, stood for Up the Spout Grant.⁶

Renown for aggressiveness and daring, Lee seemed just the man to thwart Grant’s operations and to persuade the Northern electorate that the war had become too costly to prolong. But much as Lee yearned to take the initiative, shortages in food and fodder—along with the possibility that portions of his army might be needed to relieve other threatened fronts—forced him to curb his combative instincts. Bowing to the necessity of a defensive campaign, he urged the Confederacy’s President Jefferson Davis to concentrate his forces wherever they are going to attack us. By mid-April, Grant’s burgeoning army on the Rapidan’s far bank had convinced Lee that the blow was about to fall in his quarter, and he stepped up his petitions for reinforcements.⁷

Competing demands in other sectors limited Davis’ ability to honor Lee’s request for soldiers. Butler’s army at Fortress Monroe, on the James River, required the president to hold troops near Richmond to protect the Confederate capital. Confederate forces in the Shenandoah Valley were tied up opposing Sigel and Crook. Tension between Lee’s need for troops and demands from other theaters was a central theme in the unfolding campaign. Lacking any realistic expectation of reinforcements, Lee formulated a defensive strategy. He would hold a line near the Rapidan and watch for opportunities to assault the Union army when it moved. At all costs, he would avoid retreating to Richmond. If backed against the Confederate capital, he would forfeit his ability to maneuver, and the war would become a siege that the North must necessarily win. If I am forced to retire from this line, he warned Davis, either by a flank movement of the enemy or the want of supplies, great injury will befall us.⁸

Gen. Robert E. Lee

William A. Turner Collection

The stage was thus set for the war’s decisive campaign. If Lee added new victories to his unbroken string of triumphs in Virginia, Lincoln’s presidency might falter, and with it the Union war effort. In this high stakes confrontation, Grant faced a heavy burden. Avoiding defeat was not enough. He had to win. The result was a campaign such as the nation had never experienced.

Adhering to his promise to let army commanders devise their own tactics, Grant left Meade to prepare a plan of attack. Assaulting Lee’s earthworks head-on was manifestly a bad idea. Consideration was given to swinging around Lee’s upriver flank, but that thought was rejected as well, as it afforded the Union army no ready means of supply and left Lee between Meade and Butler. Moving down river, or east, of the Confederates made better sense from several perspectives. The Federal force could draw supplies from rivers that fed in from Chesapeake Bay, which would satisfy its voracious appetite as it moved south, and Meade could maintain communication with Butler. All things considered, a dash around Lee’s right flank seemed appropriate, and Grant endorsed the plan.

Meade assigned his talented chief-of-staff, Maj. Gen. Andrew A. Humphreys, to iron out the details. A Pennsylvanian like his boss and just as ill-tempered, Humphreys devised a commendable program. The Union army would break camp under cover of night and make for the down-river fords in two columns. Major General Gouverneur K. Warren’s Fifth Corps would lead across Germanna Ford, followed by the Sixth Corps under Maj. Gen. John Sedgwick. Another column consisting of Maj. Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock’s Second Corps would cross a few miles east at Ely’s Ford. The two columns would advance below the Rapidan, then swing west toward Lee. The turning movement, Humphreys predicted, would compel Lee to abandon his entrenched line. He must either come out and fight, or retreat. Warren and Sedgwick were to push west along Orange Turnpike and Orange Plank Road, paralleling the river, and engage the Confederates. Hancock would meanwhile press through the crossroads settlement of Chancellorsville and slice below Lee along Catharpin Road to administer the killing blow.

Terrain was Humphreys’ chief obstacle. Immediately below the Rapidan, his chosen routes plunged into tangled woodland called the Wilderness of Spotsylvania. The country had been cleared in colonial times for charcoal to feed a local smelting industry. By 1864, it was a wasteland of second growth. Roads were few, and clearings scarce. A more difficult place to fight was unimaginable. Infantry had no place to form, artillery had no clear fields of fire, and cavalry was useless. Simply put the Wilderness was the last place where the Federals wanted to encounter Lee.

The previous November, Meade had crossed the Rapidan intending to attack Lee at Mine Run, west of the Wilderness. The Confederates had thwarted Meade’s offensive, but the operation had persuaded Humphreys that the Army of the Potomac could traverse the Wilderness before Lee could respond. Meade’s innate caution threw a monkey-wrench into Humphreys’ program. The army commander did not want his infantry to outpace his wagons. If the Potomac Army moved too quickly, he feared that Lee might capture its wagons and sever its supply line. Approving Humphreys’ program in principal, Meade insisted on a momentous change. Once across the river, the Potomac Army must halt and wait for its wagons to catch up. Humphreys endorsed the delay. Lee, he predicted, would not be able to reach the Wilderness until well into the next day, which meant that the Army of the Potomac could safely overnight in the forest. That assessment, Hancock’s aide Francis A. Walker later admitted, was the first misfortune of the campaign.⁹

On May 2, Lee met with his subordinate commanders at a signal station atop Clark’s Mountain. Grant’s camps were clearly visible across