The Civil War Through the Camera :: THE BATTLE IN THE WILDERNESS

THE BATTLE IN THE WILDERNESS

The volunteers who composed the armies of the Potomac and Northern Virginia were real soldiers now, inured to war, and desperate in their determination to do its work without faltering or failure. This fact—this change in the temper and morale of the men on either side—had greatly simplified the tasks set for Grant and Lee to solve. They knew their men. They knew that those men would stand against anything, endure slaughter without flinching, hardship without complaining, and make desperate endeavor without shrinking. The two armies had become what they had not been earlier in the contest, perfect instruments of war, that could be relied upon as confidently as the machinist relies upon his engine scheduled to make so many revolutions per minute at a given rate of horse-power, and with the precision of science itself.—George Cary Eggleston, in “The History of the Confederate War.”

After the battle of Gettysburg, Lee started for the Potomac, which he crossed with some difficulty, but with little interruption from the Federals, above Harper’s Ferry, on July 14, 1863. The thwarted invader of Pennsylvania wished to get to the plains of Virginia as quickly as possible, but the Shenandoah was found to be impassable. Meade, in the mean time, had crossed the Potomac east of the Blue Ridge and seized the principal outlets from the lower part of the Valley. Lee, therefore, was compelled to continue his retreat up the Shenandoah until Longstreet, sent in advance with part of his command, had so blocked the Federal pursuit that most of the Confederate army was able to emerge through Chester Gap and move to Culpeper Court House. Ewell marched through Thornton’s Gap and by the 4th of August practically the whole Army of Northern Virginia was south of the Rapidan, prepared to dispute the crossing of that river. But Meade, continuing his flank pursuit, halted at Culpeper Court House, deeming it imprudent to attempt the Rapidan in the face of the strongly entrenched Confederates. In the entire movement there had been no fighting except a few cavalry skirmishes and no serious loss on either side.

On the 9th of September, Lee sent Longstreet and his corps to assist Bragg in the great conflict that was seen to be inevitable around Chattanooga. In spite of reduced strength, Lee proceeded to assume a threatening attitude toward Meade, and in October and early November there were several small but severe engagements as the Confederate leader attempted to turn Meade’s flank and force him back to the old line of Bull Run. On the 7th of November, Sedgwick made a brilliant capture of the redoubts on the Rappahannock, and Lee returned once more to his old position on the south side of the Rapidan. This lay between Barnett’s Ford, near Orange Court House (Lee’s headquarters), and Morton’s Ford, twenty miles below. Its right was also protected by entrenchments along the course of Mine Run. Against these, in the last days of November, Meade sent French, Sedgwick, and Warren. It was found impossible to carry the Confederate position, and on December 1st the Federal troops were ordered to recross the Rapidan. In this short campaign the Union lost sixteen hundred men and the Confederacy half that number. With the exception of an unsuccessful cavalry raid against Richmond, in February, nothing disturbed the existence of the two armies until the coming of Grant.

In the early months of 1864, the Army of the Potomac lay between the Rapidan and the Rappahannock, most of it in the vicinity of Culpeper Court House, although some of the troops were guarding the railroad to Washington as far as Bristoe Station, close to Manassas Junction. On the south side of the Rapidan, the Army of Northern Virginia was, as has been seen, securely entrenched. The Confederates’ ranks were thin and their supplies were scarce; but the valiant spirit which had characterized the Southern hosts in former battles still burned fiercely within their breasts, presaging many desperate battles before the heel of the invader should tread upon their cherished capital, Richmond, and their loved cause, the Confederacy.

Within the camp religious services had been held for weeks in succession, resulting in the conversion of large numbers of the soldiers. General Lee was a religious man. The influence of the awakening among the men in the army during this revival was manifest after the war was over, when the soldiers had gone back to civil life, under conditions most trying and severe. To this spiritual frame of mind may be credited, perhaps, some of the remarkable feats accomplished in subsequent battles by the Confederate army.

On February 29, 1864, the United States Congress passed law reviving the grade of lieutenant-general, the title being intended for Grant, who was made general-in-chief of the armies of the United States. Grant had come from his victorious battle-grounds in the West, and all eyes turned to him as the chieftain who should lead the Union army to success. On the 9th of March he received his commission. He now planned the final great double movement of the war. Taking control of the whole campaign against Lee, but leaving the Army of the Potomac under Meade’s direct command, he chose the strongest of his corps commanders, W. T. Sherman, for the head of affairs in the West. Grant’s immediate objects were to defeat Lee’s army and to capture Richmond, the latter to be accomplished by General Butler and the Army of the James; Sherman’s object was to crush Johnston, to seize that important railroad center, Atlanta, Georgia, and, with Banks’ assistance, to open a way between the Atlantic coast and Mobile, on the Gulf, thus dividing the Confederacy north and south, as the conquest of the Mississippi had parted it east and west. It was believed that if either or both of these campaigns were successful, the downfall of the Confederacy would be assured.On a recommendation of General Meade’s, the Army of the Potomac was reorganized into three corps instead of the previous five. The Second, Fifth, and Sixth corps were retained, absorbing the First and Third.

Hancock was in command of the Second; Warren, the Fifth; and Sedgwick, the Sixth. Sheridan was at the head of the cavalry. The Ninth Corps acted as a separate army under Burnside, and was now protecting the Orange and Alexandria Railroad. As soon as Meade had crossed the Rapidan, Burnside was ordered to move promptly, and he reached the battlefield of the Wilderness on the morning of May 6th. On May 24th his corps was assigned to the Army of the Potomac. The Union forces, including the Ninth Corps, numbered about one hundred and eighteen thousand men.

The Army of Northern Virginia consisted of three corps of infantry, the First under Longstreet, the Second under Ewell, and the Third under A. P. Hill, and a cavalry corps commanded by Stuart. A notable fact in the organization of the Confederate army was the few changes made in commanders. The total forces under Lee were about sixty-two thousand.

After assuming command, Grant established his headquarters at Culpeper Court House, whence he visited Washington once a week to consult with President Lincoln and the Secretary of War. He was given full authority, however, as to men and movements, and worked out a plan of campaign which resulted in a series of battles in Virginia unparalleled in history. The first of these was precipitated in a dense forest, a wilderness, from which the battle takes its name.

Grant decided on a general advance of the Army of the Potomac upon Lee, and early on the morning of May 4th the movement began by crossing the Rapidan at several fords below Lee’s entrenched position, and moving by his right flank. The crossing was effected successfully, the line of march taking part of the Federal troops over a scene of defeat in the previous spring. One year before, the magnificent Army of the Potomac, just from a long winter’s rest in the encampment at Falmouth on the north bank of the Rappahannock, had met the legions of the South in deadly combat on the battlefield of Chancellorsville. And now Grant was leading the same army, whose ranks had been freshened by new recruits from the North, through the same field of war.

By eight o’clock on the morning of the 4th the various rumors as to the Federal army’s crossing the Rapidan received by Lee were fully confirmed, and at once he prepared to set his own army in motion for the Wilderness, and to throw himself across the path of his foe. Two days before he had gathered his corps and division commanders around him at the signal station on Clark’s Mountain, a considerable eminence south of the Rapidan, near Robertson’s Ford. Here he expressed the opinion that Grant would cross at the lower fords, as he did, but nevertheless Longstreet was kept at Gordonsville in case the Federals should move by the Confederate left.

The day was oppressively hot, and the troops suffered greatly from thirst as they plodded along the forest aisles through the jungle-like region. The Wilderness was a maze of trees, underbrush, and ragged foliage. Low-limbed pines, scrub-oaks, hazels, and chinkapins interlaced their branches on the sides of rough country roads that lead through this labyrinth of desolation. The weary troops looked upon the heavy tangles of fallen timber and dense undergrowth with a sense of isolation. Only the sounds of the birds in the trees, the rustling of the leaves, and the passing of the army relieved the heavy pall of solitude that bore upon the senses of the Federal host.

The forces of the Northern army advanced into the vast no-man’s land by the roads leading from the fords. In the afternoon, Hancock was resting at Chancellorsville, while Warren posted his corps near the Wilderness Tavern, in which General Grant established his headquarters. Sedgwick’s corps had followed in the track of Warren’s veterans, but was ordered to halt near the river crossing, or a little south of it. The cavalry, as much as was not covering the rear wagon trains, was stationed near Chancellorsville and the Wilderness Tavern. That night the men from the North lay in bivouac with little fear of being attacked in this wilderness of waste, where military maneuvers would be very difficult.

Two roads—the old Orange turnpike and the Orange plank road—enter the Wilderness from the southwest. Along these the Confederates moved from their entrenched position to oppose the advancing hosts of the North. Ewell took the old turnpike and Hill the plank road. Longstreet was hastening from Gordonsville. The troops of Longstreet, on the one side, and of Burnside, on the other, arrived on the field after exhausting forced marches.

The locality in which the Federal army found itself on the 5th of May was not one that any commander would choose for a battle-ground. Lee was more familiar with its terrible features than was his opponent, but this gave him little or no advantage. Grant, having decided to move by the Confederate right flank, could only hope to pass through the desolate region and reach more open country before the inevitable clash would come. But this was not to be. General Humphreys, who was Meade’s chief of staff, says in his “Virginia Campaign of 1864 and 1865”: “So far as I know, no great battle ever took place before on such ground. But little of the combatants could be seen, and its progress was known to the senses chiefly by the rising and falling sounds of a vast musketry fire that continually swept along the lines of battle, many miles in length, sounds which at times approached to the sublime.”

As Ewell, moving along the old turnpike on the morning of May 5th, came near the Germanna Ford road, Warren’s corps was marching down the latter on its way to Parker’s store, the destination assigned it by the orders of the day. This meeting precipitated the battle of the Wilderness.Meade learned the position of Ewell’s advance division and ordered an attack. The Confederates were driven back a mile or two, but, re-forming and reËnforced, the tide of battle was turned the other way. Sedgwick’s marching orders were sending him to the Wilderness Tavern on the turnpike. He was on his way when the battle began, and he now turned to the right from the Germanna Ford road and formed several of his divisions on Warren’s right. The presence of Hill on the plank road became known to Meade and Grant, about eight in the morning. Hancock, at Chancellorsville, was too far away to check him, so Getty’s division of Sedgwick’s corps, on its way to the right, was sent over the Brock road to its junction with the plank road for the purpose of driving Hill back, if possible, beyond Parker’s store.

Warren and Sedgwick began to entrench themselves when they realized that Ewell had effectively blocked their progress. Getty, at the junction of the Brock and the Orange plank roads, was likewise throwing up breastworks as fast as he could. Hancock, coming down the Brock road from Chancellorsville, reached him at two in the afternoon and found two of A. P. Hill’s divisions in front. After waiting to finish his breastworks, Getty, a little after four o’clock, started, with Hancock supporting him, to carry out his orders to drive Hill back. Hancock says: “The fighting became very fierce at once. The lines of battle were exceedingly close, the musketry continuous and deadly along the entire line.... The battle raged with great severity and obstinacy until about 8 P.M. without decided advantage to either party.” Here, on the Federal left, and in this desperate engagement, General Alexander Hays, one of Hancock’s brigade commanders, was shot through the head and killed.

The afternoon had worn away with heavy skirmishing on the right. About five o’clock Meade made another attempt on Ewell’s forces. Both lines were well entrenched, but the Confederate artillery enfiladed the Federal positions. It was after dark when General Seymour of Sedgwick’s corps finally withdrew his brigade, with heavy loss in killed and wounded.

When the battle roar had ceased, the rank and file of the Confederate soldiers learned with sorrow of the death of one of the most dashing brigade leaders in Ewell’s corps, General John M. Jones. This fighting was the preliminary struggle for position in the formation of the battle-lines of the two armies, to secure the final hold for the death grapple. The contestants were without advantage on either side when the sanguinary day’s work was finished.

Both armies had constructed breastworks and were entrenched very close to each other, front to front, gathered and poised for a deadly spring. Early on the morning of May 6th Hancock was reËnforced by Burnside, and Hill by Longstreet.

Grant issued orders, through Meade, for a general attack by Sedgwick, Warren, and Hancock along the entire line, at five o’clock on the morning of the 6th. Fifteen minutes before five the Confederates opened fire on Sedgwick’s right, and soon the battle was raging along the whole five-mile front. It became a hand-to-hand contest. The Federals advanced with great difficulty. The combatants came upon each other but a few paces apart. Soldiers on one side became hopelessly mixed with those of the other.

Artillery played but little part in the battle of the Wilderness. The cavalry of the two armies had one indecisive engagement on the 5th. The next day both Custer and Gregg repulsed Hampton and Fitzhugh Lee in two separate encounters, but Sheridan was unable to follow up the advantage. He had been entrusted with the care of the wagon trains and dared not take his cavalry too far from them. The battle was chiefly one of musketry. Volley upon volley was poured out unceasingly; screaming bullets mingled with terrific yells in the dense woods. The noise became deafening, and the wounded and dying lying on the ground among the trees made a scene of indescribable horror. Living men rushed in to take the places of those who had fallen. The missiles cut branches from the trees, and saplings were mowed down as grass in a meadow is cut by a scythe. Bloody remnants of uniforms, blue and gray, hung as weird and uncanny decorations from remaining branches.

The story of the Federal right during the morning is easily told. Persistently and often as he tried, Warren could make no impression on the strongly entrenched Ewell—nor could Sedgwick, who was trying equally hard with Wright’s division of his corps. But with Hancock on the left, in his entrenchments on the Brock road, it was different. The gallant and heroic charges here have elicited praise and admiration from friend and foe alike. At first, Hill was forced back in disorder, and driven in confusion a mile and a half from his line. The Confederates seemed on the verge of panic and rout. From the rear of the troops in gray came the beloved leader of the Southern host, General Lee. He was astride his favorite battle-horse, and his face was set in lines of determination. Though the crisis of the battle for the Confederates had arrived, Lee’s voice was calm and soft as he commanded, “Follow me,” and then urged his charger toward the bristling front of the Federal lines. The Confederate ranks were electrified by the brave example of their commander. A ragged veteran who had followed Lee through many campaigns, leaped forward and caught the bridle-rein of the horse. “We won’t go on until you go back,” cried the devoted warrior. Instantly the Confederate ranks resounded with the cry, “Lee to the rear! Lee to the rear!” and the great general went back to safety while his soldiers again took up the gage of battle and plunged into the smoke and death-laden storm. But Lee, by his personal presence, and the arrival of Longstreet, had restored order and courage in the ranks, and their original position was soon regained.

The pursuit of the Confederates through the dense forest had caused confusion and disorganization in Hancock’s corps. That cohesion and strength in a battle-line of soldiers, where the men can “feel the touch,” shoulder to shoulder, was wanting, and the usual form and regular alignment was broken. It was two hours before the lines were re-formed. That short time had been well utilized by the Confederates. Gregg’s eight hundred Texans made a desperate charge through the thicket of the pine against Webb’s brigade of Hancock’s corps, cutting through the growth, and wildly shouting amid the crash and roar of the battle. Half of their number were left on the field, but the blow had effectually checked the Federal advance.

While the battle was raging Grant’s general demeanor was imperturbable. He remained with Meade nearly the whole day at headquarters at the Lacy house. He sat upon a stump most of the time, or at the foot of a tree, leaning against its trunk, whittling sticks with his pocket-knife and smoking big black cigars—twenty during the day. He received reports of the progress of the battle and gave orders without the least evidence of excitement or emotion. “His orders,” said one of his staff, “were given with a spur,” implying instant action. On one occasion, when an officer, in great excitement, brought him the report of Hancock’s misfortune and expressed apprehension as to Lee’s purpose, Grant exclaimed with some warmth: “Oh, I am heartily tired of hearing what Lee is going to do. Go back to your command and try to think what we are going to do ourselves.”

Several brigades of Longstreet’s troops, though weary from their forced march, were sent on a flanking movement against Hancock’s left, which demoralized Mott’s division and caused it to fall back three-quarters of a mile. Longstreet now advanced with the rest of his corps. The dashing leader, while riding with Generals Kershaw and Jenkins at the head of Jenkins’ brigade on the right of the Southern battle array, was screened by the tangled thickets from the view of his own troops, flushed with the success of brilliant flank movement. Suddenly the passing column was seen indistinctly through an opening and a volley burst forth and struck the officers. When the smoke lifted Longstreet and Jenkins were down—the former seriously wounded, and the latter killed outright. As at Chancellorsville a year before and on the same battle-ground, a great captain of the Confederacy was shot down by his own men, and by accident, at the crisis of a battle. Jackson lingered several days after Chancellorsville, while Longstreet recovered and lived to fight for the Confederacy till the surrender at Appomattox. General Wadsworth, of Hancock’s corps, was mortally wounded during the day, while making a daring assault on the Confederate works, at the head of his men.

During the afternoon, the Confederate attack upon Hancock’s and Burnside’s forces, which constituted nearly half the entire army, was so severe that the Federal lines began to give way. The combatants swayed back and forth; the Confederates seized the Federal breastworks repeatedly, only to be repulsed again and again. Once, the Southern colors were placed on the Union battlements. A fire in the forest, which had been burning for hours, and in which, it is estimated, about two hundred of the Federal wounded perished, was communicated to the timber entrenchments, the heat and smoke driving into the faces of the men on the Union side, and compelling them in some places to abandon the works. Hancock made a gallant and heroic effort to re-form his lines and push the attack, and, as he rode along the lines, his inspiring presence elicited cheer upon cheer from the men, but the troops had exhausted their ammunition, the wagons were in the rear, and as night was approaching, further attack was abandoned. The contest ended on the lines where it began.

Later in the evening consternation swept the Federal camp when heavy firing was heard in the direction of Sedgwick’s corps, on the right. The report was current that the entire Sixth Corps had been attacked and broken. What had happened was a surprise attack by the Confederates, commanded by General John B. Gordon, on Sedgwick’s right flank, Generals Seymour and Shaler with six hundred men being captured. When a message was received from Sedgwick that the Sixth Corps was safe in an entirely new line, there was great rejoicing in the Union camp.

Thus ended the two days’ fighting of the battle of the Wilderness, one of the greatest struggles in history. It was Grant’s first experience in the East, and his trial measure of arms with his great antagonist, General Lee. The latter returned to his entrenchments and the Federals remained in their position. The first clash had been undecisive. While Grant had been defeated in his plan to pass around Lee, yet he had made a new record for the Army of the Potomac, and he was not turned from his purpose of putting himself between the Army of Northern Virginia and the capital of the Confederacy. During the two days’ engagement, there were ten hours of actual fighting, with a loss in killed and wounded of about seventeen thousand Union and nearly twelve thousand Confederates, nearly three thousand men sacrificed each hour. It is the belief of some military writers that Lee deliberately chose the Wilderness as a battle-ground, as it would effectually conceal great inferiority of force, but if this be so he seems to have come to share the unanimous opinions of the generals of both sides that its difficulties were unsurmountable, and within his entrenchments he awaited further attack. It did not come.

The next night, May 7th, Grant’s march by the Confederate right flank was resumed, but only to be blocked again by the dogged determination of the tenacious antagonist, a few miles beyond, at Spotsylvania. Lee again anticipated Grant’s move. It is not strange that the minds of these two men moved along the same lines in military strategy, when we remember they were both military experts of the highest order, and were now working out the same problem. The results obtained by each are told in the story of the battle of Spotsylvania.

LEE’S MEN

The faces of the veterans in this photograph of 1864 reflect more forcibly than volumes of historical essays, the privations and the courage of the ragged veterans in gray who faced Grant, with Lee as their leader. They did not know that their struggle had already become unavailing; that no amount of perseverance and devotion could make headway against the resources, determination, and discipline of the Northern armies, now that they had become concentrated and wielded by a master of men like Grant. But Grant was as yet little more than a name to the armies of the East. His successes had been won on Western fields—Donelson, Vicksburg, Chattanooga. It was not yet known that the Army of the Potomac under the new general-in-chief was to prove irresistible. So these faces reflect perfect confidence.

CONFEDERATE SOLDIERS IN VIRGINIA, 1864

Though prisoners when this picture was taken—a remnant of Grant’s heavy captures during May and June, when he sent some ten thousand Confederates to Coxey’s Landing, Virginia, as a result of his first stroke against Lee—though their arms have been taken from them, though their uniforms are anything but “uniform,” their hats partly the regulation felt of the Army of Northern Virginia, partly captured Federal caps, and partly nondescript—yet these ragged veterans stand and sit with the dignity of accomplishment. To them, “Marse Robert” is still the general unconquerable, under whom inferior numbers again and again have held their own, and more; the brilliant leader under whom every man gladly rushes to any assault, however impossible it seems, knowing that every order will be made to count.

THE COMING OF THE STRANGER GRANT

Hither, to Meade’s headquarters at Brandy Station, came Grant on March 10, 1864. The day before, in Washington, President Lincoln handed him his commission, appointing him Lieutenant-General in command of all the Federal forces. His visit to Washington convinced him of the wisdom of remaining in the East to direct affairs, and his first interview with Meade decided him to retain that efficient general in command of the Army of the Potomac. The two men had known each other but slightly from casual meetings during the Mexican War. “I was a stranger to most of the Army of the Potomac,” said Grant, “but Meade’s modesty and willingness to serve in any capacity impressed me even more than had his victory at Gettysburg.” The only prominent officers Grant brought on from the West were Sheridan and Rawlins.

SIGNALING ORDERS FROM GENERAL MEADE’S HEADQUARTERS, JUST BEFORE THE WILDERNESS

In April, 1864, General Meade’s headquarters lay north of the Rapidan. The Signal Corps was kept busy transmitting the orders preliminary to the Wilderness campaign, which was to begin May 5th. The headquarters are below the brow of the hill. A most important part of the Signal Corps’ duty was the interception and translation of messages interchanged between the Confederate signal-men. A veteran of Sheridan’s army tells of his impressions as follows: “On the evening of the 18th of October, 1864, the soldiers of Sheridan’s army lay in their lines at Cedar Creek. Our attention was suddenly directed to the ridge of Massanutten, or Three Top Mountain, the slope of which covered the left wing of the army—the Eighth Corps. A lively series of signals was being flashed out from the peak, and it was evident that messages were being sent both eastward and westward of the ridge. I can recall now the feeling with which we looked up at those flashes going over our heads, knowing that they must be Confederate messages. It was only later that we learned that a keen-eyed Union officer had been able to read the message: ‘To Lieutenant-General Early. Be ready to move as soon as my forces join you, and we will crush Sheridan. Longstreet, Lieutenant-General.’ The sturdiness of Sheridan’s veterans and the fresh spirit put into the hearts of the men by the return of Sheridan himself from ‘Winchester, twenty miles away,’ a ride rendered immortal by Read’s poem, proved too much at last for the pluck and persistency of Early’s worn-out troops.”

ON THE WAY TO THE FRONT

The Streets of Culpeper, Virginia, in March, 1864. After Grant’s arrival, the Army of the Potomac awoke to the activity of the spring campaign. One of the first essentials was to get the vast transport trains in readiness to cross the Rapidan. Wagons were massed by thousands at Culpeper, near where Meade’s troops had spent the winter. The work of the teamsters was most arduous; wearied by long night marches—nodding, reins in hand, for lack of sleep—they might at any moment be suddenly attacked in a bold attempt to capture or destroy their precious freight. When the arrangements were completed, each wagon bore the corps badge, division color, and number of the brigade it was to serve. Its contents were also designated, together with the branch of the service for which it was intended. While loaded, the wagons must keep pace with the army movements whenever possible in order to be parked at night near the brigades to which they belonged.

THE “GRAND CAMPAIGN” UNDER WAY—THE DAY BEFORE THE BATTLE

Pontoon-Bridges at Germanna Ford, on the Rapidan. Here the Sixth Corps under Sedgwick and Warren’s Fifth Corps began crossing on the morning of May 4, 1864. The Second Corps, under Hancock, crossed at Ely’s Ford, farther to the east. The cavalry, under Sheridan, was in advance. By night the army, with the exception of Burnside’s Ninth Corps, was south of the Rapidan, advancing into the Wilderness. The Ninth Corps (a reserve of twenty thousand men) remained temporarily north of the Rappahannock, guarding railway communications. On the wooden pontoon-bridge the rear-guard is crossing while the pontonniers are taking up the canvas bridge beyond. The movement was magnificently managed; Grant believed it to be a complete surprise, as Lee had offered no opposition. That was yet to come. In the baffling fighting of the Wilderness and Spotsylvania Court House, Grant was to lose a third of his superior number, arriving a month later on the James with a dispirited army that had left behind 54,926 comrades in a month.

THE TANGLED BATTLEFIELD

The Edge of the Wilderness, May 5, 1864. Stretching away to the westward between Grant’s army and Lee’s lay no-man’s-land—the Wilderness. Covered with a second-growth of thicket, thorny underbrush, and twisted vines, it was an almost impassable labyrinth, with here and there small clearings in which stood deserted barns and houses, reached only by unused and overgrown farm roads. The Federal advance into this region was not a surprise to Lee, as Grant supposed. The Confederate commander had caused the region to be carefully surveyed, hoping for the precise opportunity that Grant was about to give him. At the very outset of the campaign he could strike the Federals in a position where superior numbers counted little. If he could drive Grant beyond the Rappahannock—as he had forced Pope, Burnside and Hooker before him—says George Cary Eggleston (in the “History of the Confederate War”), “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 EWELL’S CHARGE SURPRISED GRANT

A photograph of Confederate breastworks raised by Ewell’s men a few months before, while they fought in the Wilderness, May 5, 1864. In the picture we see some of the customary breastworks which both contending armies threw up to strengthen their positions. These were in a field near the turnpike in front of Ewell’s main line. The impracticable nature of the ground tore the lines on both sides into fragments; as they swept back and forth, squads and companies strove fiercely with one another, hand-to-hand. Grant had confidently expressed the belief to one of his staff officers that there was no more advance left in Lee’s army. He was surprised to learn on the 5th that Ewell’s Corps was marching rapidly down the Orange turnpike to strike at Sedgwick and Warren, while A. P. Hill, with Longstreet close behind, was pushing forward on the Orange plank-road against Hancock.

LEE GIVES BLOW FOR BLOW

Another view of Ewell’s advanced entrenchments—the bark still fresh where the Confederates had worked with the logs. In the Wilderness, Lee, ever bold and aggressive, executed one of the most brilliant maneuvers of his career. His advance was a sudden surprise for Grant, and the manner in which he gave battle was another. Grant harbored the notion that his adversary would act on the defensive, and that there would be opportunity to attack the Army of Northern Virginia only behind strong entrenchments. But in the Wilderness, Lee’s veterans, the backbone of the South’s fighting strength, showed again their unquenchable spirit of aggressiveness. They came forth to meet Grant’s men on equal terms in the thorny thickets. About noon, May 5th, the stillness was broken by the rattle of musketry and the roar of artillery, which told that Warren had met with resistance on the turnpike and that the battle had begun. Nearly a mile were Ewell’s men driven back, and then they came magnificently on again, fighting furiously in the smoke-filled thickets with Warren’s now retreating troops. Sedgwick, coming to the support of Warren, renewed the conflict. To the southward on the plank road, Getty’s division, of the Sixth Corps, hard pressed by the forces of A. P. Hill, was succored by Hancock with the Second Corps, and together these commanders achieved what seemed success. It was brief; Longstreet was close at hand to save the day for the Confederates.

TREES IN THE TRACK OF THE IRON STORM

The Wilderness to the north of the Orange turnpike. Over ground like this, where men had seldom trod before, ebbed and flowed the tide of trampling thousands on May 5 and 6, 1864. Artillery, of which Grant had a superabundance, was well-nigh useless, wreaking its impotent fury upon the defenseless trees. Even the efficacy of musketry fire was hampered. Men tripping and falling in the tangled underbrush arose bleeding from the briars to struggle with an adversary whose every movement was impeded also. The cold steel of the bayonet finished the work which rifles had begun. In the terrible turmoil of death the hopes of both Grant and Lee were doomed to disappointment. The result was a victory for neither. Lee, disregarding his own safety, endeavored to rally the disordered ranks of A. P. Hill, and could only be persuaded to retire by the pledge of Longstreet that his advancing force would win the coveted victory. Falling upon Hancock’s flank, the fresh troops seemed about to crush the Second Corps, as Jackson’s men had crushed the Eleventh the previous year at Chancellorsville. But now, as Jackson, at the critical moment, had fallen by the fire of his own men, so Longstreet and his staff, galloping along the plank road, were mistaken by their own soldiers for Federals and fired upon. A minie-ball struck Longstreet in the shoulder, and he was carried from the field, feebly waving his hat that his men might know that he was not killed. With him departed from the field the life of the attack.

A LOSS IN “EFFECTIVE STRENGTH”—WOUNDED AT FREDERICKSBURG

Federal wounded in the Wilderness campaign, at Fredericksburg. Grant lost 17.3 per cent. of his numbers engaged in the two days’ battles of the Wilderness alone. Lee’s loss was 18.1 per cent. More than 24,000 of the Army of the Potomac and of the Army of Northern Virginia lay suffering in those uninhabited thickets. There many of them died alone, and some perished in the horror of a forest fire on the night of May 5th. The Federals lost many gallant officers, among them the veteran Wadsworth. The Confederates lost Generals Jenkins and Jones, killed, and suffered a staggering blow in the disabling of Longstreet. The series of battles of the Wilderness and Spotsylvania campaigns were more costly to the Federals than Antietam and Gettysburg combined.

ONE OF GRANT’S FIELD-TELEGRAPH STATIONS IN 1864

This photograph, taken at Wilcox Landing, near City Point, gives an excellent idea of the difficulties under which telegraphing was done at the front or on the march. With a tent-fly for shelter and a hard-tack box for a table, the resourceful operator mounted his “relay,” tested his wire, and brought the commanding general into direct communication with separated brigades or divisions. The U. S. Military Telegraph Corps, through its Superintendent of Construction, Dennis Doren, kept Meade and both wings of his army in communication from the crossing of the Rapidan in May, 1864, till the siege of Petersburg. Over this field-line Grant received daily reports from four separate armies, numbering a quarter of a million men, and replied with daily directions for their operations over an area of seven hundred and fifty thousand square miles. Though every corps of Meade’s army moved daily, Doren kept them in touch with headquarters. The field-line was built of seven twisted, rubber-coated wires which were hastily strung on trees or fences.

TELEGRAPHING FOR THE ARMIES

ANDREW CARNEGIE SUPERINTENDED
MILITARY RAILWAYS AND GOVERNMENT
TELEGRAPH LINES IN 1861

ANDREW CARNEGIE

The man who established the Federal military telegraph system amid the first horrors of war was to become one of the world’s foremost advocates of peace. As the right hand man of Thomas A. Scott, Assistant Secretary of War, he came to Washington in ’61, and was immediately put in charge of the field work of reestablishing communication between the Capital and the North, cut off by the Maryland mobs. A telegraph operator himself, he inaugurated the system of cipher despatches for the War Department and secured the trusted operators with whom the service was begun. A young man of twenty-four at the time, he was one of the last to leave the battlefield of Bull Run, and his duties of general superintendence over the network of railroads and telegraph lines made him a witness of war’s cruelties on other fields until he with his chief left the government service June 1, 1862.

THE MILITARY FIELD TELEGRAPH

THE MILITARY TELEGRAPH IN THE FIELD

“No orders ever had to be given to establish the telegraph.” Thus wrote General Grant in his memoirs. “The moment troops were in position to go into camp, the men would put up their wires.” Grant pays a glowing tribute to “the organization and discipline of this body of brave and intelligent men.”

THE ARMY SAVING THE NAVY IN MAY, 1864

Here the army is saving the navy by a brilliant piece of engineering that prevented the loss of a fleet worth $2,000,000. The Red River expedition was one of the most humiliating ever undertaken by the Federals. Porter’s fleet, which had so boldly advanced above the falls at Alexandria, was ordered back, only to find that the river was so low as to imprison twelve vessels. Lieut.-Colonel Joseph Bailey, acting engineer of the Nineteenth Corps, obtained permission to build a dam in order to make possible the passage of the fleet. Begun on April 30, 1864, the work was finished on the 8th of May, almost entirely by the soldiers, working incessantly day and night, often up to their necks in water and under the broiling sun. Bailey succeeded in turning the whole current into one channel and the squadron passed below to safety. Not often have inland lumbermen been the means of saving a navy.

COLONEL JOSEPH BAILEY IN 1864.

THE MAN WHO SAVED THE FLEET.

The army engineers laughed at this wide-browed, unassuming man when he suggested building a dam so as to release Admiral Porter’s fleet imprisoned by low water above the Falls at Alexandria at the close of the futile Red River expedition in 1864. Bailey had been a lumberman in Wisconsin and had there gained the practical experience which taught him that the plan was feasible. He was Acting Chief Engineer of the Nineteenth Army Corps at this time, and obtained permission to go ahead and build his dam. In the undertaking he had the approval and earnest support of Admiral Porter, who refused to consider for a moment the abandonment of any of his vessels even though the Red River expedition had been ordered to return and General Banks was chafing at delay and sending messages to Porter that his troops must be got in motion at once.

Bailey pushed on with his work and in eleven days he succeeded in so raising the water in the channel that all the Federal vessels were able to pass down below the Falls. “Words are inadequate,” said Admiral Porter, in his report, “to express the admiration I feel for the ability of Lieut. Colonel Bailey. This is without doubt the best engineering feat ever performed.... The highest honors the Government can bestow on Colonel Bailey can never repay him for the service he has rendered the country.” For this achievement Bailey was promoted to colonel, brevetted brigadier general, voted the thanks of Congress, and presented with a sword and a purse of $3,000 by the officers of Porter’s fleet. He settled in Missouri after the war and was a formidable enemy of the “Bushwhackers” till he was shot by them on March 21, 1867. He was born at Salem, Ohio, April 28, 1827.

READY FOR HER BAPTISM.

This powerful gunboat, the Lafayette, though accompanying Admiral Porter on the Red River expedition, was not one of those entrapped at Alexandria. Her heavy draft precluded her being taken above the Falls. Here we see her lying above Vicksburg in the spring of 1863. She and her sister ship, the Choctaw, were side-wheel steamers altered into casemate ironclads with rams. The Lafayette had the stronger armament, carrying two 11-inch Dahlgrens forward, four 9-inch guns in the broadside, and two 24-pound howitzers, with two 100-pound Parrott guns astern. She and the Choctaw were the most important acquisitions to Porter’s fleet toward the end of 1862. The Lafayette was built and armed for heavy fighting. She got her first taste of it on the night of April 16, 1863, when Porter took part of his fleet past the Vicksburg batteries to support Grant’s crossing of the river in an advance on Vicksburg from below. The Lafayette, with a barge and a transport lashed to her, held her course with difficulty through the tornado of shot and shell which poured from the Confederate batteries on the river front in Vicksburg as soon as the movement was discovered. The Lafayette stood up to this fiery christening and successfully ran the gantlet, as did all the other vessels save one transport. She was commanded during the Red River expedition by Lieutenant-Commander J. P. Foster.

FARRAGUT AT THE PINNACLE OF HIS FAME

Leaning on the cannon, Commander David Glasgow Farragut and Captain Percival Drayton, chief of staff, stand on the deck of the “Hartford,” after the victory in Mobile Bay, of August, 1864. When Gustavus V. Fox, Assistant Secretary of the Navy, proposed the capture of New Orleans from the southward he was regarded as utterly foolhardy. All that was needed, however, to make Fox’s plan successful was the man with spirit enough to undertake it and judgment sufficient to carry it out. Here on the deck of the fine new sloop-of-war that had been assigned to him as flagship, stands the man who had just accomplished a greater feat that made him a world figure as famous as Nelson. The Confederacy had found its great general among its own people, but the great admiral of the war, although of Southern birth, had refused to fight against the flag for which, as a boy in the War of 1812, he had seen men die. Full of the fighting spirit of the old navy, he was able to achieve the first great victory that gave new hope to the Federal cause. Percival Drayton was also a Southerner, a South Carolinian, whose brothers and uncles were fighting for the South.

“FAR BY GRAY MORGAN’S WALLS”—THE MOBILE BAY FORT, BATTERED BY FARRAGUT’S GUNS

How formidable was Farragut’s undertaking in forcing his way into Mobile Bay is apparent from these photographs. For wooden vessels to pass Morgan and Gaines, two of the strongest forts on the coast, was pronounced by experts most foolhardy. Besides, the channel was planted with torpedoes that might blow the ships to atoms, and within the bay was the Confederate ram Tennessee, thought to be the most powerful ironclad ever put afloat. In the arrangements for the attack, Farragut’s flagship, the Hartford, was placed second, the Brooklyn leading the line of battleships, which were preceded by four monitors. At a quarter before six, on the morning of August 5th, the fleet moved. Half an hour later it came within range of Fort Morgan. The whole undertaking was then threatened with disaster. The monitor Tecumseh, eager to engage the Confederate ram Tennessee behind the line of torpedoes, ran straight ahead, struck a torpedo, and in a few minutes went down with most of the crew. As the monitor sank, the Brooklyn recoiled. Farragut signaled: “What’s the trouble?” “Torpedoes,” was the answer. “Damn the torpedoes!” shouted Farragut. “Go ahead, Captain Drayton. Four bells.” Finding that the smoke from the guns obstructed the view from the deck, Farragut ascended to the rigging of the main mast, where he was in great danger of being struck and of falling to the deck. The captain accordingly ordered a quartermaster to tie him in the shrouds. The Hartford, under a full head of steam, rushed over the torpedo ground far in advance of the fleet. The battle was not yet over. The Confederate ram, invulnerable to the broadsides of the Union guns, steamed alone for the ships, while the ramparts of the two forts were crowded with spectators of the coming conflict. The ironclad monster made straight for the flagship, attempting to ram it and paying no attention to the fire or the ramming of the other vessels. Its first effort was unsuccessful, but a second came near proving fatal. It then became a target for the whole Union fleet; finally its rudder-chain was shot away and it became unmanageable; in a few minutes it raised the white flag. No wonder Americans call Farragut the greatest of naval commanders.

WHERE BROADSIDES STRUCK

THE “HARTFORD” JUST AFTER THE BATTLE OF MOBILE BAY

This vivid photograph, taken in Mobile Bay by a war-time photographer from New Orleans, was presented by Captain Drayton of the “Hartford” to T. W. Eastman, U. S. N., whose family has courteously allowed its reproduction here. Never was exhibited a more superb morale than on the “Hartford” as she steamed in line to the attack of Fort Morgan at Mobile Bay on the morning of August 5, 1864. Every man was at his station thinking his own thoughts in the suspense of that moment. On the quarterdeck stood Captain Percival Drayton and his staff. Near them was the chief-quartermaster, John H. Knowles, ready to hoist the signals that would convey Farragut’s orders to the fleet. The admiral himself was in the port main shrouds twenty-five feet above the deck. All was silence aboard till the “Hartford” was in easy range of the fort. Then the great broadsides of the old ship began to take their part in the awful cannonade. During the early part of the action Captain Drayton, fearing that some damage to the rigging might pitch Farragut overboard, sent Knowles on his famous mission. “I went up,” said the old sailor, “with a piece of lead line and made it fast to one of the forward shrouds, and then took it around the admiral to the after shroud, making it fast there. The admiral said, ‘Never mind, I’m all right,’ but I went ahead and obeyed orders.” Later Farragut, undoing the lashing with his own hands, climbed higher still.

QUARTERMASTER KNOWLES

FORT MORGAN—A BOMBARDMENT BRAVELY ANSWERED

The battered walls of Fort Morgan, in 1864, tell of a terrific smashing by the Federal navy. But the gallant Confederates returned the blows with amazing courage and skill; the rapidity and accuracy of their fire was rarely equalled in the war. In the terrible conflict the “Hartford” was struck twenty times, the “Brooklyn” thirty, the “Octorora” seventeen, the “Metacomet” eleven, the “Lackawanna” five, the “Ossipee” four, the “Monongahela” five, the “Kennebec” two, and the “Galena” seven. Of the monitors the “Chickasaw” was struck three times, the “Manhattan” nine, and the “Winnebago” nineteen. The total loss in the Federal fleet was 52 killed and 170 wounded, while on the Confederate gunboats 12 were killed and 20 wounded. The night after the battle the “Metacomet” was turned into a hospital ship and the wounded of both sides were taken to Pensacola. The pilot of the captured “Tennessee” guided the Federal ship through the torpedoes, and as she was leaving Pensacola on her return trip Midshipman Carter of the “Tennessee,” who also was on the “Metacomet,” called out from the wharf: “Don’t attempt to fire No. 2 gun (of the “Tennessee”), as there is a shell jammed in the bore, and the gun will burst and kill some one.” All felt there had been enough bloodshed.

THE BRAVEST OF THE BRAVE—THE CONFEDERATE IRONCLAD RAM “TENNESSEE”

Mobile Bay, on the morning of August 5, 1864, was the arena of more conspicuous heroism than marked any naval battle-ground of the entire war. Among all the daring deeds of that day stands out superlatively the gallant manner in which Admiral Franklin Buchanan, C. S. N., fought his vessel, the “Tennessee.” “You shall not have it to say when you leave this vessel that you were not near enough to the enemy, for I will meet them, and then you can fight them alongside of their own ships; and if I fall, lay me on one side and go on with the fight.” Thus Buchanan addressed his men, and then, taking his station in the pilot-house, he took his vessel into action. The Federal fleet carried more power for destruction than the combined English, French, and Spanish fleets at Trafalgar, and yet Buchanan made good his boast that he would fight alongside. No sooner had Farragut crossed the torpedoes than Buchanan matched that deed, running through the entire line of Federal vessels, braving their broadsides, and coming to close quarters with most of them. Then the “Tennessee” ran under the guns of Fort Morgan for a breathing space. In half an hour she was steaming up the bay to fight the entire squadron single-handed. Such boldness was scarce believable, for Buchanan had now not alone wooden ships to contend with, as when in the “Merrimac” he had dismayed the Federals in Hampton Roads. Three powerful monitors were to oppose him at point-blank range. For nearly an hour the gunners in the “Tennessee” fought, breathing powder-smoke amid an atmosphere superheated to 120 degrees. Buchanan was serving a gun himself when he was wounded and carried to the surgeon’s table below. Captain Johnston fought on for another twenty minutes, and then the “Tennessee,” with her rudder and engines useless and unable to fire a gun, was surrendered, after a reluctant consent had been wrung from Buchanan, as he lay on the operating table.

BATTLE AT SPOTTSYLVANIA.
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