Fateful Lightning: A New History of the Civil War & Reconstruction Allen Guelzo (novels to read .txt) 📖

Bermuda Hundred, a small area largely surrounded by a bend in the James. There the Confederates sealed off his small army, like a “bottle tightly corked.”

Grant’s biggest problem was presented by Robert E. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia. Grant did not simply propose to throw himself at Lee, and like Hooker a year before, he chose not to try to force a crossing of the Rappahannock at Fredericksburg. Instead, the Army of the Potomac, with Meade and Grant, 3,500 wagons, 29,000 horses, 20,000 mules, and 120,000 men, again turned wide to the west, splashed across the Rapidan River on May 4, and plunged at once into the eerie gloom of the Wilderness. Despite the apparently irresistible juggernaut of his numbers, Grant had only about 65,000–70,000 veterans; the rest were unseasoned troops scraped from hither and yon (conscripts, replacements, the heavy artillery regiments of the Washington defenses; even Ambrose Burnside made a reappearance from Ohio with his old 9th Corps). Grant had to hope that he could move through the Wilderness fast enough to force Lee to fall back upon Richmond. “It was a good day’s work in such a country for so large an army with its artillery and fighting trains to march twenty miles, crossing a river on five bridges of its own building, without a single mishap, interruption or delay,” wrote Andrew A. Humphreys, Meade’s chief of staff. All the same, nightfall found the lead elements of the Army of the Potomac no more than halfway along the narrow rutted roads of the Wilderness, and the army was forced to stop and wait for daylight.18

This presented precisely the sort of opportunity Lee prayed for, since the tangled and unfamiliar terrain of the Wilderness would eliminate the Federal advantages in numbers and artillery and allow the Army of Northern Virginia an even chance in a fight. And that spring, Lee needed all the help the Virginia terrain could give. Three weeks before Grant crossed the Rapidan, Lee warned Jefferson Davis, “I cannot see how we can operate with our present supplies. … There is nothing to be had in this section for man or animals.” (No exaggeration, this: after three years of war, the countryside “seemed almost uninhabited and not even the bark of a dog or sound of a bird broke the dreary silence.”) Lee’s health was so poor that he admitted to his son Custis in April, “I feel a marked change in my strength… and am less competent for duty than ever.” 19

Moreover, Lee’s three corps commanders—James Longstreet (who had rejoined the Army of Northern Virginia with his corps after Bragg’s debacle at Missionary Ridge), A. P. Hill, and Richard Ewell—were all veteran officers with at least a full year of experience at corps command behind them. But each of them had failed Lee at Gettysburg. Even worse, Longstreet had performed ineffectively in Tennessee after Chickamauga, and quarreled so bitterly with his subordinates that two of them, LaFayette McLaws and Evander Law, resigned. Richard Ewell was “loved and admired” by his men, “but he was not always equal to his opportunities.” There would remain some question about how reliable their performance would be in the upcoming battles. Yet the morale of the ordinary soldier of the Army of Northern Virginia remained resilient. “The whole command is in fine health and excellent spirits and ready for the coming struggle confident of whipping Grant, and that badly. We all believe that this is the last year of the war.” John L. Runzer, of the 2nd Florida, resolved: “Whereas, we… believe, as we did, from the first, that the cause in which we are engaged… is just and right… Be it resolved, That we are determined never to give that cause up.” 20

The most immediate problem that Lee had to face, however, was concentrating his forces to meet Grant. In the interest of casting his net for supplies as far as he dared, Lee’s three army corps, numbering only about 70,000 men, were widely scattered along the south side of the Rappahannock. When Lee ordered them to rendezvous to face Grant, Richard Ewell’s corps, moving eastward on the Orange Turnpike through the Wilderness, collided with the vanguard of the Army of the Potomac’s 5th Corps, heading south on the one usable north-south road through the Wilderness, the Germanna Plank Road. A firefight erupted. Meade, anxious to get out of the Wilderness before the main body of Lee’s army arrived, tried to shoulder the Confederates aside, only to find the rebels in significantly greater numbers than he had planned for, and with a more aggressive spirit. “These lunatics were sweeping along to that appallingly unequal fight, cracking jokes, laughing,” wrote a Virginia artilleryman of his fellow Southerners, “and with not the least idea in the world of anything else but victory.” 21

Meade called up John Sedgwick’s 6th Corps to cover the 5th Corps’s southward-extended left flank. They, in turn, were overlapped by rebel infantry from Hill’s corps, coming up to meet them along the Orange Plank Road (a parallel to the Orange Turnpike) as twilight descended. That night, Meade moved the 9th Corps (Burnside’s) and the 2nd Corps (under Winfield Scott Hancock) around behind the firing lines so that, at five o’clock on the morning of May 5, Hancock and the 2nd Corps were in position to attack Hill. With a gigantic lurch forward, they smashed right over Hill’s rebels on the Plank Road. “Tell Meade we are driving them most beautifully,” Hancock exulted. 22

The exultation lasted only for an hour. Without any warning, the last of Lee’s infantry corps, under James Longstreet, arrived and knocked the overconfident Federals back to their starting point. It was now Lee’s turn to exult, and he was so jubilant at the appearance of Longstreet that he almost tried to lead one of Longstreet’s brigades personally (until a Texas sergeant grabbed the bridle of Lee’s horse and the protective shout went up, “General Lee to the rear!”). This confused melee