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Page 27
SPOTTSYLVANIA.
A losing cause never showed a braver front than the Confederacy put on
in the Wilderness. It was a front of iron. A man weaker than Grant
would have quailed before it. It was virtually the same old rim of
fire and death that had confronted McClellan, that had consumed Pope,
that almost destroyed both Hooker and Burnside. Either the Union army
must go through this barrier of flame and destruction and scatter it
like brands of fire to right and left, or else the Union could never
be rebuilded on the foundation of victory.
There was much discussion--and some doubt--in the spring of 1864
whether the Silent Man of Galena, now made Commander-in-chief of the
Union armies, could pursue his military destiny to a great fame with
Robert E. Lee for his antagonist. This talk was bruited abroad; Grant
himself heard it, and had to consider what not a few people were
saying, namely, that he had had before him in the West as leaders of
the enemy only such men as Buckner and Beauregard and Pemberton; now
he must stand up face to face with "Old Bobby Lee" and take the blows
of the great Virginian against whom neither strategy nor force had
hitherto prevailed.
The Man of Galena did not quail. Neither did he doubt. His pictures of
this epoch show him with mouth more close shut than ever; but
otherwise there was no sign. Lee for his part knew that another foeman
was now come, and if we mistake not he divined that the end of the
Confederacy, involving the end of his own military career, was not far
ahead. It is to the credit of his genius that he did not weaken under
such a situation and despair ere the ordeal came upon him; but on the
contrary, he planted himself in the Wilderness and awaited the coming
of the storm.
Let the world know that Grant in entering upon his great campaign, in
the first days of May, 1864, had to do so against the greatest
disadvantages. The country south of the Rappahannock was against him.
The fact of Lee's acting ever on the defensive was against him. The
woods and the rivers were against him. All Virginia, from the Rapidan
to Richmond, was a rifle-pit and an earthwork. The Confederates knew
every hill and ravine as though they were the orchard and the fishing
creek of their own homes. The battlefield was theirs, to begin with;
it must be taken from them or remain theirs forever. To take a
battlefield of their own from Virginians has never been a pleasing
task to those who did it--or more frequently tried to do it and did
not!
It remained for Grant and his tremendous Union army to undertake this
herculean task. He moved into the Wilderness and fought a two-days'
battle of the greatest severity. The contest of the fifth and sixth of
May were murderous in character. The National losses in these two days
in killed, wounded and missing were not less than 14,000; those of the
Confederates were almost as great. In this struggle General Alexander
Hays was killed; Generals Getty, Baxter and McAlister were wounded,
and scores of under-officers, with thousands of brave men, lost their
lives or limbs. Now it was that Lee is reported to have said to his
officers, with a serious look on his iron face: "Gentlemen, at last
the Army of the Potomac has a head."
On the seventh of May there was not much fighting. It is said that in
the lull Grant's leading commanders thought he would recede, as his
predecessors had done, and that not a few of them gave it as their
opinion that he should do so. It is said that when coming to the
Chancellorsville House, he gave the command, "Forward, by the left
flank," thus demonstrating his purpose, as he said four days afterward
in his despatch to the government, "to fight it out on that line if
it took all summer," the soldiers gave a sigh of relief, and many
began to sing at the prospect of no more retreating. General Sherman
has recorded his belief that at this juncture Grant best displayed his
greatness.
With the movement which we have just mentioned, the next stage in the
campaign would bring both the Union and the Confederate armies to
Spottsylvania Courthouse. The distance that each had to march to that
point was about the same. It was at this juncture that the woods in
which the two armies were moving, Grant to the left and Lee to the
right, took fire and were burned. When the Union advance came in sight
of Spottsylvania, Warren, who commanded, found that the place had been
already occupied by the vigilant enemy. Hancock did not arrive in time
to make an immediate attack, and Longstreet's corps was able to get
into position before the pressure of the Union advance could be felt.
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