The battle between Major-General George G. Meade’s Federal Army of the Potomac (under General-in-Chief Ulysses S. Grant’s overall direction) and General Robert E. Lee’s Confederate Army of the Northern Virginia had been terrible on May 5. Since then, the battlefield had split into two sectors:
- In the southern sector, Grant expected Major-General Winfield Scott Hancock’s Second Corps to attack and destroy Lieutenant-General A.P. Hill’s weakened Third Corps on the Orange Plank Road at dawn.
- In the northern sector, the Sixth and Fifth corps under Major-Generals John Sedgwick and Gouverneur Warren would attack Lieutenant-General Richard Ewell’s Second Corps on the Orange Turnpike, preventing Ewell from helping Hill.
- In the center, Major-General Ambrose E. Burnside’s reserve Ninth Corps would come up and attack Hill’s left flank and rear.
Grant directed Meade to renew the assaults at 4:30 a.m., but Meade consulted with commanders and told Grant that such a time was not feasible. Meade suggested starting at 6, but Grant ordered it started at 5 because he “desires especially to avoid” allowing Lee to seize the initiative. It ultimately could not be avoided.
Lee expected Lieutenant-General James Longstreet’s First Corps to be up on Hill’s right at dawn, but the troops had gotten lost in the brush and would be delayed. Nevertheless, Ewell got the jump on the Federals by renewing the fight against Warren at 4:45 a.m. Warren stayed on the defensive until Sedgwick’s men came up on his right. When Meade urged Warren to attack, Warren replied, “I think it best not to make the final assault until the preparations are made.” A messenger delivered Meade’s stern response: “The major-general commanding considers it of the utmost importance that your attack should be pressed with the utmost vigor. Spare ammunition and use the bayonet.”
Warren did not commit his corps to an all-out assault, but instead he fought off Ewell’s assaults and kept him from helping Hill to his right.
At Washington, President Abraham Lincoln had been anxiously awaiting news from the battlefield all day on the 5th. He finally received a dispatch from Grant on the morning of the 6th, but it simply read, “Everything pushing along favorably.” Throughout the day, Grant sat and smoked his cigar as he whittled pieces of wood, awaiting reports from the field.
In the southern sector, Hancock launched his attack as scheduled and started pushing Hill’s Confederates back toward Lee’s headquarters at the Widow Tapp farm. Colonel Theodore Lyman reported to Meade at 5:40 a.m., “General Hancock went in punctually, and is driving the enemy handsomely.” The Confederate guns at the farm continuously fired canister into the oncoming Federals to no avail. Hancock told a courier, “Tell General Meade we are driving them most beautifully!”
Grant had expected Burnside’s Ninth Corps to come up between Warren and Hancock by dawn. But Burnside was running late, which did not surprise Meade, who had previously served under him. Hancock continued pushing the Confederates back without waiting for Burnside’s troops. Hill’s line eventually broke as the Federals closed in on the Tapp house.
Suddenly, Brigadier-General John Gregg’s Texas brigade, the vanguard of Longstreet’s corps, arrived on the scene around 6 a.m. Lee, who had been anxiously awaiting Longstreet’s arrival, asked them, “What brigade is this?” When told they were the Texas brigade, Lee said, “I am glad to see it. When you go in there, I wish you to give those men the cold steel–they will stand and fight all day, and never move unless you charge them.”
Then, in a rare display of excitement, Lee raised his hat and urged them forward, shouting, “Texans always move them!” Lee began advancing with the troops, but when they saw this, they began hollering, “Go back, General Lee, go back!” They stopped Lee’s horse and refused to proceed until Lee went back to safety. Lee complied, and the Texans charged furiously into the stunned Federals.
Lyman reported to Meade at 6:20, “The left of our assault has struck Longstreet… sharp musketry. Longstreet is filing to the south of the plank road–our left; how far not yet developed…” Hancock supposedly ordered Brigadier-General John Gibbon to send a division against Longstreet’s right, but Gibbon claimed that he never got that order, and no copy of such an order exists. Lyman reported, “Hancock complained after, that Gibbon’s feeble command of the left wing of his corps changed the face of the day.”
Soon after, Longstreet arrived with the rest of his two divisions. They, along with Gregg’s men, replaced Hill’s Confederates and counterattacked. The fighting was vicious and confused in the tangled brush and vines of the Wilderness. Gregg lost 550 of his 800 Texans, but the momentum began shifting as the Confederates slowly pushed the Federals back.
Around 10 a.m., Longstreet learned from commanders familiar with the area that the bed of an unfinished railroad lay south of the Orange Plank Road, hidden by the brush. This was an excellent spot from which to assault Hancock’s left flank. Longstreet directed his aide, Lieutenant-Colonel Moxley Sorrell, to lead four brigades in an attack that began at 11 a.m.
The Federals wavered under this sudden assault, which Hancock later said rolled up his flank “like a wet blanket.” Grant, “annoyed and surprised” that Burnside’s corps had not yet come up on Hancock’s right, wrote Burnside at 11:45: “Hancock has been expecting you for the last three hours, and has been making his attack and dispositions with a view to your assistance.”
Longstreet renewed the main attack on Hancock’s front, adding to the pressure and pushing the Federals back to the Brock Road. Brigadier-General James S. Wadsworth, a prominent Republican politician now commanding a Federal division, was shot off his horse and died two days later. Wadsworth was mourned at the White House, where President Lincoln said, “No man has given himself up to the war with such self sacrificing patriotism as Genl. Wadsworth.” Wadsworth’s division had been assigned to Warren’s corps but was now scattered throughout the Wilderness; there were just 500 men on hand after starting the campaign with 5,000.
Longstreet and his aides followed their advancing troops along the Orange Plank Road. To their right, Sorrell’s Confederates suddenly appeared and, mistaking them for Federals, fired on them. Brigadier-General Micah Jenkins, commanding a brigade, was killed. Moments later, Longstreet was hit as well. Longstreet later wrote:
“At the moment that Jenkins fell I received a severe shock from a minie ball passing through my throat and right shoulder. The blow lifted me from the saddle, and my right arm dropped to my side, but I settled back to my seat, and started to ride on, when in a minute the flow of blood admonished me that my work for the day was done.”
Coincidentally, Longstreet was just four miles from the spot where Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson was mortally wounded by friendly fire almost exactly one year before. The surviving aides helped Longstreet from his horse, and his doctor pronounced the wounds “not necessarily mortal.” Longstreet wrote:
“As my litter was borne to the rear my hat was placed over my face, and soldiers by the road-side said, ‘He is dead, and they are telling us he is only wounded.’ Hearing this repeated from time to time, I raised my hat with my left hand, when the burst of voices and the flying of hats in the air eased my pains somewhat.”
Lee temporarily took over Longstreet’s corps and looked to renew the attack. Grant had ordered Hancock to counterattack at 6 p.m., but Lee hit Hancock’s line with an attack of his own at 4 p.m. Brush fires came up between the armies, forcing the Federals back to their breastworks along the Brock Road. The Confederates could not dislodge them, and the fight ended in stalemate.
In the center, Burnside finally arrived around 2 p.m. to fill the gap between Hancock and Warren. But instead of flanking Hill as planned, he now ran into the survivors of Hill’s corps who had shifted to the center to fight alongside Longstreet’s men. The Confederates held firm against Burnside’s assaults.
Back in the northern sector, Brigadier-General John B. Gordon, commanding a brigade in Major-General Jubal Early’s division, saw that Sedgwick’s right flank was vulnerable (another failure of the Federal cavalry for not guarding the flank) and urged Early, and then Ewell, to approve an attack. After several hours of vacillation, Gordon sought permission directly from Lee, who approved. Gordon’s men finally attacked at 6 p.m., overwhelming the Federals just as Gordon hoped.
The Confederates captured two Federal generals, 600 other prisoners, and nearly cut the Federal supply line. Federal troops fled the field and Sedgwick hurriedly deployed reinforcements and shouted among them, “Halt! For God’s sake, boys, rally! Don’t disgrace yourselves and your general in this way!” The troops responded to their beloved commander and held firm until darkness ended the fighting. Gordon later asserted that had his plan been approved earlier, his men would have destroyed the Federal right. Instead, “the greatest opportunity ever presented to Lee’s army was permitted to pass.”
News of this unexpected flank attack caused panic at Federal headquarters. One brigadier told Grant, “I know Lee’s methods well by past experience; he will throw his whole army between us and the Rapidan, and cut us off completely from our communications.” Grant angrily replied, “Oh, I am heartily tired of hearing about what Lee is going to do. Some of you always seem to think he is suddenly going to turn a double somersault, and land in our rear and on both of our flanks at the same time. Go back to your command, and try to think what we are going to do ourselves, instead of what Lee is going to do.”
Elsewhere on the field, opposing cavalries skirmished lightly at Todd’s Tavern, as Major-General Jeb Stuart’s Confederate horsemen met the Federals under their new commander, Major-General Philip Sheridan, for the first time.
Fighting gradually ended all along the line as night fell. Troops began scrambling to rescue wounded comrades before they burned to death in the raging forest fires. Lee reported to Secretary of War James A. Seddon that the Federal advance, “thanks to a merciful God, has been repulsed.”
The Federals knew they had gotten the worst of this battle. An army half their size had nearly routed both the Sixth Corps on the right and the Second Corps on the left. In fact, the Federals had been more thoroughly defeated here than at Chancellorsville a year ago:
- Joseph Hooker only had one flank turned last year, but this time Grant had both turned
- Hooker had nearly surprised Lee last year, but this time Lee surprised Grant
- Lee lost 13,000 men last year, but this time he lost just over half that amount
A reporter from the London Herald who observed the battle from the Confederate side exaggerated when he estimated that the Federals had sustained 30,000 casualties and suffered what “cannot be described by any word less forcible than massacre.” But the real number was high enough; the Federals sustained 17,666 casualties (2,246 killed, 12,037 wounded, and 3,383 missing) while the Confederates lost about 7,500. These totals were more one-sided than any other battle between these armies except the Battle of Fredericksburg. With Lee scoring such a decisive tactical victory, most Federal troops believed that Grant would do what his predecessors had done and retreat.
In Grant’s less than impressive debut in the Eastern Theater, he learned that unlike most of the western commanders he faced, Lee would take the fight to him. Grant retired to his headquarters that night and wept, but when he was done, he emerged with a new resolve. He told a Washington correspondent preparing to return to the capital, “If you see the president, tell him, from me, that whatever happens, there will be no turning back.”
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