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he moved with his three corps toward the Wilderness, to offer battle.

The head of the column consisted of Ewell's corps, which had retained its position on the Rapidan, forming the right of Lee's line. General A. P. Hill, who had been stationed higher up, near Liberty Mills, followed; and Longstreet, who lay near Gordonsville, brought up the rear. These dispositions dictated, as will be seen, the positions of the three commands in the ensuing struggle. Ewell advanced in front down the Old Turnpike, that one of the two great highways here running east and west which is nearest the Rapidan; Hill came on over the Orange Plank-road, a little south of the turnpike, and thus formed on Ewell's right; and Longstreet, following, came in on the right of Hill.

General Grant had plunged with his army into the dense and melancholy thicket which had been the scene of General Hooker's discomfiture. His army, followed by its great train of four thousand wagons, indicating the important nature of the movement, had reached Wilderness Tavern and that Brock Road over which Jackson advanced in his secret flank-march against the Federal right in May, 1863. In May of 1864, now, another Federal army had penetrated the sombre and depressing shadows of the interminable thickets of the Wilderness, and a more determined struggle than the first was to mark with its bloody hand this historic territory.

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II.

THE FIRST COLLISION IN THE WILDERNESS.

To understand the singular combat which now ensued, it is necessary to keep in view the fact that nothing more surprised General Grant than the sudden appearance of his adversary face to face with him in the Wilderness.

It had not been supposed, either by the lieutenantgeneral or his corps-commanders, that Lee, with his small army, would have recourse to a proceeding so audacious. It was anticipated, indeed, that, somewhere on the road to Richmond, Lee would make a stand and fight, in a carefullyselected position which would enable him to risk collision with his great adversary; but that Lee himself would bring on this collision by making an open attack, unassisted by position of any sort, was the last thing which seems to have occurred to his adversary.

Such, however, as has been said, was the design, from the first, of the Southern commander, and he moved with his accustomed celerity and energy. As soon as General Grant broke up his camps north of the Rapidan, Lee was apprised of the fact, and ordered his three corps to concentrate in the direction of Chancellorsville. Those who were present in the Southern army at this time will bear record to the soldierly promptness of officers and men. On the evening of the 3d of May the camps were the scenes of noise, merriment, and parade: the bands played; the woods were alive; nothing disturbed the scene of general enjoyment of winterquarters. On the morning of the 4th all this was changed. The camps were deserted; no sound was anywhere heard;

the troops were twenty miles away, fully armed and ready for battle. General Lee was in the saddle, and his presence seemed to push forward his column. Ewell, marching with celerity, bivouacked that night directly in face of the enemy; and it was the suddenly-discovered presence of the troops of this commander which arrested General Grant, advancing steadily in the direction of Spottsylvania Court-House.

He must have inwardly chafed at a circumstance so unexpected and embarrassing. It had been no part of his plan to fight in the thickets of the Wilderness, and yet an adversary of but one-third his own strength was about to reverse his whole programme, and dictate the terms of the first battles of the campaign. There was nothing to do, however, but to fight, and General Grant hastened to form order of battle for that purpose, with General Sedgwick commanding his right, Generals Warren and Burnside his centre, and General Hancock his left, near the Brock Road. The line thus formed extended from northwest to southeast, and, as the right wing was in advance with respect to Lee, that circumstance occasioned the first collision.

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This occurred about mid-day on the 5th of May, and was brought on by General Warren, who attacked the head of Ewell's column, on the Old Turnpike. An obstinate engagement ensued, and the division which received the assault was forced back. It quickly, however, reformed, and being reënforced advanced in turn against General Warren, and, after a hard fight, he was driven back with a loss of three thousand men and two pieces of artillery.

This first collision of the armies on the Confederate left was followed almost immediately by a bloody struggle on the centre. This was held by A. P. Hill, who had marched

down the Plank-road, and was near the important point of junction of that road with the Brock Road, when he was suddenly attacked by the enemy. The struggle which ensued was long and determined. General Lee wrote: "The assaults were repeated and desperate, but every one was repulsed." When night fell, Hill had not been driven back, but had not advanced; and the two armies rested on their arms, awaiting the return of light to continue the battle.

III.

THE BATTLE OF THE 6TH OF MAY.

THE morning of the 6th of May came, and, with the first light of dawn, the adversaries, as by a common understanding, advanced at the same moment to attack each other.

The battle which followed is wellnigh indescribable, and may be said, in general terms, to have been naught but the blind and desperate clutch of two great bodies of men, who could scarcely see each other when they were but a few feet apart, and who fired at random, rather by sound than sight. A Southern writer, describing the country and the strange combat, says: "The country was sombre-a land of thicket, undergrowth, jungle, ooze, where men could not see each other twenty yards off, and assaults had to be made by the compass. The fights there were not even as easy as night attacks in open country, for at night you can travel by the stars. Death came unseen; regiments stumbled on each other, and sent swift destruction into each other's ranks, guided by the crackling of the bushes. It was not war

military manœuvring: science had as little to do with it as sight. Two wild animals were hunting each other; when they heard each other's steps, they sprung and grappled. The conqueror advanced, or went elsewhere. The dead were lost from all eyes in the thicket. The curious spectacle was here presented of officers advancing to the charge, in the jungle, compass in hand, attacking, not by sight, but by the bearing of the needle. In this mournful and desolate thicket did the great campaign of 1864 begin. Here, in blind wrestle as at midnight, did two hundred thousand men in blue and gray clutch each other-bloodiest and weirdest of encounters. War had had nothing like it. The genius of destruction, tired apparently of the old commonplace killing, had invented the 'unseen death.' At five in the morning, the opponents closed in, breast to breast, in the thicket. Each had thrown up here and there slight, temporary breastworks of saplings and dirt; beyond this, they were unprotected. The question now was, which would succeed in driving his adversary from these defences, almost within a few yards of each other, and from behind which crackled the musketry. Never was sight more curious. On the low line of these works, dimly seen in the thicket, rested the muzzles spouting flame; from the depths rose cheers; charges were made and repulsed, the lines scarcely seeing each other; men fell and writhed, and died unseen—their bodies lost in the bushes, their death-groans drowned in the steady, continuous, never-ceasing crash."

These sentences convey a not incorrect idea of the general character of this remarkable engagement, which had no precedent in the war. We shall now proceed to speak of General Lee's plans and objects, and to indicate where they

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