The battle of the Wilderness

Front matter

BY

MORRIS SCHAFF

AUTHOR OP 'the 8PIBIT OF OLD WEST POINT'

II

After several abortively offensive movements by each of the armies during the autumn of 1863, they went into winter quarters: Lee, with his armj' well in hand, on the south bank of the Rapidan; Meade, between the Rapidan and the Rappahannock. The former's headquarters were among some pines and cedars at the foot of Clarke's Mountain, near Orange Court House; the latter's were on a knoll covered with tall young pines about a mile and a half northwest from Brandy Station. The bulk of the army of the Potomac was around Culpeper and Stevensburg; one corps, the Fifth, under Warren, stretched northward along the Orange and Alexandria Railroad — at present the Southern — as far as Calverton; the Sixth was between the railroad and Hazel River, a little tributary of the Rappahannock, the Second around Stevensburg, the First and Third, consolidated before we moved with the other three, were about Culpeper. Lee's principal depot for supplies was at Orange Court House, ours at Brandy, where I passed the greater part of the winter in charge of the ordnance depot.

The town, about midway between Culpeper and the Rappahannock, then had only three or four houses and a one-story, unpainted, lonely sort of a building for receiving freight. A good deal of military history of interest is connected with Brandy ; for in the rolling fields of the plantations about it, Lee, just before setting out for Gettysburg, reviewed Stuart's cavalry, ten to twelve thousand strong. The dew was still on his great victory at Chancellorsville, won in the month before, and the review, according to all accounts, was a pageant, drawing people from far and near. Ladies, young and old, of Culpeper, Charlottesville, and more distant points in Virginia, were there, and around some of the horses' necks, and hanging from the cantles of the saddles, and at the heads of the fluttering guidons, were bouquets and bunches of wild flowers which they had brought with them. They were proud, and justly so, of their sons, brothers, and lovers; and I really believe that the future of the Confederacy never looked so fair to them, or to those at its helm as on that June day.

It will be remembered that in the deep mist of the morning following the review our cavalry crossed the Rappahannock and gave Stuart desperate battle right around Brandy; and it is a matter of history that our mounted force had its baptism on that field. For two years it had been a negligible quantity, and scorned by its enemy ; but from then on to the end our cavalry met the enemy sternly, with increasing bravery and effectiveness. The battle lasted nearly all day and was very severe; Buford, Gregg, Custer, Merritt, Kilpatrick, and the lamented Davis, were all there. My tent at the station, pitched after dark and partly floored, I discovered later was over the grave of some one who had fallen in those repeated charges. The other day I wandered over those same fields: cattle and sheep were grazing up the slopes where the squadrons had marched in the June sunshine; killdeers with banded necks and bladed wings, turtle-doves, meadow-larks, and serenely joyous little sparrows were flying and singing where the flags had fluttered and the bugles sounded. j

In view of the fact that the bulk of the supplies to meet the daily wants of the army, then consisting of a hundred thousand men, and between forty and fifty thousand animals, were sent to Brandy, it is easy to imagine that it was a very busy place. Of course they all came by rail from Washington and Alexandria. Those for the ordnance, hospital, and clothing departments were put under cover in temporary buildings, while forage, and unperishable quartermaster and commissary stores, were racked up and covered by tarpaulins along the track and sidings. Some of the piles were immense, and from morning till night trains of army wagons were coming and going, or stood occupying all the open space around the station, waiting for their turn to load.

In the history of the Fifth Massachusetts is the following letter from one of the sergeants of the battery. It is dated April 30, 1864.

"The next battle will be a rouser! The rebels of

Lee's army are all ready for us, and are said to be ninety thousand. They will give us a tough pull if my opinion amounts to anything.

"To-day I was up to Brandy Station. You can form no idea of the bustle and confusion at this depot when the army is getting ready to move. It looked to me as if a thousand or more wagons were waiting to load, and there were immense piles of ammunition and all kinds of Ordnance Stores, etc., etc., and piles of boxes of hard bread as high as two and three-story houses. It reminded me some of a wharf in New York with twelve or fifteen ships loading and unloading."

The trains were generally in charge of sergeants, but were often accompanied by their brigade and division officers, so that those of us at the head of depots gained a wide acquaintance throughout the army. Frequently these officers staid with us for dinner; and as my fellow messmate was Dr. J. B. Brinton of Philadelphia, in charge of the medical supplies, and as surgeons, like certain aspiring young lawyers, never cease to talk about their cases, I knew a good many surgeons well, and understood at least a part of their professional lingo.

The wagons were generally drawn by six mules driven by negroes, who rode the nigh wheeler and managed the team by a jerk line to the nigh leader. In these days it may seem like a shiftless way to drive a team, but it worked well, and possibly be-

S6 THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS

cause the darkies and the mules, through some medium or other, understood each other perfectly; at any rate, the drivers talked to their teams as if they comprehended every word said to them; and sometimes it was worth listening to, when the roads were bad and some of the wagons ahead of them were stuck in the mud. "Calline" (Caroline, the nigh leader), giving her an awakening jerk of the line, "stop dreamin' with dem y'ears o' yourn." "Jer'miah'* (Jeremiah, the off wheeler), "you'll think the insex is bit'n you if you don't put dem sholdahs agin dat collah." "Dan'l" (Daniel, the wheeler he is on), giving him a sharp dig in the ribs with his boot-heels, the road getting heavier every minute, "no foolin', you old hahdened sinnah ! " " Member, Mrs. N'nias '* (Mrs. Ananias, off leader), "if dis yere wagon sticks in dat hole ahead o' you, you '11 wish you 're down in the dakh grave 'longside dat lie'n husband o' yourn." And, on reaching the worst place in the road, yelling "Yep! Yah!" loud enough to be heard half-way from Washington to Baltimore, every prophet and lady mule in the team knew what to expect if the wagon stuck, and generally the faithful creatures pulled it through.

In one of the teams of the ammunition-trains that came to the depot, there was a little bay mule, the leader, that wore a small and sweetly tinkling sheepbell. I stroked her silky nose and neck often and was always glad to see her. On the Mine Run campaign.

one of the abortive campaigns referred to above, in December, 1863, while riding from Ely's Ford to Meade's headquarters at Robertson's Tavern on the Orange and Fredericksburg pike, a road which will be mentioned over and over again later, I overtook a long train. My progress by it was necessarily slow, for it was a pitch-dark night and the road narrow and very bad. But when I got near the head of the train I heard the little tinkling bell, and soon was alongside the faithful creature tugging away to the front. It may seem ridiculous, but I felt I had met a friend, and rode by her side for quite a while. I do not remember seeing her again till the army was crossing the James near Fort Powhatan.

While I do not wish to encumber the narrative with a burden of figures, yet it may interest the reader to know that we had in the Army of the Potomac, the morning we set off on the great campaign, 4300 wagons and 835 ambulances. There were 34,981 artillery, cavalry, and ambulance horses, and 22,528 mules, making an aggregate of 57,509 animals. The strength of the Army of the Potomac was between ninety-nine and one hundred thousand men. Burnside, who caught up with us the second day of the Wilderness, brought with him about twenty thousand more.

My original telegraph book, now before me, shows that I called for and issued between April 4 and May 2, the day before we moved, in addition to equipments and supplies of all kinds for infantry, artillery and cavalry, 2,325,000 rounds of musket and pistol cartridges as a reserve for what was already on hand. When Sheridan returned from his Trevilian raid and battle, we then had gone as far on our way toward Richmond as the White House, Mrs. Washington's attractive old home on the Pamunkey. At the mention of the memorable place, back comes the odor of mint being brewed in a julep, mint gathered in the famous war-stricken garden; and back come also a squad of dust-covered soldiers removing tenderly the bodies of their gallant commanders, Porter and Morris, killed at Cold Harbor, from ambulances, and bearing them aboard the boat for home. While at White House I ordered 88,600 rounds of pistol and carbine ammunition for Sheridan's command alone. When we reached City Point a few days later — the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, and Cold Harbor lay behind us — I called, on one requisition, for 5,863,000 rounds of infantry and 11,000 rounds of artillery ammunition, this 11,000 in addition to a like amount received at White House.

I should be untrue to my memory of Brandy if I did not record my high regard for my messmate through all that long winter of '63 and '64, Dr. J. B. Brinton, an assistant surgeon in the regular army. Transparency in minerals is rare, and always carries a suggestion of refinement; in the characters of men it is supreme, overtopping genius itself. It was Brinton's steady characteristic, and in all the long procession of friends that have blest my way through life I recall no one more humanly real, or who had more natural sweetness, or who cherished better ideals. Moreover, there was a fountain of quiet joyousness about him, too, and I fondly believe that the recording angel has but little in his book against either of us for those winter days and nights. For I know we passed them without envy, hatred, or malice toward any one in the world.

There was an incident in our life at Brandy, connected with Gettysburg, which possibly is worth relating. Batchelder, whose map of the battlefield of Gettysburg is authority, and whom we had fallen in with while we were there, asked to join our mess at Brandy when he came to the army to verify the positions of the various commands. One night, just after we had sat down to dinner, he entered quite tired. "Well," he announced, taking his place at the table, "I have been in the Second Corps to-day, and I believe I have discovered how Joshua made the sun stand still.

I first went to regiment and had the oflScers mark

on the map the hour of their brigade's position at a

certain point. Then I went to regiment in the

same brigade; they declared positively it was one or two hours earlier or later than that given by the other. So it went on, no two regiments or brigades agreeing, and if I hinted that some of them must certainly be mistaken, they would set me down by saying, with severe dignity, *We were there, Batchelder, and we ought to know, I guess'; and I made up my mind that it would take a day of at least twenty hours instead of thirteen at Gettysburg to satisfy their accounts. So, when Joshua's captains got around him after the fight and they began to talk it over, the only way under the heavens that he could ever harmonize their statements was to make the sun stand still and give them all a chance." Any one who has ever tried to establish the exact position or hour when anything took place in an engagement will confirm Batchelder's experience; and possibly, if not too orthodox, accept his explanation of Joshua's feat.

My duties called me daily to Meade's headquarters; and when his Chief of Ordnance, John R. Edie of Pennsylvania and of the class ahead of mine at West Point, was away on leave I took his place there permanently. Meade at this time was in his forty-ninth year, and his Gettysburg laurels were green. His face was spare and strong, of the Romanish type, its complexion pallid. His blue eyes were prominent, coldly penetrating and underhung by sweeping lobes that when cares were great and health not good had a rim of purplish hue. His height was well above the average, and his mien that of a soldier, a man of the world, and a scholarly gentleman. He wore a full, but inconspicuous beard, and his originally deep chestnut, but now frosted hair, was soft and inclined to wave on good, easy terms with his conspicuous and speaking forehead. His manners were native and high-bred, but, alas! they reared a barrier around him which cut him off from the love of his army, and I doubt if it would ever have rallied around him had he been relieved and recalled, as it did around McClellan. In social hours, when things were going well, no man in civil or military life would outshine him in genial spirits or contribution of easy and thoughtful suggestive speech.

He had, too, that marvelous instrument, a rich, cultivated voice. But nature had not been altogether partial: she had given him a most irritable temper. I have seen him so cross and ugly that no one dared to speak to him, — in fact, at such times his staff and everybody else at headquarters kept as clear of him as possible. As the campaign progressed, with its frightful carnage and disappointments, his temper grew fiercer — but, save Grant's, everybody's got on edge, and it was not to be wondered at. Nevertheless, Meade was a fine, cultivated, and gallant gentleman, and as long as the victory of Gettysburg appeals to the people he will be remembered gratefully, and proudly too. In camp his military coat, sack in cut, was always open, displaying his well-ordered linen, vest, and necktie; when mounted, he wore a drooping army hat, yellow gauntlets, and rode a bald-faced horse with a fox-walk which kept all in a dog-trot to keep up with him, and on more than one occasion some one of the staff was heard to say, "Damn that horse of Meade's! I wish he would either go faster or slower."

Hancock, who commanded the Second Corps, was, like Hooker, a very handsome, striking-looking man; both were of the military type and looked and moved grandly. He was symmetrically large, with chestnut hair and rather low forehead, but authority was in his open face, which, when times were storming, became the mirror of his bold heart; "so that in battle," says Walker, his distinguished Inspector-General, " where his men could see him, as at Williamsburg and Gettysburg, he lifted them to the level of his impetuous valor. But when he was surrounded by woods and he could not see his enemy, as at Ream's Station and the Wilderness, he was restless and shorn of much of his effectiveness, very unlike the great commander he was as he rode up and down his lines, inspiring them with his electrical energy, until severely wounded, when Pickett was coming on." When he returned to duty I happened to be at Meade's headquarters. Some one observed, "There's Hancock," who was just dismounting. Meade came hurrying out from his quarters, bareheaded and with illuminated face — I can hear his rich-toned voice as he said, "I'm glad to see you again, Hancock," and grasped the latter's outstretched hand with both of his. They had not seen each other since the great day.

Sedgwick, who commanded the Sixth Corps, was stocky, had short, curhng chestnut hair, was a bachelor, and spent lots of time playing solitaire. His whole manner breathed of gentleness and sweetness, his soldiers called him Uncle John, and in his broad breast was a boy's heart. I saw him only a few hours before it ceased to beat at Spotsylvania.

Sheridan joined the army just before we moved and so I saw much less of him than of any of the other corps commanders. He was not of delicate fibre. His pictures are excellent, preserving faithfully the animation of his ruddy, square face and large, glowing dark eyes. With his close army associates he threw off rank and fame and made many a night memorable and loud, and Lee's final overthrow is due in great measure to him. He had a genius for war and his name will last long.

Meade's chief of staff was Humphreys, and as so much of the success or failure of an army hangs on that position, a word about him will not be out of place. Moreover, his services were great as a corps commander, for after we got in front of Petersburg, Hancock, on account of his Gettysburg wound, had to give up command, and Meade assigned Humphreys to succeed him at the head of the famous Second Corps. He was a small, bow-legged man, with chopped-off, iron gray moustache; and when he lifted his army hat you saw a rather low forehead, and a shock of iron-gray hair. His blue-gray dauntless eyes threw into his stern face the coldness of hammered steel. I never saw it lit up with joy but once, and that was long after the war, as he met an old classmate at West Point on graduation day. And yet off duty, by his simple manners, unfailing in their courtesy, and his clear, easy, and informing talk, he bound friends and strangers to him closely. Look at him well: you are gazing at a hero, one who has the austere charm of dignity and a wellstored mind. Like a knight of old, Humphreys led his division against the heights of Fredericksburg; and at Gettysburg, on the second day, he was only driven from the Emmitsburgh road salient after a most desperate defense, probably saving the line. He graduated in the class of 1831, Meade in that of 1835. And now I come to two men on Meade's staff whose names like daisies in a meadow dot the history of the Army of the Potomac: Seth Williams, who was the Adjutant-General, and General Henry J. Hunt, Chief of Artillery. To set them forth so that the reader would see them and know them as they were, would give me keen pleasure, for there never was a sweeter-tempered or kindlier heart than Williams's, or a braver one than Hunt's. Williams's hair was red, his face full, open and generous, and always lit up as if there were a harp playing in his breast. At Appomattox, when Lee was going through the trying ordeal of surrendering his army, the only one of all in the room whom he greeted with anything like cordiality was Williams; for all others his face wore its native dignity. Williams was from Maine, and had been Lee's adjutant at West Point when he was superintendent.

Hunt, the chief of artillery, whose complexion was about the color of an old drum-head, had rather dull black eyes, separated by a thin nose. His West Point classmates loved him, and called him "Cupid." He was lion-hearted, and had won brevet on brevet for gallant conduct. At Gettysburg it was Hunt, riding through the storm, who brought up the fresh batteries and put them into action at the critical moment of Pickett's charge. Both he and Williams have long since made their bed in the grave.

There is a great temptation to dwell on other members of the staff. On Ingalls, the chief quartermaster, a classmate of Grant's: a chunky, oracular-looking man who carried sedulously a wisp of long hair up over his otherwise balding pate, and who, besides being the best quartermaster the war produced, could hold his own very well with the best poker players in the army or Congress, and in those days there were some very good ones in both Senate and House. On McParlin, the head of the medical department, Duane, the chief engineer, Michler, Mendell, and Theodore Lyman of Boston, of Meade's staff. All were my seniors, and their character and services I remember with veneration. Especially would I love to dwell on those who were about my ovv^n age, not one of us over twenty -five, mere boys as it were: Sanders, Bache, Bates, Edie, Cadwalader, Biddle, Pease, and handsome George Meade, with whom I passed many a pleasant hour. So far as our services or personaHties had significance, we were hke the httle feathery clouds which sometimes fringe great ones as they bear steadily on. And, truly like them, we have melted away. The big clouds, on the other hand, that we accompanied, at more or less distance, with such light hearts. Grant and Meade, are lying richly banded low down across the glowing sunset sky of History. When I visited the knoll, a few weeks ago, where Meade had his headquarters, and where we all passed a happy winter, — it is now bare, clothed only in grass, with here and there an apple tree or a locust in bloom, that have taken the places of the young pines, — I thought of them all. It is needless to say that the scene from the old camp offered its contrasts. Where desolation had brooded, clover was blooming; in the fields where the bleaching bones of cattle, horses, and mules, had stippled the twilight, the plough was upturning the rich red earth with its sweet, fresh breath of promise. In short, the choral songs of Peace and Home had replaced the dirges which underlie the march of glory.

Grant had his headquarters in the Barbour house in Culpeper, now the site of the county jail. At this time he was in his forty-second year, having graduated at West Point in 1843. I am not vain enough to think that anything I may say will add to the world's knowledge of him. Several of his personal aides, and many admirers, have written books about him which like sconces throw their beams on his personality and remarkable career, but neither they as friends or the predacious critics who have driven their beaks fiercely into him, have yet revealed to me the source of the fascinating mystery in his greatness.

WTien he came to the Army of the Potomac — I remember the day well — I never was more surprised in my life. I had expected to see quite another type of man: one of the chieftain-type, surveying the world with dominant, inveterate eyes and a certain detached military loftiness. But behold, what did I see? A medium-sized, mild, unobtrusive, inconspicuously dressed, modest and naturally silent man. He had a low, gently vibrant voice and steady, thoughtful, softly blue eyes. Not a hint of self-consciousness, impatience, or restlessness, either of mind or body; on the contrary, the centre of a pervasive quiet which seemed to be conveyed to every one around him — even the orderlies all through the campaign were obviously at their ease. I often looked at him as I might have looked at any mystery, as day after day I saw him at his headquarters, especially after we had reached City Point, — the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, and Cold Harbor, with their frightful losses, lying behind us.

There was nothing in his manner or his tone or his face that indicated that he had ever had anything to do with the victories of Fort Donelson, Vicksburg, and Missionary Ridge, or that his unfinished task, so momentous for the country, troubled him. There was certainly something evoking about him. What of the earth, earthy, what of exceeding greatness, what dim constellation of virtues, were looking out of that imperturbable but sadly earnest face? At one time, and not long before the period dealt with, lean Want had sat at his table. Few tried companions frequented his door or cheered his fireside then. The war comes on, the spirit of the age, as I believe, in the guise of Opportunity knocks at his door, and without powerful friends to back him, and with no social or political influence to clear the way for him, in less than four years, never courting advancement, never resenting malevolent criticism or ill treatment, tempted always, there he was aloft in the country's eye the winner of its telling victories, a Lieutenant- General in command of all the armies of the North, and with the destiny of the Republic hanging on him! Has Genius ever shown her transcendency more masterfully?

It is needless for me to add that, marvelous as this career had been, the future was to unfold it, rising far above the level of wonder. If his antagonist Lee be the culmination of the gentleman and soldier of our land, and of all lands, Grant made the splendor of his background for him by putting into the hitherto hard face of war two humanizing features, chivalry's posies so fragrant with glory, magnanimity and modesty in the hour of Victory.

There was one man on Grant's staff whose name should not be forgotten ; in fact, it ought to be carved on every monument erected to Grant, for it was through him. Colonel John F. Rawlins, his chief of staff, that Grant's good angel reached him her steadying and uplifting hand. He was above medium size, wore a long black beard, and talked in a loud, emphatic voice. Sincerity and earnestness was the look of his face.

He had on his staff three of my West Point acquaintances, Comstock, Babcock, and Porter. Comstock had been one of the instructors in mathematics; Babcock and Porter had been in the corps with me. Captain Hudson of his staff I have good reason for remembering; for I was playing "seven-up," with him and the late Admiral Clitz of the navy, when my ordnance depot at City Point was blown up by a torpedo brought down from Richmond, and placed by a couple of daring Confederates clothed in our uniform on the deck of a barge loaded with artillery ammunition. Our innocent game was going on in the tent of Captain Mason, who commanded Grant's escort. First came the explosion of the depot, that shook the earth and was felt for miles; then a solid shot tore through the mess chest. I doubt if a game of cards ever ended quicker than that one. We fairly flew from the tent, and at once came under a shower of bursting shells and falling wreckage. One of the barge's old ribs, that must have weighed at least a ton, dropped right in front of Clitz. Changing his course, he uttered only one remark, the first half of the 35th verse of the 11th chapter of the Holy Gospel of Saint John. Then, with eyes on the ground, and wondering, I suspect, what would come next, he passed at great speed right by Grant, who in his usually calm voice asked, "Where are you going, Clitz?" The admiral hove to, and then streaked it for his war vessel, and we never finished the game.

The youngest and nearest my own age on Grant's staff was "Billy" Dunn, one of the best and truest friends I ever had. He had reddish hair and naturally smiling eyes, and died not long after the war. Peace, peace be on the spot where the brave and sweet-hearted fellow sleeps!

The looming gravity of the situation North and South, which I have tried to depict, left no doubt, I think, in the minds of Grant and Lee, that the coming campaign called on Lee to give Grant a crushing defeat at the very outset of the campaign ; or at least a blow that would send him reeling back across the Rapidan, leaving him stunned and helpless for months, as Burnside and Hooker had been left before him. For he knew, and every observer of the times knew, that such a defeat would give to the dastard Peace Party, on whom the last hope of the Confederacy hung, immediate and bold encouragement to declare "the War a failure," and at the coming presidential election,Lincoln's administration, pledged to its continuance, would be swept away. In that case, every leader and private in the Confederate Army knew that, once their inwardly despised friends got hold of the helm, under the cowardly cloak of humanity they would ask for an armistice. That granted, the goal would be reached and their weary Confederacy, weighted down with slavery, would be at rest. The children of the leaders of the Peace Party of the North ought to thank God for balking their fathers' incipient treason; for where would their present pride of country be.^* The last hopes then of reaching a harbor called on Lee for a victory; our country's destiny on Grant, for the complete destruction of Lee's army; for until then there could be no peace with safety and honor.