THE BURNING WOODS, MAY 6 —RESCUING WOUNDED. From a sketch made at the time.
DISTRIBUTIONG AMMUNITION UNDER FIRE TO WARREN’S FIFTH CORPS, MAY 6. From a sketch made at the time.
stroyed. A part of it stood, and, darkness helping them, the assailants ־were prevented from destroying Wright’s division. Wright kept his men in order.
This is in fact the end of the battle of the Wilderness, so far as relates to the infantry. Our cavalry was drawn in from Todd’s tavern and the Brock road. The enemy’s cavalry followed them. They were all intrenched, and General Grant decided that night that he would continue the movement to the left, as it was impossible to attack a position held by the enemy in such force in a tangled forest. . . .
Note.—Warren’s Fifth Corps loci the advance of the Army of the Potomac from the Wilderness to Spotsylvania, and reached there on the 8th. Crawford’s division attacked the Confederate center and developed a strongly intrenched line. On the 9th Burnside’s corps arrived opposite the Confederate right and Hancock reached the field on the right of Warren. Sheridan’s corps of 10,000 sabers cut loose from the main army and started on the memorable raid around Lee’s army. That day, also, General Sedgwick was killed by a Confederate sharpshooter and General H. G. Wright assumed command of the Sixth Corps. On the 10th Hancock crossed the river Po, threatening the Confederate left, and, finding the position intrenched, retired under a heavy fire. Warren assailed the Confederate right center about sp.i, and was repulsed. Warren’s attempt was followed by an attack all along the line. A picked storming column of Sixth Corps regiments, led by Colonel Emory Upton, penetrated beyond the second line of Confederate intrenchments, but was compelled to fall back. Burnside’s troops pushed close up to the enemy’s works on Lee’s right and intrenched under fire. General T. G. Stevenson, commanding a division under Burnside, was killed while leading the advance. The assault generally failed. On the night of the 11th the Second and Sixth corps were massed opposite the Confederate center for a grand attack on the 12th.
breastworks, when it was struck in the flank, rolled up in confusion, and General Seymour and General Shaler and some hundreds of his men were taken prisoners. But the brigade was not de-
on the extreme right on the Germanna Plank road, due north from where General Grant was standing. Shaler’s brigade was close np to the enemy, as indeed was our whole line. Shaler was busy building
and joining the right of Hancock, now held hy my brigade. Burnside’s other division, under Stevenson, moved up the Plank road in our support, and I placed four of his regiments, taken from the head of his column, on my right, then pressed to the rear and changed my whole line, which had been driven back to the Plank road, forward to its original line, holding Field’s division in check with the twelve regiments now under my command. . . .
Burnside had finally become engaged far out on our right front; Potter’s division came upon the enemy intrenched on the west side of a little ravine extending from Ewell’s right. General Burnside i says that after considerable fighting he connected his left with Hancock’s right and intrenched.
Hancock was out of ammunition, and had to replenish the best way he could from the rear. At 3:45 p. M. the enemy advanced in force against him to within a hundred yards of his logworks on the left of the Plank road. The attack was of course the heaviest here. Anderson’s division came forward and took possession of our line of intrenchments, but Carroll’s brigade was at hand and drove them out at a double quick.
Now let us return to our right, and stand where General Meade and General Grant were, at the Lacy house. The battle was finished over on the left so far as Hancock and Burnside were concerned. Grant had been thoroughly defeated in his attempt to walk past General Lee on the way to Richmond. Shaler’s brigade of Wright’s division of Sedgwick’s corps had been guarding the wagon-trains, but was now needed for the fight and had returned to the Sixth Corps lines. It was placed
OUT OF THE WILDERNESS, SUNDAY MORNING, MAY 8—THE MARCH TO SPOTSYLVANIA.
From a sketch made at the time.
251