Page:Cambridge Modern History Volume 7.djvu/549

 1864] Battles of the Wilderness and Spotsylvania. 517 farms or openings. Here, where artillery and cavalry were useless, manoeuvring and intelligent direction practically impossible, where opposing lines often could not see each other until almost actually in contact, there raged for two days, May 5 and 6, an irregular and scattered battle along a line of five miles, with but little apparent result beyond mutual destruction. In this first fight were developed two peculiarities which became characteristic of the campaign, and shaped its final result. Both sides resorted more industriously than ever to the use of extemporised field entrenchments, with which, the moment arms were stacked, they covered every change of line, bivouac, or camp against surprise or attack. The second peculiarity, displayed for the first time by the Army of the Potomac, was that a single battle did not necessarily end the campaign. Though in the two days there had been hard fighting, heavy losses, and con- siderable captures of prisoners on both sides, the Army of the Potomac held the field ; and the enemy did not reappear on the 7th. Moreover when, on the evening of that day, the troops and trains were ordered southward, and after dark Generals Grant and Meade and their headquarters' staffs were seen riding in advance with their horses' heads turned towards Richmond, the soldiers knew what it meant, and greeted their chief with such an ovation of cheers, salutations, and bonfires that their enthusiasm had to be checked lest the unusual noise should give notice to the enemy that the Army of the Potomac had begun a new flank movement, not in retreat as formerly, but forward, past Lee's army to Spotsylvania Court House. Grant made for Spotsylvania Court House in order to push forward toward Richmond. Lee made for the same place with the idea of getting between Grant and Fredericksburg, assuming that Grant was falling back. It was only a march of eight or ten miles, but the Confederates arrived first, and were thus enabled to post themselves on highly advantageous ground, in an irregular semicircle, having a radius of about a mile and a half, from which there jutted out toward the north a triangular salient nearly a mile long, and more than half a mile wide. The country was both more open and more hilly than in the Wilderness, and by rapid entrenchments Lee's army turned the position during the next two days into a great fortified camp of extraordinary strength. Grant's army drew itself round this position, with the feeling on his part that it was an obstacle in his path which he must remove. Accordingly he took the aggressive, and on May 10 hurled a heavy assault against Lee's centre. Fortune varied at different points, but the net result amounted to a repulse. The defeat, however, shook neither Grant's faith nor his purpose. While his report to Washington next morning could only state that, after six days of very hard fighting and heavy losses, " the result up to this time is much in our favour," his dispatch contained the resolute and characteristic phrase, " I purpose to fight it out on this line, if it takes CH. XVI.