Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 14.djvu/533

 The Campaign from the Wilderness to Petersburg. 527

airy across Grant's line of march on the Brock road. The enemy's cavalry (division) failing to dislodge Stuart, gave up the accomplish- ment of that work to the Fifth corps (Warren's). When Anderson ar- rived at Spotsylvania Courthouse, he found the cavalry ( Fitz. Lee's division) at the Courthouse, maintaining gallantly an unequal fight with the Fifth corps and Torbert's cavalry division. Torbert was checked on his right, and Stuart, with the assistance ot several brigades of infantry sent to him by Anderson, soon created in the enemy what Swinton describes as "an excited and nervous condition of mind and a tendency to stampede " — ascribed by him, however, to want of rest and Wilderness experience. Stuart stopped their advance, and they fell to entrenching of their own accord. The conduct and skill of Stuart in this fight on the 8th, on which so much depended, always met the warm approval of the Commanding-General, and he spoke of it, with grateful remembrance, in the days of March, 1865, when disasters began to crowd upon us. Let us lay this laurel on the tomb of him who so soon afterwards rendered up his life leading, with heroic courage, his mere handful of wearied men against Sheri- dan's overwhelming numbers. That General Grant did not push up other troops to Warren's assistance, to enable him to drive these two divisions (now perhaps not more than eight thousand strong) from his front is attributable to the fact that he detained Hancock (the nearest supporting corps ) to meet an anticipated attack iVom General Lee on his rear. That General Lee, with his small force, reduced by two days' heavy fighting, should check this great body of one hun- dred and twenty thousand infantry (reduced by Wildernes expe- rience), and at the same time threaten its rear and cause the Federal commander to send to Washington for reinforcements, is a thing almost unparalleled in the history of war. On General Lee's arrival with Ewell's corps in the afternoon, after a second repulse of tiie enemy, the line of Spotsylvania was taken up. That a part of the line was weak on Rodes's right and General Edward Johnson's salient, has often been asserted. The reason for taking it was that the road in the rear might be left free from missiles, for the conve- nient use of the trains.

The repulse of Hancock's corps, in its attempt to threaten our left and rear, by General Early with Heth's division, and the terrible repulses given by Anderson's corps (Field's and Kershaw's divisions) to the repeated assaults of heavy columns, thrown against them from the Second and Fifth corps, and to the grand assault by both ot these corps simultaneously at five o'clock in the afternoon are matters of