Nowhere to Run

The Wilderness, May 4th & 5th, 1864

John Michael Priest

• Publisher: Savas Publishing
• Year: 2022
• eBook ISBN: 9781940669533
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: American Civil War History
• Index: History

An immersive Civil War history, Nowhere to Run is a riveting account of the one of the most devasting battles between the Union and Confederate armies.
 
At 12:00 a.m. on May 4, 1864, Ulysses S. Grant and George G. Meade's Army of the Potomac began crossing the Rapidan River in an effort to turn the strategic right flank of Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. Confederate reaction was swift. Richard E. Ewell's Second Corps and Ambrose P. Hill's Third Corps moved to meet the advancing Union infantry, artillery, and cavalry in the heavy terrain known simply as "The Wilderness," a sprawling area of second growth scrub oak, brush, and gullies, interspersed with meandering creeks in Virginia. Inside this difficult terrain one of the largest and bloodiest battles would consume two days and thousands of men.
 
Nowhere to Run is the story of the men and their officers who fought and died in the horrific fighting. With Civil War historian John Michael Priest's customary thoroughness, specially drawn maps, and extensive documentation, readers will experience the battles just as the men themselves saw it, and wrote about it, from their own eyes and their own pens.

CHAPTER ONE

“You have played hell!”

MAP 1: Federal and Confederate troop dispositions before noon on May 4, 1864.

May 4, 1864: The Army of the Potomac
The V Corps at Mitchell’s Station

(7.25 miles southwest of Culpeper Court House on the Orange and Alexandria Railroad. 12 miles west of Germanna Ford.)*

Sergeant Austin “Jim” Stearns (Company K, 13th Massachusetts) never forgot that exhausting day. Roused out at 1:00 A.M., his regiment struck their tents and within an hour and a half had left Mitchell’s Station and headed toward Stevensburg by way of Culpeper Court House.¹ Along the route Colonel Samuel Leonard’s brigade joined the rest of Brigadier General John C. Robinson’s division.²

It had become unpleasantly warm. In squads, the veteran New Englanders began to “overhaul” their excess baggage. They threw away letters, stockings, drawers, overcoats, blankets, and knapsacks. Stearns wisely discarded his extra socks and drawers. He cut his blanket in half but kept his heavy overcoat, because he knew he would need it later. He ripped the cape off to lighten it some. Most of his comrades tossed aside everything but their rations.³ Regimental adjutant, First Lieutenant Abner Small (16th Maine), concentrated upon the natural beauty which surrounded him. He studied the twinkling stars in the black sky, and reassured himself they would gradually yield to a gorgeous day.⁴

Captain Amos M. Judson (Company E, 83rd Pennsylvania) paid more attention to the division’s route. About three and one fourths of a mile northeast of Mitchell’s Station, the brigade turned southeast on the Raccoon Ford Road, rather than continue toward Culpeper Court House. Small fires lined the road south toward the crossing. After following this road a short distance, the brigade suddenly countermarched northwest back toward its original point of departure. Judson surmised the brigade had been part of a huge feint to draw the Confederates’ attention five miles farther west than the V Corps’ actual destination – Germanna Ford.⁵ Trudging north through Culpeper Court House, the division followed the Orange and Alexandria Railroad to Brandy Station. The men, averaging a little under three miles per hour, marched almost sixteen miles since leaving their winter bivouacs.

The 88th Pennsylvania (Baxter’s brigade), Captain George B. Rhoads (Company B) commanding, wheezed into Brandy Station at first light, where, without halting, it joined the lumbering wagon train, and sluggishly followed it south. Caked with the fine powdery dust churned up by the thousands of troops and the wagons, the men turned various shades of brown. Their mouths were dry and their bodies sweltering. Brandy Station, as Private John Vautier (Company I) complained, did not deserve its name. If there was any alcohol around, the officers had probably already secreted it away because the ever sensitive noses of the enlisted men could not find any of it as they shuffled through the place.⁶ The brigade passed through the camps of the battle toughened VI Corps, and, Robinson’s division did not catch up with the rest of the corps until it arrived at Germanna Ford.⁷

By morning, May 4, Robinson’s division had reached Stevensburg, with Brigadier General James Wadsworth’s Fourth Division on the road behind it. Wadsworth’s men had already covered twenty miles before reaching Stevensburg and still they had to keep going.⁸ A gentle breeze rustled the wild flowers along the roadside. They cheered up the sensitive Small as he marched down the road. When Leonard’s brigade passed through the tiny village and crested an open ridge just beyond it, he beheld a spectacle which he would never forget. Below him thousands of infantrymen, marching with their weapons at the shoulder, followed by their supporting artillery, wove their way along the roads toward the Rapidan River. The sunlight, which bounced off their rifles and the burnished cannon barrels, danced in the morning light like so many little mirrors.⁹

The division halted to keep from crowding the lead brigades of the corps which had stalled near Germanna Ford, while the engineers feverishly worked to float two pontoon bridges across the river. The 83rd New York used the respite to enjoy breakfast. An hour later, the New Yorkers resumed the march with the division, somewhat refreshed and in a fairly good mood.¹⁰ The Massachusetts men in Leonard’s brigade were not relishing the idea of moving deeper into Virginia. They were heading for the Rapidan River again. The veterans mused over the river’s quaint name. On some of the maps it appeared as the “Rapid Ann” – a name which they believed belonged to a fleet footed young lady of days past. The regiment waded through the thick dust kicked up by the huge army on the road. The men were glad to be away from the army’s massive, slow moving wagon trains. Near the quartermaster’s headquarters a number of them remembered seeing 500 wagons lined up as straight as soldiers on parade. They disliked the incessant racket of mules being shod, wheels being rimmed, and blacksmiths hammering away, and looked forward to being serenaded to sleep by snores rather than by the irritating braying of over 2,000 cantankerous mules.¹¹

The VI Corps at Brandy Station

Reveille sounded at 2:30 A.M. in Brigadier General Thomas H. Neill’s brigade.¹² Simultaneously, it blared throughout the VI Corps’ bivouacs.¹³ Nearby, the worried veterans of the 7th Massachusetts (Eustis’ brigade) sadly ripped their tents from the roofs of their comfortable log huts. This was their last campaign and they did not want to take part in it.¹⁴ In Brigadier General David A. Russell’s brigade, Sergeant Alfred Thompson (Company A, 49th Pennsylvania) started his day with prayer and devotions. He was going to be right with God despite his evil surroundings.¹⁵

Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Hyde (7th Maine) began his morning with the customary ablutions – his servant pouring two canteens of water over his head followed by a rub down. After stuffing a hard cracker in his mouth, he set out with Major General John Sedgwick (VI Corps commanding) and the rest of the headquarters staff.¹⁶

The corps, according to the official itinerary, took the road toward Germanna Ford at 4:00 A.M.¹⁷ The ever observant Captain Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., on the general’s staff, awakened at 3:00 A.M. Three hours later, the corps was on the march. “At 4 A.M., nominally,” he smirked, “we started on the Spring Campaign.” At 6:00 A.M., he rode out in the cold air upon a newly purchased $150 mare.¹⁸

The 1st Battalion, 4th New York Heavy Artillery silently left its camp as infantry, detached from the rest of the VI Corps artillery. No drum taps rapped the men into a cadence as they headed south in column of fours. They hauled everything imaginable with them and it did not take long for the men to start shedding their extra baggage.

Wilson’s Cavalry and the 50th New York Engineers at Germanna Ford

Brigadier General James H. Wilson’s cavalry division, led by the 1st Vermont Cavalry (Chapman’s brigade), contacted Captains James H. McDonald’s and Martin Van Brocklin’s companies of the 50th New York Engineers shortly before 3:00 A.M.¹⁹ At 4:00 A.M., the four companies of engineers pulled their pontoon train into park on a hill about one thousand feet north of the Rapidan. The New Yorkers unloaded their boats and planking and carried them down to the river. McDonald’s three companies (D, K, and M) worked a little faster than Van Brocklin’s Company C.²⁰

Lieutenant Colonel Addison W. Preston’s 1st Vermont Cavalry guarded the operation from a position several rods north of the ford. The muzzle flashes which stabbed sporadically through the fading darkness from the southern side of the Rapidan startled Second Lieutenant Waldo J. Clark (Company G). Before he had time to react, his company, with the rest of the regiment in its wake, splashed into the dark waters to silence the Confederate skirmishers.²¹ Private Charles Chapin (Company L) took a bath when his horse stumbled and completely immersed his feet and pants legs in the cold water. While he slogged ashore, Chapin glared at the first rays of sunlight which were poking over the tree tops. The skirmishers disappeared and the cavalrymen, having achieved their objective, dismounted to dry out and enjoy coffee. Chapin glanced at his watch. It was 5:30 A.M.²² By the time the firing had stopped both McDonald’s and Van Brocklin’s men had finished their bridge work. It had taken the engineers one and one half hours to float and install two parallel pontoon bridges across the two hundred twenty foot wide Rapidan.²³

The V Corps at Germanna Ford

Brigadier General Charles Griffin’s division arrived at the ford at 6:00 A.M. An hour later Brigadier General Romeyn Ayres’ brigade marched to the other side of the river.²⁴ At 8:00 A.M., the 22nd Massachusetts crossed with Colonel Jacob Sweitzer’s brigade. Private Robert Carter (Company H, 22nd Massachusetts) felt elated. Grant’s “go for the throat” Western attitude permeated the ranks. Carter and his friends believed the Army of the Potomac was not going to recross the Rapidan until that final push was over and the war was won.²⁵

Private Theodore Gerrish (Company H, 20th Maine) studied the brilliant blue sky and breathed in a chest full of the balmy air. It offered some relief from the stifling march through the woods below Stevensburg.²⁶ Birds whistled and piped in the trees. It did not seem as if he were marching to battle. He stared blankly at the dark, swift water which surged under the swaying pontoon bridge, mesmerized.²⁷ Nearby, the Army Engineers with “volunteered” foot soldiers struggled to float another pontoon bridge across the rolling, rain swollen river.²⁸ At 10:00 A.M., Wadsworth’s division, following an hour’s rest, marched across the swaying pontoons to the other side.²⁹ The V Corps was entirely over the Rapidan by noon.³⁰ By then the Engineers had another bridge in operation, which increased the flow of troops to the southern bank.³¹ The corps halted for an hour, waiting for the VI Corps and the IX Corps to catch up with it.³² The soldiers crawled over and around the abandoned Confederate rifle pits on that side of the river, relieved they had been abandoned so quickly.³³ Souvenir hunters such as Gerrish scroun...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introductory Remarks
• Chapter One: “You have played hell!”
• Chapter Two: “Oh, Captain, I killed one of ’em.”
• Chapter Three: “Orr, I am not coming out of that hole alive.”
• Chapter Four: “Soldiers, we have always driven the enemy before us.”
• Chapter Five: “I can’t go no farther.”
• Chapter Six: “Death was in every shot.”
• Chapter Seven: “Show the enemy you have won laurels...”
• Chapter Eight: “Give them hell, boys.”
• Chapter Nine: “What are our sabres for?”
• Chapter Ten: “Grant will whip! Grant will whip!”
• Appendix
• Endnotes
• Bibliography