Wilderness, Battle of the, was one of the fiercest battles of the American Civil War (1861-1865). The battle, named after the forested area where it was fought, took place in eastern Virginia on May 5 and 6, 1864. Union General Ulysses S. Grant led 120,000 soldiers against Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s 62,000 troops. Both sides suffered heavy losses in the battle, and neither side could claim a victory. The Union suffered more than twice as many casualties as the Confederates. However, the losses did not prevent Grant from driving his troops south toward the Confederate capital at Richmond, Virginia.
In July 1863, Union troops led by General George Meade defeated Confederate troops under Lee at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. After Gettysburg, the two sides fought little before settling into their winter quarters on opposite sides of the Rapidan River in Virginia.
On March 9, 1864, President Abraham Lincoln promoted Grant to lieutenant general and gave him command of all Northern armies. As part of Grant’s plan to defeat the Confederates, Meade’s Army of the Potomac was assigned to confront Lee in northern Virginia and to attempt to occupy Richmond. Grant accompanied Meade and his army throughout the campaign.
On May 4, the Union army crossed the Rapidan River and moved into a desolate area of northern Virginia known as the Wilderness. The Wilderness was a dense forest crossed by only a few roads. Grant did not want to fight in the Wilderness. Instead, he hoped to march through the area and then meet Lee’s troops out in the open. But Lee, whose men were outnumbered, preferred to fight in the Wilderness, where the terrain would favor a defensive battle and neutralize Grant’s larger army.
Lee hoped to delay the fighting because he was waiting for Confederate General James Longstreet to arrive with more troops. But on May 5, Confederate troops under General Richard Ewell accidentally ran into Union troops under General Gouverneur Warren, and the Battle of the Wilderness began. Ewell’s troops were successful at first. But reinforcements soon arrived for both sides, and the battle ended that night in a stalemate. About 3 miles (5 kilometers) to the south, Confederate troops led by General A. P. Hill fought Union General Winfield Hancock’s corps. Hancock’s troops drove back Hill’s outnumbered troops until darkness stopped the Union advance.
The next day, Hancock resumed his advance, and it succeeded until Longstreet’s troops arrived. Longstreet’s troops attacked the Union flank (side) and pushed the army back, but Longstreet himself was accidentally shot and wounded by his own troops. Lee took over for Longstreet, but Hancock’s men stopped his attack. To the north, the Confederates attacked the flank of Warren’s corps and had initial success, but darkness and reinforcements stopped the advance.
On May 7, neither side resumed the battle. That night, Grant withdrew the Union army from its positions and marched south. Union soldiers cheered Grant for moving toward Richmond. Lee anticipated Grant’s move and also took his army south. The two sides would meet again the next day at Spotsylvania Court House in Virginia.
During the two days of fighting in the Battle of the Wilderness, the Union army suffered about 17,700 casualties and the Confederates about 8,000. Throughout the battle, the underbrush of the forest caught fire, and many wounded men died in the flames.
