Wilderness to Petersburg Campaign

Wilderness to Petersburg Campaign (1864).On 4 May 1864, Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant initiated a campaign with the Union's Army of the Potomac to defeat Gen. Robert E. Lee and the Confederate's Army of Northern Virginia. For forty days, Grant hammered and maneuvered. Lee deftly fended off Grant's force, which was double his own. The series of battles, from the Battle of the Wilderness to the siege of Petersburg, was called the “Overland Campaign” to distinguish it from Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan's Peninsular Campaign (Seven Days' Battle), in 1862, which had involved an approach by water. The Overland Campaign cost 60,000 Union casualties and perhaps 35,000 Confederate losses. Strategically, it was a Union success, ending in June with Lee's army backed against Petersburg and Richmond, unable to maneuver.

Grant began by crossing the Rapidan River west of Lee and stopping for the night in the timbered Wilderness near Spotsylvania, Virginia. On 5 May, Lee surprised Grant in the Wilderness and fought him to impasse in a bloody two‐day battle costing 18,000 Federal and 11,000 Confederate casualties. Undeterred, Grant swung southeast, hoping to interpose between Lee and Richmond and draw the Confederates out of the Wilderness. While J. E. B. Stuart's cavalry delayed Grant's progress, a portion of the Confederate army beat Grant to Spotsylvania Court House.

The Confederates constructed a formidable line of earthworks above the hamlet. On 8 May, the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House began when Grant battered Lee's left wing at Laurel Hill. On 10 May, he attacked Lee's flank on the Po River and orchestrated a massive assault against the entire entrenched Confederate line. None of these efforts succeeded. On 12 May, Grant assailed a bulge in Lee's formation known as “the Mule Shoe” and broke through, but the Confederates rallied and repulsed the attackers. For twenty‐two hours, fearsome combat raged unabated at a bend in the Confederate earthworks called the “Bloody Angle.”

Lee constructed a new line across the base of the Mule Shoe. For several days, the Union forces probed for weak points. Following a bloody repulse by Confederate artillery on 18 May, Grant gave up trying to overrun Lee's earthworks and once again swung east and south. Lee countered by deploying his army into an inverted “V” below the North Anna River, its tip resting on the river. Grant crossed the stream in pursuit, only to find that Lee's V had divided his army. Sickness left Lee too debilitated to exploit his ingenious trap.

On 26 May, Grant circled southeast across the Pamunkey River and advanced toward Richmond. Lee parried by drawing a strong line along Totopotomoy Creek. 30 May, Lee attacked part of Grant's army near Bethesda Church, and on 1 June, the armies clashed in the Battle of Cold Harbor. Both sides rushed in reinforcements, and on the morning of 3 June, Grant launched a concerted assault to break Lee's line. The frontal attack across open land against entrenched positions was repulsed with 12,000 Union soldiers killed or wounded. Thwarted in his frontal attacks, Grant again resorted to maneuver. On 12–14 June, he marched to the James River and crossed his army on ferries and a pontoon bridge, heading for Petersburg, the railroad center serving Richmond.
[See also Civil War: Military and Diplomatic Course.]

Bibliography

Edward Steeve , The Wilderness Campaign, 1960.
Gordon C. Rhea , The Battle of the Wilderness: May 5–6, 1864, 1994.
Gordon C. Rhea , The Battles for Spotsylvania Courthouse and the Road to Yellow Tavern, May 7–12, 1864, 1998.

Gordon C. Rhea