Showing results for "Wilderness"
Petersburg Day One: Wednesday, June 15, 1864
On June 15 the Army of the Potomac began to cross the James River. It was an emotional moment. A. M. Judson of the 83rd Pennsylvania likened the army’s arrival at the James to Xenophon and his 10,000 Greeks reaching the Black Sea. As the 7th Rhode Island marched passed a nearby swamp a band […]
Read more...From the Chickahominy to the James: June 4-14, 1864
In the aftermath of Cold Harbor, the armies led by Robert E. Lee and George Meade were at a strategic stalemate less than twenty miles from Richmond. The advantage though was to the Confederates. Lee still held Richmond and his army was in overall better shape. Despite some heavy officer losses, Lee’s men had high […]
Read more...A Comprehensive View of the Overland Campaign, Part IV
Part of a Series – Part I and Part II and Part III Forgotten Victories Grant wrote to Halleck on May 26 stating “Lee’s army is really whipped.”[1] He found that Lee was unable to attack his positions at North Anna and believed that the Army of Northern Virginia was bound to break. As Grant maneuvered the Army […]
Read more...Recruiting The Regiment: A New State Answers The Call To War
ECW welcomes Lance J. Herdegen. News of the firing on Fort Sumter in 1861 was announced from the pulpits of small-town churches and elsewhere on a peaceful Sunday morning in Wisconsin. “The effect…can hardly be told upon those who had persistently insisted…that no American would ever open fire upon an American flag,” one man remembered. […]
Read more...Recruiting The Regiment: “Remarkable Patriotism”
Today is the 77th anniversary of Operation Overlord, D-Day, the Invasion of Normandy during World War II. As I followed my annual habit of reading accounts or speeches connected to the event, similar themes between 1944 and 1861 appeared. Volunteerism and patriotism has long been at the heart of forming American military units, though in […]
Read more...Myths and Misconceptions of Cold Harbor
There are certain battles which have a lot of misconceptions attached to them. Perhaps one of the most myth-shrouded battles is the 1864 Cold Harbor engagement near Richmond. Part of the Overland Campaign, it was at the tail end of Grant’s grueling drive across central Virginia. Many readers likely know that one of the biggest […]
Read more...“On the Heights”: The Field Hospital at Brompton in May 1864
The wagons rolling into Fredericksburg never seemed to stop. Mary Caldwell, an inhabitant of the town, wrote in her diary, “The road near the fair grounds seems to be literally covered.”[1] They were filled with broken and bloodied bodies, the debris of the dual battles of the Wilderness and Spotsylvania Court House. For almost two […]
Read more...A Comprehensive View of the Overland Campaign, Part III
Part of a Series – Part I and Part II The Center of Gravity Lies at Ox Ford Ulysses Grant suffered terrible casualties in the fighting around Spotsylvania Courthouse, and his periphery strategy failed. General Franz Sigel retreated from the Shenandoah Valley, and Benjamin Butler was “bottled up” on the James River peninsula. Only the […]
Read more...Harris Farm: The 1st Massachusetts Heavy Artillery’s Baptism of Fire
General Ulysses S. Grant had decided to move around Gen. Robert E. Lee’s right once again in another flanking maneuver in the Overland Campaign. On the night of May 18, 1864, the Union’s Army of the Potomac started shifting away from Spotsylvania Court House. On the following day, Private Joseph W. Gardner of Company K, […]
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