Part 48 (1/2)

The battle of the preceding day had been a sort of ”feeler”--now the real struggle came.

By a curious coincidence, Grant and Lee both began the attack and at the same hour. At five o'clock in the morning the blue and gray ranks rushed together, and opened fire on each other. Or rather, they fired when they heard each others' steps and shouts. You saw little in that jungle.

I have already spoken more than once of this sombre country--a land of undergrowth, thicket, ooze; where sight failed, and attacks had to be made by the needle, the officers advancing in front of the line with drawn--compa.s.ses!

The a.s.saults here were worse than night fighting; the combats strange beyond example. Regiments, brigades, and divisions stumbled on each other before they knew it; and each opened fire, guided alone by the crackling of steps in the bushes. There was something weird and lugubrious in such a struggle. It was not a conflict of men, matched against each other in civilized warfare. Two wild animals were prowling, and hunting each other in the jungle. When they heard each others' steps, they sprang and grappled. One fell, the other fell upon him. Then the conqueror rose up and went in pursuit of other game--the dead was lost from all eyes.

In this mournful and desolate country of the Spottsylvania Wilderness, did the b.l.o.o.d.y campaign of 1864 begin. Here, where the very landscape seemed dolorous; here, in blind wrestle, as at midnight, did 200,000 men, in blue and gray, clutch each other--bloodiest and weirdest of encounters.

War had had nothing like it. Destruction of life had become a science, and was done by the compa.s.s.

The Genius of Blood, apparently tired of the old common-place mode of killing, had invented the ”Unseen Death,” in the depths of the jungle.

On the morning of May 6th, Lee and Grant had grappled, and the battle became general along the entire line of the two armies. In these rapid memoirs I need only outline this bitter struggle--the histories will describe it.

Lee was aiming to get around the enemy's left, and huddle him up in the thicket--but in this he failed.

Just as Longstreet, who had arrived and taken part in the action, was advancing to turn the Federal flank on the Brock road, he was wounded by one of his own men; and the movement was arrested in mid career.

But Lee adhered to his plan. He determined to lead his column in person, and would have done so, but for the remonstrances of his men.

”To the rear!” shouted the troops, as he rode in front of them; ”to the rear!”

And he was obliged to obey.

He was not needed.

The gray lines surged forward: the thicket was full of smoke and quick flashes of flame: then the woods took fire, and the scene of carnage had a new and ghastly feature added to it. Dense clouds of smoke rose, blinding and choking the combatants: the flames crackled, soared aloft, and were blown in the men's faces; and still, in the midst of this frightful array of horrors, the carnival of destruction went on without ceasing.

At nightfall, General Lee had driven the enemy from their front line of works--but nothing was gained.

What _could_ be gained in that wretched country, where there was nothing but thicket, thicket!

General Grant saw his danger, and, no doubt, divined the object of his adversary,--to arrest and cripple him in this tangle-wood, where numbers did not count, and artillery could not be used.

There was but one thing to do--to get out of the jungle.

So, on the day after this weird encounter, in which he had lost nearly 20,000 men, and Lee about 8,000, Grant moved toward Spottsylvania.

The thickets of the Wilderness were again silent, and the blue and gray objects in the undergrowth did not move.

The war-dogs had gone to tear each other elsewhere.

x.x.xIII.

BREATHED AND HIS GUN.

In the din and smoke of that desperate grapple of the infantry, I have lost sight of the incessant cavalry combats which marked each day with blood.