Rhea

The Battle of the Wilderness May 5-6, 1864. By Gordon C. Rhea. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1994.

The battle of the Wilderness, the opening contest between Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee in the 1864 Overland campaign, haunts the collective American memory as one of the most nightmarish struggles waged in a war known for its brutality. The very name of the Wilderness conjures into mind a hellish vision of a primordial landscape enveloped with impenetrable vegetation, shrouded in dense smoke and raging fires, erupting with furious combat and unimaginable human suffering, especially for those wounded that were unable to escape from encroaching flames and were tragically burned alive. In The Battle of the Wilderness May 5-6, 1864, noted Civil War historian Gordon C. Rhea cuts through the complex tangles of time to reveal the neglected truth of this infamous battle. Rhea, one of the world’s foremost experts on the battle, presents the Battle of the Wilderness as the opening study of an award-winning series on the Overland campaign.

Rhea conducted extensive research for this volume, consulting numerous primary resources such as manuscripts, diaries, letters, newspaper accounts, official reports, memoirs, and secondary campaign studies. The book, organized as a tactical narrative history of the battle, focuses on the two primary days of the Wilderness conflict and Grant’s decision to continue the campaign after the battle had reached a tactical stalemate, rather than retreating as previous Union commanders had done before in Virginia. The research also incorporates the accounts of the ordinary soldiers of both sides who endured the atrocious carnage of the Wilderness, which had been the scene of severe fighting only a year before during the battle of Chancellorsville.

Rhea’s narrative relates the ferocious bloodshed of the entire battle, from the opening assaults along the Orange Turnpike on May 5 to the climatic showdown on the Orange Plank Road on May 6, including the lesser known cavalry actions south of the Wilderness. Rhea presents a number of novel conclusions regarding generalship of both Grant and Lee, and Rhea objectively criticizes both for their mistakes. Grant’s performance is faulted for his failure to extricate the Army of the Potomac from the Wilderness in a timely manner as his strategy dictated, for failing to coordinate the separate assaults of the first and second days, and most of all, for severely underestimating the audacity of his advisory, who proved himself to be far superior to the opponents Grant had faced before in the Western Theater. Robert E. Lee’s mythical reputation, on the other hand, is challenged for not reacting quickly to Grant’s flanking maneuver, for allowing A. P. Hill’s 3rd Corps to rest during the night after the first day’s vicious combat and not reorganize their defenses, for not pressing Richard Ewell’s 2nd Corps to assault earlier on the second day against the Federal right flank, and for resulting to a questionable frontal attack after the wounding of 1st Corps commander James Longstreet and the resulting breakdown of the Confederate flanking attack on the Union left.

Rhea concludes that battle of the Wilderness, while a tactical victory for Lee, ended with strategic “Confederate failure,” declaring that “the southerners had been unable to maintain the initiative. Now the Army of Northern Virginia’s offensive capacity was spent. . . . The only reasonable course of action remaining to the Confederates was to stay in their strong defensive line and wait for Grant to make a mistake” (441). Although Lee had inflicted terrible punishment on the Army of the Potomac, he did not destroy his enemy, and Grant’s decision to continue marching southward to Spotsylvania Courthouse determined the future outcome of campaign and ultimately the war. Although thousands more would fall in the epic contest between Grant and Lee, the die was cast for their last legendary meeting at Appomattox Courthouse.

Than Dossman

The Battle of the Wilderness, May 5-6, 1864. By Gordon C. Rhea. (Baton Rouge and London: Louisiana State University, 1994).

In The Battle of the Wilderness, May 5-6, 1864, historian Gordon C. Rhea delivers a detailed narrative of the engagement between Confederate forces under the command of Robert E. Lee and Union forces led by the newly appointed commander of the Union armies, Ulysses S. Grant. The first match between Lee and Grant, The Battles of the Wilderness presented each leader with formidable challenges. Lee needed to design a strategy aimed at securing a Confederate victory against an army twice the size of his own. Grant faced the challenge of maneuvering Lee’s forces into a position more favorable to Union forces than Lee’s entrenched position on the banks of the Rapidan River in Virginia. Lee’s troops rested securely behind fortified positions on the southern bank of the river facing Major General George Meade’s Army of the Potomac.

Rhea provides an analysis of the leadership capabilities of Grant, Lee and their subordinate officers. According to the author, Lee’s leadership was frequently characterized by “unabashed aggressiveness, combined with an irrepressible penchant for taking risks.” As a result, Lee hoped to exploit the striking power of his smaller army. Despite his successes against the Union army, Lee’s army suffered from limited resources. As a result, his engagements severely depleted the supply of soldiers in the south. Unless Lee delivered a devastating blow to the Union army, the North would win due to attrition. Rhea states that 1864 represented Lee’s last chance to win, if it was not already too late. Lee’s subordinate officers included Lieutenant Generals James Longstreet, Richard S. Ewell, and Ambrose Hill. Rhea describes Lee’s generals as a quarrelsome lot, whose idiosyncrasies and flaws of judgment precluded Lee’s full trust in their leadership. Lee’s challenge included forcing these leaders to work together in battle. By May 2^nd, Lee commanded an army of approximately 65,000 soldiers.

The author’s assessment of the Union army also reveals the newly appointed Grant’s struggle to impose an aggressive imperative upon the command structure of the Union army. Grant’s leadership style matched Lee’s in aggressiveness and determination. Grant recognized Lee’s weakness and vowed to defeat the confederate general through sheer attrition if necessary. Grant intended to keep pounding away at Lee’s army until Lee surrendered or his army was destroyed. In addition, Grant rejected the previous policy of occupying the southern countryside. Southern cities remained secondary goals to the destruction of Lee’s army.

Rhea’s assessment of General Meade’s leadership reveals a crippling obsession with cautious movement of troops and obsessive attention to detail. Grant provided a renewed focus for the Union army. Nevertheless, Grant apparently acquiesced to Meade’s leadership decisions during much of the battle. The reason for Grant’s reticence is never satisfactorily explained. The author’s analysis of Meade’s choices in generals is decidedly more favorable. According to the author, Winfield Hancock, Gouverneur K. Warren and John Sedgwick represented the most promising set of commanders ever assembled in the Union army. Nevertheless, Grant also suffered from poor communication and a lack of coordination amongst his commands.

Rhea’s narrative describing the prosecution of the battle from May 4^th through May 5^th provides the reader with exhaustive detail of the battle and troops movements. His account of troop movements, command decisions and logistical difficulties allows the reader to grasp the chaos of battle and the challenges faced by both sides. The author spares criticism for neither side of the battle. He blames Lee for failing to position his men in a more advantageous position to stop Meade’s advance. He criticizes Grant for failing to use Burnside's army to pin Lee down early in the campaign. Meade receives criticism for his obsessive concern over guarding his supply line, thus failing to effectively utilize his cavalry to screen the advance of his army. In addition, Rhea argues that once engaged Meade consistently failed to effectively deploy his superior force against a weaker army. Perhaps most controversially, Rhea maintains that the Union army became bogged down in the Wilderness because of sloppy Union planning and reconnaissance, not due to any decisive action by Lee. During the battle, Rhea argues that Ewell was indecisive, Hill was careless, and Longstreet was slow. As a result, Lee controlled his forces no better than his Union counterparts.

Rhea’s work is exhaustively researched and the author provides the reader with twenty maps designed to facilitate an understanding of what is often a confusing narrative. An appendix provide readers with the order of battle, followed by a comprehensive bibliography.