Battle of Wills by David Alan Johnson

Author:David Alan Johnson
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781633882461
Publisher: Prometheus Books
Published: 2016-09-23T04:00:00+00:00

REALLY WHIPPED

At about 6:30 on the morning of May 22, General Grant received reports that General Lee and his army were heading south, down the Telegraph Road, toward the North Anna River. Grant had been hoping to get to the North Anna first, to catch Lee before he had the chance to dig in, but now there was no possibility of that. He was too far away, too far south, for Grant to catch up with him. Grant could see that the Confederates would be able to cross the North Anna well before any of his troops could get near enough to attack Lee on the north side of the river.

General George Gordon Meade was disappointed that Lee had managed to get away. He was hoping to catch the enemy out in the open and finish him off before he could take shelter on the south side of the river. But Grant was too optimistic—and too hardheaded, like his father—to let a minor setback get him down. He would catch Lee out in the open someplace else—there would be a lot more opportunities in the months to come.

“We were now to operate in a different country from any from any we had before seen in Virginia,” Grant noted with confidence.35 “The roads were wide and good, and the country well cultivated.” He went on to say that the area “was new to us,” and that they did not have reliable maps or guides to help them find the roads or to advise them “where they led to.” But Grant was not at all fazed by these shortcomings. “Our course was south,” he insisted, “and we took all the roads leading in that direction which would not separate the army too widely.”

By and large, the army shared Grant's enthusiasm. Soldiers groused and grumbled about the marching and the rations, but soldiers in all the armies since the days of Julius Caesar had always griped about something, usually the food and the marching. Considering all that the Army of the Potomac had been through during the past two and a half weeks, the men were in excellent spirits. On May 20, Lieutenant Elisha Hunt Rhodes of the Second Rhode Island Volunteers wrote in his diary, “A mail arrived today, the first in several days. I received eighteen letters as my share.” Well-fortified by many letters from home, Lieutenant Rhodes went on to say, “We have finished our earthworks and now feel secure. Our works are strong and built of large trees covered with earth. Let the Rebels try to take them if they want to.”36

General Grant himself had a lot to do with this way of thinking. The men in the ranks had confidence in Grant, the kind of confidence that comes from getting the measure of someone after watching them do their job competently. The army did not admire him, the way they had admired General McClellan, their first commanding general. (Although there was an increasing number who admitted that if Grant had been in command in 1862, the war would probably be over by now.

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