Bloody Spring by Joseph Wheelan

Author:Joseph Wheelan [Wheelan, Joseph]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780306822070
Publisher: Da Capo Press
Published: 2017-05-02T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 4

The Battle That Never Happened

THE NORTH ANNA

The cold relentless energy with which [Grant] is pursuing Lee is actually sublime. The rebels call him “butcher” and “bull-dog.”

—CAPTAIN SAMUEL C. SCHOYER, 139TH PENNSYLVANIA1

It’s no use killing these fellows; a half-dozen take the place of every one we kill.

—A CONFEDERATE SOLDIER DESCRIBING THE UNION ARMY2

1

Friday, May 20–Saturday, May 21, 1864 North Anna River

LATE MAY 20, Hancock’s II Corps, reinforced to 20,000 men by Robert Tyler’s heavy artillerymen, left its camps at Anderson’s Mill, east of Spotsylvania Court House. Teenage artilleryman Frank Wilkeson wrote that as the army began to move that night, “all around us, the air hummed and vibrated with life.” II Corps’ infantry brigades passed Wilkeson’s battery “at a swinging gait, with their arms at will.” The men, he said, “growled and swore, and grumbled and enjoyed life right savagely.”3

A little after midnight, the corps’ leading brigades left the Telegraph Road and turned eastward toward Guiney Station. The tread of infantrymen and the rumble of iron wheel rims on the hard roads—portions of them corduroyed by army pioneers—filled the sultry night air with the unmistakable sounds of large numbers of soldiers on the move. Near Massaponax Church Road, Hancock’s infantrymen stepped aside to let the artillery pass; every wagon was packed with sleeping gun crewmen.

Wade Hampton’s Confederate cavalrymen were watching and reporting to Lee what they saw. At 4 a.m. on May 21, Lee dispatched Ewell’s Second Corps to block the Telegraph Road at Mud Tavern, three miles south of where Hancock had turned toward Guiney Station. By mid-morning, Ewell’s Rebels reached Stanard’s Mill on the Po River, a mile from Mud Tavern, and barricaded the Telegraph Road.4

V Corps did not start south until II Corps had finished passing its camps at mid-morning. By then, Grant and Meade knew that Ewell’s corps was moving toward the Telegraph Road, but they were unsure whether the First and Third Corps were behind Ewell; indeed, they could have used Phil Sheridan’s Cavalry Corps for reconnaissance and to screen their movements, but he had not yet returned from his Richmond expedition. Lacking good information, Grant and Meade diverted V corps onto the Guiney Station road, behind Hancock’s corps, rather than send it down the Telegraph Road and into a certain fight with an enemy force of unknown size.5

After II and V Corps had gone, Burnside’s IX Corps and Wright’s VI Corps withdrew from their positions and followed them, and Lee then ordered his First and Third Corps to follow Ewell to the Telegraph Road. The Army of Northern Virginia was athwart the shorter, more direct route south, while the Army of the Potomac was hoping that its left hook would land between Lee and Richmond.

THE UNION ARMY’S new objective was the North Anna River, fifteen miles south of Spotsylvania Court House, and Hanover Junction, north-central Virginia’s railroad hub. Its rail lines connected the Rebel army, Richmond, and their larder, the Shenandoah Valley. If the Yankees got there first, the Confederates, pledged to protect Richmond at all costs, would have to attack the Army of the Potomac on Grant’s terms.

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