A World on Fire_ Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War - Amanda Foreman [337]
Instead of marching quickly through the Wilderness, the Federal commanders took a leisurely pace, so that by midnight the advance of the army was still less than halfway through. In the darkness, there was many a startled yell as an accidental kick or stumble over a mound of leaves revealed human remains beneath. Many soldiers were too frightened to sleep that night, but not the new volunteer James Pendlebury, who lay down on the ground curled up like a dog. Pendlebury had made the beginner’s mistake of throwing away his knapsack during the hot and tiring march. “In throwing away the knapsack I also threw away my cartridge box,” he wrote. During the night, his captain “came and wakened me with his foot, and, handing me a cartridge box, said, ‘Here take that, and don’t ask any questions.’ He had stolen it from one of the other men because he was so fond of me.”48
Pendlebury’s regiment was part of General Hancock’s II Corps, one of the first to enter the Wilderness on May 4. There was no possibility he would be able to hide from the fighting once it began. “This was my first battle and I can’t say that I was a brave man, for I wished I was at home,” he wrote in his memoir. “But after I had fired a few times I began to get accustomed to the work and soon I had no fear about me.” His baptism started at 4:00 P.M. on May 5. Lee had succeeded in placing two of his three corps inside the Wilderness even though General Longstreet was still a day’s march away. Forty thousand Confederates pitched into seventy thousand Federals. Just as Lee had hoped, the Union regiments lost their sense of direction, firing wildly into the trees and charging hither and thither. At sunset many soldiers had no idea where they were and resorted to lying behind improvised breastworks. There was nothing to see except the outlines of tree trunks. But the noises coming from the woods were terrifying. As at Chancellorsville, stray sparks lit the dry underbrush, and fires spread along the forest floor, burning everything in their path.
Yet neither army flinched. At dawn on the sixth the fighting resumed with the same ferocity. Under General Hancock’s direction, Pendlebury’s corps suddenly found its cohesion and began to overpower the Confederates. Lee was near the Orange Plank Road when he saw hundreds of troops running toward him. Realizing that the line had broken, he spurred his horse forward in a desperate attempt to rally the men himself. At that moment, the first of Longstreet’s regiments—a brigade of Texans—came storming up, having marched through the night from the Old Fredericksburg Road. The sight of Lee caused them to shout in dismay, “Lee to the rear! Lee to the rear!”49 The Texans rushed ahead of him; but of the eight hundred who went forward, only three hundred returned unhurt.
Longstreet’s corps had tramped through little-used tracks, taking every shortcut no matter how snarled and wild in order to reach Lee, the boom of gunfire spurring them on when exhaustion threatened. Captain Francis Dawson, who had passed his artillery examination in April, was exhilarated despite his arduous ride. “You know that until I left I had never been in the saddle in my life,” he wrote to his parents, “but in sober truth the saddle is the headquarters of a staff officer and by dint of long practice you cannot fail, however stupid, to become moderately expert.”50 Dawson was riding with Longstreet and his staff when Lee met them. Displaying none of the hesitancy that had undermined his leadership at Knoxville, Longstreet saw immediately that the woods could aid them if he ignored conventional tactics and allowed the terrain to dictate the formation of his battle line.51 His troops ran forward, with Longstreet and his staff, including Dawson, riding ahead of the surge.