This Hallowed Ground - Bruce Catton [212]
One more blow the Confederates swung before the battle ended. The extreme right of the Army of the Potomac, operating in dense woods where no regimental commander could see all of his own men, had an exposed flank. Lee found it, and at dusk the Federal right flank was driven in just as the left flank had been driven during the morning. But John Sedgwick, who was still another imperturbable Union corps commander cut to the Thomas pattern, was in charge here; and as the Rebel drive lost its impetus in the smoky darkness he brought up reserves, stabilized a new line, and got the flank securely anchored. And at last the noise died down, the firing stopped, the smoke drifted off in the night, and the two exhausted armies settled down to get what sleep they could, while the cries of wounded men in the smoldering forest (flames creeping up through the matted dead leaves and dried underbrush) made a steady, despairing murmur in the dark.
… The fearful story of war is mostly the story of ordinary men who are called upon to suffer and endure and die to no purpose that they can easily discover; and generally the story of a great battle is no more than the story of how some thousands of these men acquit themselves. But once in a great while the terrible drama of war narrows to a very small focus: to a place in the heart and mind of one man who has been burdened with the great responsibility of making a decision and who at last, alone with himself in a darkened tent, must speak the word that will determine how history is to go.
It was this way in the Wilderness after the two days of battle were over. Here were the two armies, lying crosswise in a burned-out forest, death all around them, the scent and feel of death in the soiled air. They had done all they could, nobody had won or lost anything that amounted to very much, and the men who had to carry the muskets would go on doing whatever they were told even if they were destroyed doing it. But someone at the top must finally say what was going to happen next, and as the night of May 6 settled down this someone was U. S. Grant.
Technically, his army (Meade’s army, actually, but from now on to the end people would think of it as Grant’s) had been whipped quite as badly as Hooker’s army had been whipped at Chancellorsville, almost on the same ground, one year earlier. It had had horrifying losses — seventeen thousand men or thereabouts shot or blown loose from their commands — its flanks had been beaten in, it had completely failed to drive Lee away from his chosen ground, and in 1863, Hooker no more roughly handled, had gone back north of the Rapidan to recruit and refit and to let Lee decide where the next fight would take place. Now it was up to Grant, and the crucial decision of all the war was his to make.
Grant thought it over, taking counsel of nobody, throughout the day of May 7. The armies stayed in each other’s presence, there was picket-line firing all day long, and although things were easy compared with what happened on the two days before nothing seemed to be settled; as far as the men in the ranks were concerned, the battle was still going on. Finally night came in once more, and after dark the divisions of the Army of the Potomac were pulled out of line and put on the road for another march. And when they moved, they all moved — south.
In other words, the battle of the Wilderness was no defeat, simply because