A FIRE IN THE WILDERNESS

Documenting the first clash between two of the Civil War’s most iconic figures.

“Not since Napoleon fought the Duke of Wellington at Waterloo in 1815,” writes historian Reeves, “had two such celebrated commanders faced one another in the field.” The author sets the scene in the spring of 1864, when the Army of the Potomac, huge and well equipped but not terribly confident after three years of mostly painful experiences at the hands of Robert E. Lee’s smaller Army of Northern Virginia, began the year’s campaign. Perhaps the North’s principal advantage was its commander, Ulysses Grant, who understood that wars are won by resources and persistence, both of which he possessed. He faced a very aggressive commander who focused on battlefield victories when preserving his army might have been a better idea. Marching south in early May, Grant’s army entered the Wilderness, “a tangled forest of underbrush and thickets.” He hoped to pass through quickly, but the Army of the Potomac did nothing quickly, and Lee attacked the following day. Thick brush restricted visibility to a few yards, and copious rifle smoke restricted it even more. Units became lost or panicked or attacked into the unknown with suicidal results. Communications were worse than usual; messages were delayed or lost, units attacked piecemeal. At the end of the second day, the advance seemed stalled, and the Union had suffered greater losses. But instead of imitating his predecessors by retreating north to recover, Grant continued on toward Richmond. Another year of fighting remained, but Lee’s shrunken army never attacked again. Reeves offers visceral descriptions of the fires that spread through the dry forest, burning to death hundreds of wounded soldiers, as well as vivid accounts of movements, battles, debates between commanding generals, and a generous helping of anecdotes from individual soldiers. He has clearly absorbed the confused geography of the Wilderness, but the maps could use improvement. Readers should keep a Civil War military atlas on hand.

An expert account of a particularly horrific Civil War battle.