Mineral Point weekly tribune. (Mineral Point, Wis.) 1859-1868, 1864-06-22
The London Times on Grants Fighting.

The London Tines is con straiIi ed to a dmit
that the Army of the Potomac under Gen.
GRANTS leadership, has manifested unsur-
passed fighting qualities IN an article on
the series of battles in the Wilderness, il
saws:
Perhaps the Americans NAV DE proud of
the pre- -eminence, but they have certainly
fought more desperately, for a longer time,
I and with more dreadful slaughter, than any
, nation before then. 1t would not be impos-
sible to match the results of any one day's
battle With stories from the wars of the Old
W orld; but never, We should think, in the
| history OF man, were FIVE such battles as
these compressed into six successive daye-
1t Is hard to conceive how nature could have
supported the exhaustion and strain. We
have been told that after a single days hard
lighting, the lassitude and reaction are such
even III a victorious and exultant army
that any fresh force might snatch its laurels
from 1t; whereas, here are two armies hotly
engaged in the work of slaughter from the
morning of Thursday till the night of Tues
day, with scarcely the intermssion of an
hour. On every day, except Saturday, there
was pitched battle, contested with the ut
most fury; ana even Saturday was devoted
70 marching and fighting on the march. Nor
were these prodigiOus operations divided
among IIemense numbers brought into action
by relays. Neither army numbered appa-
rently over one hundred thousand men, and
OF these every man seemed to have been en-
gagged in every battle. Indeed, we are ex-
pressly told that the Federal reserves were
brought up the very first day.
The desperate ferocty of the fighting NAV
be inferred from the fact now reported that
the slaughter was produced without the aid
of artillery. No rifed guns murderous
shells did execution among crowded masses.
The great battle of Friday, which is said to
have cost the Federals alone upwards of TO-
600 men, was a hand-to-hand fight. The
Contederates were posted in the well-known
woods IN the vicinity of Charlottesville,
where Hooker once received so bloody a re-
pulse, and so dense the thicket that can
non could not come into play. Regiment
against regiment. man against man, the com
batants fired and hacked each other in this
tangled wilderness until night closed in and
an intercepted report from Gen. Lee tells US
that, on his side, the heaviest loss was in men
killed outright, and that he had comparative
ly few wounded. 1t is clear, indeed that
whatever may be said of the composition of
the Northern armies, and of their inferiority
III this respect to the patriot legons Of the
South, they have fought in this campaign with
vaior as obstinate as that Of their enemies.
No mere Indifferent or disaffected merceua-
rles could have been led from d battle like
that at Wilderness to three more such battles
at Spottsylvania. Be the impulse what it
may, the Federals are fighting in stern reali-
ty, and with a spirit as resolute as that of
their adversaries
He Grant has stamped
a new character on the tactics of the FEEDER
ais. No other General would either have
advanced upon Wilderne SIS after the severe
battle of the 9Th, or followed up an almost
victorious though retiring enemy after the
still harder fighting on the 9th. None but
he, again, would have attacked his adversary
so resolutely on the 6th and on the 9th, or
held his ground so tenaciously in spite of
failure. Under his command the Army of
the Potomac has achieved in invading Vir-
ginia amount of success never achieved
before, except in repelling invasion.