Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1864-10-20
The London Times on Grants Fighting

The London Times is constrained to admit
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. it
says:
! ferhaps the Americans NAV be proud of
| the pre-emlnence, but they have certainly
fought more desperately, for a longer time.
and with more dreadful slaughter, than any
nation before them. 1t would net be impos-
slble to match the results of any one DAYS
| battle with stories from the wars of the Old
! World; but never, we should think, in the
history OF man, were five such battles as
these compressed into six successive days.
II Is hard to conceive how nature could have
supported the exhaustion and strain. We
nave oeen told that after a single days hard
ngntlng, the lassltude and reaction are such
even In victorious and exultant army
That any fresh force might snatch its laurels
| from 1t; whereas, here are two armies hoty
engaged in the work of slaughter from the
morning of Thursday till the night of Tues
day, with scarcely the intermission of an
hour. On every day, except Saturday, there
was pitched battle contested with the ut
most fury; and even Saturday was devoted
to marching and fighting on the march. Nor
were these prodigious operations divided
among immense 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 ferocity of the fighting may
be inferred from the fact now reported that
the slaughter was produced without the aid
OF artillery. No rifed guns or murderous
smells dld execution among crowded masses.
The great battle of Friday, which is said to
have cost the Federals alone UPWARDS of 10.
700 men, was a hand-to-hand fight. The
Contederates were posted in the well-known
woods IN sthe vicinity of Charlottesville.
whers Hooker once received so bloody a re-
pulse, and so dense was the thicket that can
non could not come into play. Regiment
against regiment, man against man, the COM
oatants 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
In this respect to the patriot legions of the
South, they have fought in this campaign with
valor as obstinate as that of their enemies
No mere Indifferent or disaffected mercena-
RES could have been led from 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 spirit as resolute as that of
their adversaries.
= He Grant has stamped
q % 81 10 G IL, III
ais. No other General would either have
advanced upon WILDERNESS IS 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 an amount of success never achieved
before, except in repelling invasion.