page_title: James S. Wadsworth
section_title: The Wilderness and death
hierarchical_section_title: James S. Wadsworth / Civil War service / The Wilderness and death
caption_attribution_description: English: James Samuel Wadsworth (1807-1864)
context_page_description: James Samuel Wadsworth was a philanthropist, politician, and a Union general in the American Civil War. He was mortally wounded in battle during the Battle of the Wilderness of 1864.
context_section_description: At the start of Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant's 1864 Overland Campaign, Wadsworth led his division in Maj. Gen. Gouverneur K. Warren's V Corps at the Battle of the Wilderness. On this day Wadsworth was Grant's oldest divisional commander at 56 years old, about nine years older than the next oldest. On May 5, Wadsworth was ordered to counter march and help defend the left of the Union position. However, he had lost his direction in the dense Wilderness underbrush and drifted to the north, exposing the left of his division to a sudden and harsh attack, which in turn led to the same treatment of the Union division next to Wadsworth.
  Wadsworth was mortally wounded on May 6, trying to turn his two intact brigades (his other brigade had collided with the Federal units on his left and lost cohesion) when he was shot in the back of his head. Wadsworth fell from his horse and was captured by Confederate forces that were pursuing his retreating men. He would die two days later in a Confederate field hospital. Wadsworth's son-in-law, Montgomery Harrison Ritchie, went into the Confederate camp to retrieve his body.
  The day before he was wounded, he was promoted to major general, but this appointment was withdrawn and he received instead a posthumous brevet promotion to major general as of May 6, 1864, for his service at Gettysburg and the Wilderness.
  Wadsworth's remains were brought back to Geneseo, New York, and buried there in Temple Hill Cemetery.
caption: Brig. Gen. Wadsworth (seated, far right) and his staff
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