page_title: Battle of the Wilderness
section_title: Disposition of forces and movement to battle
hierarchical_section_title: Battle of the Wilderness / Disposition of forces and movement to battle
caption_attribution_description: English: Union troops cross the Rapidan River at Germanna Ford prior to the Battle of the Wilderness
context_page_description: The Battle of the Wilderness, fought May 5–7, 1864, was the first battle of Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant's and General George G. Meade's 1864 Virginia Overland Campaign against Gen. Robert E. Lee and the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia in the American Civil War. Both armies suffered heavy casualties, around 5,000 men killed in total, a harbinger of a bloody war of attrition by Grant against Lee's army and, eventually, the Confederate capital, Richmond, Virginia. The battle was tactically inconclusive, as Grant disengaged and continued his offensive.
  Grant attempted to move quickly through the dense underbrush of the Wilderness of Spotsylvania, but Lee launched two of his corps on parallel roads to intercept him. On the morning of May 5, the Union V Corps under Maj. Gen. Gouverneur K. Warren attacked the Confederate Second Corps, commanded by Lt. Gen. Richard S. Ewell, on the Orange Turnpike. That afternoon the Third Corps, commanded by Lt. Gen. A. P. Hill, encountered Brig. Gen. George W. Getty's division and Maj. Gen. Winfield S. Hancock's II Corps on the Orange Plank Road. Fighting until dark was fierce but inconclusive as both sides attempted to maneuver in the dense woods.
context_section_description: On May 4, 1864, the Army of the Potomac crossed the Rapidan River at three separate points and converged on the Wilderness Tavern, near the edge of the Wilderness of Spotsylvania, an area of more than 70 sq mi (181 km²) of Spotsylvania County and Orange County in central Virginia. Early settlers in the area had cut down the native forests to fuel blast furnaces that processed the iron ore found there, leaving what was mainly a secondary growth of dense shrubs. This rough terrain, which was virtually unsettled, was nearly impenetrable to 19th-century infantry and artillery maneuvers. A number of battles were fought in the vicinity between 1862 and 1864, including the bloody Battle of Chancellorsville in May 1863.
  The Wilderness had been the concentration point for the Confederates one year earlier when Stonewall Jackson launched his devastating attack on the Union right flank at Chancellorsville. But Grant chose to set up his camps to the west of the old battle site before moving southward; unlike the Union army of a year before, Grant had no desire to fight in the Wilderness, preferring to move to the open ground to the south and east of the Wilderness before fighting Lee, thereby taking advantage of his superior numbers and artillery.
  Grant's plan was for the V Corps (Warren) and VI Corps (Sedgwick) to cross the Rapidan at Germanna Ford, followed by the IX Corps (Burnside) after the supply trains had crossed at various fords, and to camp near Wilderness Tavern. The II Corps (Hancock) would cross to the east on Ely's Ford and advance to Spotsylvania Court House by way of Chancellorsville and Todd's Tavern. Speed was of the essence to the plan because the army was vulnerably stretched thin as it moved. Although Grant insisted that the army travel light with minimal artillery and supplies, its logistical "tail" was almost 70 miles.
  Sylvanus Cadwallader, a journalist with the Army of the Potomac, estimated that Meade's supply trains alone—which included 4,300 wagons, 835 ambulances, and a herd of cattle for slaughter—if using a single road would reach from the Rapidan to below Richmond. Grant gambled that Meade could move his army quickly enough to avoid being ensnared in the Wilderness, but Meade recommended that they camp overnight to allow the wagon train to catch up. Grant also miscalculated when he assumed that Lee was incapable of intercepting the Union army at its most vulnerable point, and Meade had not provided adequate cavalry coverage to warn of a Confederate movement from the west.
  On May 2, Lee met with his generals on Clark Mountain, obtaining a panoramic view of the enemy camps. He realized that Grant was getting ready to attack, but did not know the precise route of advance. He correctly predicted that Grant would cross to the east of the Confederate fortifications on the Rapidan, using the Germanna and Ely Fords, but he could not be certain. To retain flexibility of response, Lee had dispersed his Army over a wide area. Longstreet's First Corps was around Gordonsville, from where they had the flexibility to respond by railroad to potential threats to the Shenandoah Valley or to Richmond. Lee's headquarters and Hill's Third Corps were outside Orange Court House. Ewell's Second Corps was the closest to the Wilderness, at Morton's Ford.
  As Grant's plan became clear to Lee on May 4, Lee knew that it was imperative to fight in the Wilderness for the same reason as the year before: his army was massively outnumbered, with approximately 65,000 men to Grant's 120,000, and his artillery's guns were fewer than and inferior to those of Grant's. Fighting in the tangled woods would eliminate Grant's advantage in artillery, and the close quarters and ensuing confusion there could give Lee's outnumbered force better odds. He therefore ordered his army to intercept the advancing Federals in the Wilderness.
  Ewell marched east on the Orange Court House Turnpike, reaching Robertson's Tavern, where they camped about 3–5 miles from the unsuspecting soldiers in Warren's corps. Hill used the Orange Plank Road and stopped at the h
caption: Union troops cross the Rapidan
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