to throw Birney forward with his own and Mott's division. Birney went in on both Getty's right and left, a section of Ricketts's Pennsylvania battery moving up the road abreast of the troops. Dow's Sixth Maine Battery was put into position at the junction of the two roads to fire over the heads of our men. Meanwhile Gibbon's and Barlow's divisions were forming in the road farther to the left, Frank's brigade of the latter having been halted to hold the junction of the Brock road and a road leading out to the Catharpin road. All of the Second Corps artillery, except the six guns accounted for, was established on some high, cleared ground which ran backward from the extreme left of our line, forming a marked exception to the general topographical character of the Wilderness.

No sooner had Getty, Birney, and Mott become fairly engaged in front of the Brock road than the disadvantages resulting from a lack of more complete preparation became painfully evident. It was scarcely possible to bring up the remaining troops through the dense woods with sufficient rapidity to meet the demands from the leading divisions for reenforcements. One of the fiercest battles of history had begun, and both armies were entering upon the first action of the opening campaign with ferocious resolution. Owen's brigade, from Gibbon, was thrown in upon either side of the plank road to support Getty. Then Smyth's and Brooke's brigades,

from Barlow, went in from our extreme left, and with desperate resolution drove back Hill's right a considerable distance. Finally, Carroll's brigade, from Gibbon, was pushed up the plank road, where our troops had received a savage countercharge and had for the moment been forced back, leaving behind them Ricketts's two guns. Before the Confederates could secure the coveted trophies, detachments from the Fourteenth Indiana and Eighth Ohio succeeded in retaking the guns and hauling them by hand down the road. And so, amid those dense woods, where foemen could not see each other, where colonels could not see the whole of their regiments, where captains often could not see the left of their companies, the two armies thus suddenly brought into collision wrestled in desperate battle until night came to make the gloom complete. Thousands on either side had fallen. Of those who survived, many had not once beheld an enemy, yet the tangled forest had been alive with flying missiles; the whistling of the bullets through the air had been incessant; the very trees seemed peopled by spirits that shrieked and groaned through those hours of mortal combat.

"A wrestle as blind as midnight; a gloom that made manœuvres impracticable; a jungle where regiments stumbled on each other and on the enemy by turns, firing sometimes into their own ranks, and guided often only by the cracking of the bushes or the cheers and cries that rose from the depths_around.”— Badeau, vol. ii, p. 113.

The fighting ceased at dark. Neither side had secured any decisive advantage. Hill had been

driven some distance backward, and his two divisions had been considerably broken and disordered. General Humphreys, a very cautious commentator, expresses the opinion that had there been but an hour more of daylight Hill would have been driven wholly from the field; but Hancock's late arrival, owing to his long detour through Todd's Tavern, moving on a single, narrow road, prevented a complete success. Grant certainly had not expected to be attacked at that time and place, or he would not have sent Hancock away toward Shady Grove Church. Calling the Second Corps back from its turning movement, he had sought with one tremendous effort to lift and throw his antagonist. But he had underrated the valor and endurance of the Army of Northern Virginia, not to be daunted and not to be surprised; commanded by resolute, audacious, untiring leaders; defending a country with which it had become familiar by long occupation, and which was of a kind with that in which its soldiers had been reared. Upon the Union right the Fifth and Sixth Corps had met with varying fortunes in their contest with Ewell, but with no serious reverses.

CHAPTER XI.

THE WILDERNESS.-SECOND DAY.

WHEN night fell on the 5th of May the woods were full of the wounded, yet the utmost exertions of the medical staff and the ambulance corps could not avail to bring off the sufferers. The undergrowth was so dense that it was almost impossible to find the victims of the afternoon's battle, and the hostile lines were so close that any movement quickly brought down a heavy fire. During the night Grant, Meade, and Humphreys were earnestly engaged in preparing for the struggle of the coming day. On either side fresh troops were coming up: Longstreet's powerful corps, with Anderson's division of Hill's corps, from Orange Court House; Burnside's Ninth Corps from the line of the Rappahannock. The relative value of these re-enforcements was, however, far from equal, the preponderance being vastly on the Confederate side in point both of numbers and of discipline. The general plan of battle for the 6th was, in brief, as follows: Hancock, with his own four divisions, Getty's division of the Sixth Corps, and Wadsworth's division of the Fifth,

was to attack Hill at five o'clock in the morning, and if possible destroy or drive him off the field before the Confederate re-enforcements should arrive. On the right the remaining divisions of the Fifth and Sixth Corps, under the personal observation of Grant and Meade, were to occupy Ewell so closely as to prevent his sending re-enforcements to Hill. As soon as Burnside should arrive from the bridge over the Rapidan, as he was expected to do at an early hour, his corps was to be directed toward the Confederate center. Assuming Hill's corps to have been at that time disrupted by the tremendous assault preparing against it, Burnside was relied upon to pierce Lee's line north of the plank road, whereupon the demonstrations of the Fifth and Sixth Corps were to be converted into a furious attack upon Ewell, by which it was hoped to close the day with a complete victory for the Union arms.

It will be seen that Hancock's part in the coming battle was fully equal to what had been intimated by the responsibilities he had borne and the success he had achieved at Gettysburg. He was to command half of the army, and the active operations of the day were all to be made dependent upon his resolution and energy. The only miscalculation of the commander in chief was in regard to the nature of the country, the tenacity of the enemy and their capability for initiative, and the time of the arrival of the Confederate re-enforce