CHAPTER 11

Spotsylvania and
North Anna

AFTER A GRUELING two-day battle in the unfriendly Wilderness was fought to a bloody draw, Grant directed Meade to lead his troops ten miles south to the crossroads hamlet of Spotsylvania Court House. Grant expected that Lee would follow and give battle on terrain more favorable to his army. Lee, however, anticipating what Grant was about to do, got to Spotsylvania Court House first and blocked his progress with an imposing line of earthworks. Undeterred, Grant ordered the Army of the Potomac to assault Lee’s well-protected men. Ten hard days of fighting commenced from May 8–18, but Lee’s well-fortified Spotsylvania line could still not be broken. Disheartening news also reached Grant from his supporting armies. The campaign that had started two weeks before with so much promise seemed about to unravel.

Grant and Meade’s relationship was also quickly falling victim to the campaign. Concerned over Meade’s inability to defeat Lee, Grant now increasingly kept major battlefield decisions to himself, relegating to Meade matters ordinarily handled by staff officers. Meade’s letters home reveal that he believed Grant had lacked confidence in his ability as an army commander. “If there was any honorable way of retiring from my present false position, I should undoubtedly adopt it,” Meade wrote his wife, “but there is none and all I can do is patiently submit and bear with resignation the humiliation.” One of Meade’s aides defended his superior by describing Grant as a “rough, unpolished man” of only “average ability, whom fortune has favored.” Grant’s staffers in turn complained that Meade was uncommitted to the spirit of their boss’s hard-hitting offensives. Grant’s excuse for keeping the Pennsylvanian was that “by tending to the details he relieves me of much unnecessary work, and gives me more time to think and mature my general plans.”¹

Remaining calm and not distracted by setbacks on the battlefield or the discord among his generals, Grant devised a new plan to entice Lee from his Spotsylvania defenses. Hoping to lure the Confederate commander into the open, he directed Major General Winfield S. Hancock to take the Union army’s Second Corps on a twenty-mile march southeastward through the town of Bowling Green and on to the village of Milford Station. If Lee left his entrenchments to attack Hancock, as Grant expected, the remainder of Meade’s army was to spring on the Confederates and crush them. Basically, Hancock would serve first as bait to draw Lee from his fortifications and then become the trap in which Grant would corner his opponent. In the event that Lee ignored the scheme, Hancock would continue to the North Anna River, the next major river line toward Richmond, clearing the way for the rest of the Union army to follow.

Grant’s strategy took into account the terrain that Meade’s soldiers would have to traverse. Telegraph Road offered the Union troops the most direct path south, but required it to cross the Ni, Po, and Matta Rivers, risking opposition at each stream. A few carefully positioned Confederates could delay Grant’s progress while Lee’s main body pursued parallel roads and beat him to the North Anna River. A few miles east of Telegraph Road, however, the Matta, Po, and Ni merged to form the Mattaponi, which flowed due south. By swinging east from Spotsylvania Court House, Grant saw that he could circumvent the streams and descend along the Mattaponi’s far side, using the river system to shield his forces from attack.

During the night of May 20–21, Hancock began his diversionary march. When Lee learned of the Union movement, he concluded that Hancock was spearheading an advance to Richmond and threw part of the Confederate army across Telegraph Road, closing the main path south to the Union troops. Thus Hancock was cut off from the rest of Grant’s army. Growing increasingly concerned over Hancock’s safety, Grant directed Meade to evacuate his entrenchments at Spotsylvania Court House and rush to Hancock’s assistance. Once again, an operation that Grant had begun as an offensive thrust was assuming a decidedly defensive tone. Lee had outmaneuvered Grant.

That night the Army of the Potomac was in disarray. Hancock, now split from the rest of the Union force, skirmished with Confederates sent from Richmond to reinforce Lee near Spotsylvania Court House. Meade meanwhile attempted to batter his way down Telegraph Road but was brought up short by Lee’s new defensive line. Backtracking, the entire Union army set off to circumvent Lee by following a route that Hancock had taken the previous day. That night, Lee’s troops completed their withdrawal from Spotsylvania Court House and marched south toward the North Anna River. Because the Union cavalry was out on a raid, Grant did not learn of Lee’s location and the Union commander’s opening to catch Lee’s army outside its entrenchments went unexploited.

After a difficult night march, a worn out Army of Northern Virginia crossed the North Anna on May 22 and went into camp a few miles south of the river at Hanover Junction, where the Virginia Central Railroad from the Shenandoah Valley crossed the Richmond, Fredericksburg, and Potomac Railroad. Anxious to protect this critical rail link a scant twenty-five miles north of Richmond, Lee chose Hanover Junction as the next place to make a stand.

Grant pushed south in pursuit of Lee on May 22, spreading the Army of the Potomac across a wide swath of countryside. Uncertain whether Grant meant to continue across the North Anna or swing farther to the east, Lee waited for signs of his opponent’s intentions. The answer became clear the next day as the Union army’s scattered elements converged at Mount Carmel Church, a few miles above the North Anna. From the church, Hancock marched toward the main river crossing at Chesterfield Bridge while Warren took his Fifth Corps west along a side road, intending to cross a few miles upstream at Jericho Mills. Major General Horatio Wright’s Sixth Corps followed behind Warren, and Major General Ambrose E. Burnside’s Ninth Corps took another side road to Ox Ford, midway between Warren and Hancock. By day’s end, the Army of the Potomac was slated to come together in a line along the river, with some or all of its troops across.

Nearing the North Anna, Hancock’s troops came under fire from a brigade of Confederate troops well entrenched next to Chesterfield Bridge. Charging the isolated outpost, Hancock’s men overwhelmed the defenders, capturing many of them and driving the rest back across the river. Five miles upstream, Warren scattered a handful of mounted Confederates at Jericho Mills. Union engineers constructed a pontoon bridge, and by 5:00 p.m., the Union Fifth Corps crossed the river and deployed in nearby fields.

With a formidable portion of Grant’s army now placed on his side of the river, Lee recognized that he was in serious trouble. That evening, the Confederate general and his advisors met under a broad oak tree and came up with a plan of operation. The Army of Northern Virginia was to spread out into a wedge-shaped formation, its top touching the North Anna River at Ox Ford, and each leg reaching back and anchoring on strong natural positions. The tip of the wedge, rested on steep bluffs, was unassailable. With the Virginia Central Railroad connecting the wedge’s two feet, Lee could shift troops from one side to the other as needed. When Grant advanced, the wedge would split the Union army in half, enabling Lee to hold one leg with a small force while concentrating his army against the Union troops facing the other leg. By cleverly adapting the military maxim favoring interior lines to North Anna’s topography, Lee had given his smaller army an advantage over his opponent.

Throughout the night, Lee’s troops hastily built earthworks. Major General A. P. Hill’s Third Corps deployed along the wedge’s western leg while Lieutenant General Richard H. Anderson’s First Corps formed the wedge’s eastern leg. Lieutenant General Richard S. Ewell’s Second Corps tacked onto the end of Anderson’s line and comprised a reserve along with Major General John C. Breckinridge’s troops, who were fresh from defeating Union cavalry in the Shenandoah Valley.

At daylight on May 24 the entire Union army—the left under Hancock at Chesterfield Bridge, the center under Burnside at Ox Ford, and the right under Warren and Wright at Jericho Mills— made ready to push south. “The enemy have fallen back from North Anna,”² Grant wrote to Halleck, unaware that Lee was waiting for him.

Lee’s moment had come. His plan to split the Union army had worked, isolating Hancock east of the Confederate position, Burnside north of the river at Ox Ford, and Warren and Wright several miles to the west, near Jericho Mills. Hill, holding the Confederate formation’s western leg, could fend off Warren and Wright while Anderson and Ewell, on the eastern leg, attacked Hancock with superior numbers. “[Lee] now had one of those opportunities that occur but rarely in war,” a Union aide later confided, “but which, in the grasp of a master, make or mar the fortunes of armies and decide the result of campaigns.” Lee, however, had become too ill to exploit his opportunity. Wracked by dysentery, he lay confined to his tent. “We must strike them a blow,” a staffer heard the general exclaim. “We must never let them pass us again. We must strike them a blow.”³

But the Army of Northern Virginia could not strike a blow. Lee was too sick to direct the complex operation, and his top command had been decimated. Anderson was new to his Command, Ewell had proven unreliable, and Hill had exercised poor judgment at Jericho Mills. Physically unable to command and lacking a capable subordinate to direct the army in his place, Lee saw no choice but to forfeit his hard-won opportunity.

While Lee lay on his cot, prostrated by sickness, Hancock made a final attack. Pressing across the farm of the Doswell family, he came under even stiffer fire than before and camped on the rain-soaked battlefield. Warren’s and Wright’s soldiers, massed between Jericho Mills and the Virginia Central Railroad, also advanced but ran against Hill’s entrenchments and began constructing their own earthworks across from the rebels.

Near nightfall, Grant and Meade rode to the Fontaine house, south of the river, and set up headquarters. “The situation of the enemy,” Grant conceded, was “different from what I expected.”⁴ Rather than continue to attempt an advance, he decided to feel out the contours of the Confederate position. The next morning, May 25, Union intelligence confirmed that the Confederate line was just as strong there as it was at Spotsylvania Court House. “The conclusion that the enemy had abandoned the region between the North and South Anna River, though shared yesterday by every prominent officer here, proves to have been a mistake,” a highly ranked Federal officer noted. “The situation,” one of Meade’s aides observed, was a “deadlock,” with the two armies pressed closely together like “two schoolboys trying to stare each other out of countenance.”⁵

A Union newspaperman reported that the “game of war seldom presents a more effectual checkmate than was here given by Lee.” But he was wrong—the Confederate commander was also stymied. With the Union army pressed tightly against his lines, the only direction Lee could turn was south, toward Richmond. Having no other choice, Lee forfeited the initiative to Grant and awaited his enemy’s next move.

That evening, Grant and Meade met with their generals to find ways to break the impasse. Some argued that a maneuver west of Lee would catch the rebels off guard. Grant, however, vetoed that move. He needed to stay east of Lee, he insisted, to safeguard his supply routes back to the Chesapeake Bay.

Below the North Anna, the Union army faced three formidable crossings: Little River, New Found River, and South Anna River, each running west to east and only a few miles apart. High-banked and swollen from recent rains, the rivers would afford the retreating Confederates ideal defensive positions. A few miles southeast of Lee’s position, however, the rivers merged to form the Pamunkey. By moving east of Lee and heading downstream along the Pamunkey, Grant would put the difficult waterways behind him. And White House, the highest navigable point on the Pamunkey, was ideally situated as Grant’s next supply depot. In addition, as the Union forces followed the Pamunkey’s southeasterly course, they would move increasingly nearer to Richmond. Grant’s most likely crossings—the fords near Hanovertown, thirty miles southeast of Ox Ford—were only eighteen miles from Richmond; once the Army of the Potomac was over the Pamunkey, only the Chickahominy River would stand between them and the Confederate capital.

Having decided on his next move—withdrawing to the northern bank of the North Anna, driving thirty miles downriver, and crossing the Pamunkey near Hanovertown—Grant penned an optimistic dispatch. The decisive battle of the war, he predicted, would be fought on the outskirts of Richmond, and he had no doubt about the outcome. “Lee’s army is really whipped,” he assured Washington. “The prisoners we now take show it, and the actions of his army show it unmistakably. A battle with them outside of entrenchments cannot be had. Our men feel that they have gained the morale over the enemy and can attack with confidence. I may be mistaken, but I feel that our success over Lee’s army is already insured.”⁶

The most hazardous phase of the operation would be disengaging from Lee. Not only were the armies pressed tightly together, but they were on the same side of the North Anna, with Grant backed against the stream. As soon as Lee discovered that the Union forces were leaving, he was certain to attack, and the consequences could be catastrophic. Grant’s solution was a ruse: he would send a division of cavalry west of the Confederates to create the impression that he was preparing for an army-wide advance in that direction. After dark, the rest of the Army of the Potomac would slip from its entrenchments in a carefully orchestrated sequence, cross to the river’s northern bank, and head east. If everything went according to plan, the main Union army would stream across the Pamunkey well on its way toward Richmond before Lee discovered the deception.

On May 26 it rained, forcing troops of both armies to hunker low behind earthworks slippery with mud and knee-deep water. By noon, Grant sent Brigadier General James H. Wilson’s Union cavalry division across at Jericho Mills, setting out on its diversion. Meanwhile, a Union infantry division recrossed the North Anna and began a looping march toward the Pamunkey. All day, wagons carried the army’s baggage over the river and returned for fresh loads. Sightings of the constant wagon traffic persuaded Lee that the Union commander was planning some sort of movement, and Wilson’s cavalry activity suggested that a shift west was in the making. From “present indications,” Lee wrote the Confederate war secretary, Grant “seems to contemplate a movement on our left flank.”7 Grant’s ruse had worked perfectly.

Shortly after dark, Meade began evacuating his entrenchments in haste, concealing his departure with troops assigned as pickets to create a diversion. Soldiers marched along rain-soaked trails in the pitch black, slipping in mud “knee deep and sticky as shoemaker’s wax on a hot day,” a participant recalled. One hole sucked in troops to their waists, and a few unfortunates reputedly disappeared over their heads in viscous ooze and suffocated. Miraculously the last of the Union troops were across the river by daylight. Engineers pulled up the pontoon bridges, and a Union rear guard set fire to Chesterfield Bridge to delay pursuit.

By sunup, Lee learned that Grant had gotten away and was marching east. Uncertain of Grant’s precise route, he decided to abandon the North Anna line and shift fifteen miles southeast to a point near Atlee’s Station, on the Virginia Central Railroad. This would place him southwest of Grant’s apparent concentration toward Hanovertown and position the Army of Northern Virginia to block the likely avenues of Union advance toward Richmond. Unlike previous Union army commanders in the East, who were cautious when it came to Lee, Grant would prepare these troops to fight it out.