In the aftermath of the titanic struggle of the Battle of Gettysburg, both sides took time to recover, but by the start of the new year, the Union was ready to make a new move in the war in the east. In March 1864, the victor of many battles in the west, Major General Ulysses S. Grant, was called to Washington to be promoted to Lieutenant General and made commander-in-chief of all Union forces in the field. It was hoped he would transform the moribund war in the east against the Confederate General Robert E. Lee.
Grant planned a direct attack on Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia, using Major General George G. Meade’s Army of the Potomac, which would be coordinated with advances by Major Generals Franz Sigel along the Shenandoah Valley and Benjamin F. Butler on the Yorktown Peninsula to divert Lee’s attention. Grant would travel with Meade but Meade would nominally retain command of the army, which had been encamped on the northern bank of the Rapidan River in Virginia since Meade’s unsuccessful foray south towards Lee’s army in November the previous year.
On May 4 the Army of the Potomac crossed the Rapidan and headed towards the heavily wooded area known as the Wilderness, where the Battle of Chancellorsville had been fought the previous year. Lee planned to attack Grant in the Wilderness, hoping to take advantage of the difficulties of visibility and movement in the dense bush and nullify the disparity in numbers—Grant/Meade’s army numbered 100,000 while Lee had only 60,000 men.
Grant knew the dangers posed by the Wilderness but resolved to move quickly, hoping to steal a march on Lee and be through the Wilderness before Lee had time to react but once in the thick woods he was marching blind, something compounded by his lack of cavalry scouts. Lee, on the other hand, had deployed his cavalry in reconnaissance and, once he received news that Grant had crossed the river, anticipated Grant’s movements along two of the few roads through the Wilderness and set off in pursuit.