Read CHAPTER XIII - THE BATTLES IN THE WILDERNESS of Charles Carleton Coffin, War Correspondent, free online book, by William Elliot Griffis, on ReadCentral.com.

After the exhausting Gettysburg campaign, Carleton was obliged to rest some weeks. So far as his letter-book shows, he did not engage in war correspondence again until the opening of the next year, when he entered upon his fourth hundred of letters, and began a tour of observation through the border States. Traversing those between the Ohio River and the Lakes, besides Missouri and Kansas, he kept the Journal readers well informed of the state of sentiment, and showed the preparations made to pursue the war. At the last of April, we find him in Washington preparing his readers for the great events of the Wilderness, in letters which clearly describe the prospective “valley of decision.” The grandest sight, that week, in the city, was the marching of Burnside’s veteran corps, in which were not only the bronzed white heroes, following their own torn and pierced battle-flags, but also regiments of black patriots, slaves but a few months before, but now no longer sons of the Dark Continent, but of the Land of Hope and Opportunity. From slavery they had been redeemed in the Free Republic. Unpaid sons of toil once, but free men now, they were marching with steady step to certain victory or to certain death, for at that moment came the sickening details of the massacre of Fort Pillow. On the balcony of the hotel, standing beside the handsome Burnside, was the tall and pale man who, having given them freedom, now recognized them as soldiers. As they halted by the roadside and read the accounts of massacre, their white teeth clenched, and oaths, not altogether profane, were sworn for vengeance.

Out from the broad avenues of the nation’s capital, and away from the sight of the marble dome, the great army and its faithful historians moved from sight, to the bloodiest contests of war. No more splendid pageants in the fields, but close, hard, unromantic destruction in the woods and among trenches and craters! One mind now directed all the movements of the many armies of the Union, making all the forces at the control of the nation into one mighty trip-hammer, for the crushing of Slavery’s conspiracy against Liberty.

General Grant recognized in Carleton his old friend whom he first met in Cairo, and whom he had invited to take a nail-keg for a seat. Having established his reputation for absolute truthfulness, Carleton won not only Grant’s personal friendship, but obtained a pass signed “U. S. Grant,” which was good in all the military departments of the country, with transportation on all government trains and steamers. In hours of relaxation, Carleton was probably as familiar with Grant as was any officer on the general’s own staff. Carleton profoundly honored and believed in Grant as a trained, regular army officer who could cut loose from European traditions and methods, and fight in the way required in Virginia in 1864 and 1865. Further, Grant wanted the Army of the Potomac to destroy Lee’s army without the aid of, or reinforcement from, Western troops.

Carleton comprehended the magnitude of the coming campaign, in which were centred the hopes of eighteen millions of Americans. In his eyes it was the most stupendous campaign of modern times. “It is not the movement of one army merely, but of three great armies, to crush out treason, to preserve the institutions of freedom, and consolidate ourselves into a nation.” Butler and Smith were to advance from the Chesapeake, the armies of the South and West were in time to march northward in Lee’s rear, while from the West and North were to come fresh hosts to consummate the grand combination.

Carleton’s foresight had shown him that, in this campaign, an assistant for himself would be absolutely necessary; for, in one respect, Grant’s advance was unique. Instead of, as heretofore, the Union army’s having its rear in close contact with the North, and all the lines and methods of communication being open, the soldiers and the correspondents were to advance into the Wilderness, and cut themselves off from the railway, the telegraph, and even the ordinary means of communication by horse, wheel, and boat. Carleton, at short notice to the young man, chose for his assistant his nephew, Edmund Carleton, now a veteran surgeon and physician in New York, but then in the freshness and fullness of youth, health, and strength. Alert and vigorous, fertile in resource, courageous and persevering, young Carleton became the fleet messenger of the great war correspondent. He assisted to gather news, and soon learned the art of winning the soldier’s heart, and of extracting, from officers and privates, scraps and items of intelligence. Even as the hunter becomes expert in noting and interpreting signs in air and on earth which yield him spoil, so young Carleton, trained by his uncle, quickly learned how to secure news, and to make a “beat.” He kept himself well supplied to the extent of his ability with tobacco, always welcome to the veterans, for which some “would almost sell their souls;” and with newspapers, for which officers would often give what was worth more than gold, items of information, from which letters could be distilled, and on which prophecies could be based. Very appropriately, Carleton dedicates his fourth book on the war, “Freedom Triumphant,” to his fleet messenger.

Carleton’s first letter in the last long campaign is dated May 4, 1864, from Brandy Station. There four corps were assembled: the Second, Hancock’s; the Fifth, Warren’s; the Sixth, Sedgwick’s; the Ninth, Burnside’s. With Sheridan’s riders, these made a great city of tents. The cavalry was not the cavalry of Scott’s day, but was in its potency a new arm of the service. From this time forth, the Confederate authorities, by neglecting this arm of their service, furnished one chief cause of final failure, while those in Washington steadily increased in generous recognition of the power of union of man and horse. In equal ability of brute and rider to endure fatigue, the Union cavalryman under Sheridan was a veritable centaur.

While the great army lay waiting and expectant at Brandy Station, it was significant to Carleton when the swift-riding orderlies suddenly left headquarters carrying sealed packages to the corps commanders. First began the tramping of the cavalry. Next followed the movement of two divisions of the Fifth Corps. All night long was heard the rumble of artillery. Carleton wrote: “Peering from my window upon the shadowy landscape at midnight, I saw the glimmering of thousands of camp-fires, over all the plain. Hillside, valley, nook, and dell, threw up its flickering light. Long trains of white canvas wagons disappeared in the distant gloom.

“At three A. M., the reveille, the roll of innumerable drums, and the blow of bugles sounded, and as morning brightened, dark masses of armed men stood in long line. With the first beams of the sun peering over the landscape, they moved from the hills. Disjointed parts were welded together, regiments became brigades, brigades grew into divisions, and divisions became corps. The sunlight flashed from a hundred thousand bayonets and sabres.” Thus in a few hours a great city of male inhabitants, numbering over the tenth of a million, disappeared. By night-time, in a rapid march, Grant was in headquarters in a deserted house near the Germania Ford. There Carleton noticed the general’s simple style of living. Unostentatious in all his habits, he smoked constantly, often whittling a stick while thinking, and wasting no words. Grant had stolen a march upon Lee, and was as near Richmond as were the Confederates, who must attack him in flank and retard him if possible. Knowing every road and bridle-path in the Wilderness, Lee, having drawn all the resources of the Confederacy east of Georgia into his lines, had gathered an army the largest and the most complete he had yet commanded. He must now cut up Grant’s host; or, if unable to do so, even without defeat, must begin a march which meant some American Saint Helena as its end.

The campaign which followed in that densely wooded part of Virginia, a few miles west of the former battle-field of Chancellorsville, had not been paralleled for hardship during the whole war. In the ten days succeeding May 4th, when the army broke camp at Culpeper and Brandy Station, there had been a march of eighteen miles, the crossing of the Rapidan with hard fighting on May 5th, and on the 6th, the great battle in the Wilderness, among the trees from which the foe could hardly be distinguished. On the 7th, there was fighting all along the line, with the night march after Spottsylvania, and on Sunday, the 8th, under the burning sun, a sharp fight by the Fifth Corps. On the 9th, another terrific battle followed, in which three corps were engaged, one of them, the Sixth, losing its noble commander, Sedgwick, with a score or two of able officers. On the 10th, in the afternoon, a pitched battle was fought all along the line, lasting until midnight, in which all the corps were engaged. On Wednesday, the 11th, skirmishing and picket firing formed the order of the day along the whole front. On Thursday, the 12th, at daybreak, the Second Corps began its attack, capturing twenty-three guns and several thousand prisoners. Sunday, the 13th, was a time of rain, hard work, hunger, and fatigue. In a word, within twelve days there had been four great pitched battles, with heavy fighting, mainly in the woods, and hard pounding on both sides, with many thousands of dead and wounded.

During the war Carleton had seen no such fighting, suffering, patience, determination. General Grant freely admitted that the fighting had been without a parallel during the war. There was little work done by the artillery. Swords and bayonets were but ornaments or emblems. Only lead had the potency of death in it. Even the cavalry dismounted, sought cover, shooting each other out of position with their carbines. Bullets, which do the killing, were the fixed forces. In war it is musketry that kills, and it was a question which side could stand murder the longest.

At the end of the Wilderness episodes, Carleton, after first answering those critics far in the rear, who, to all the noble tenacity of Grant and his army, queried “Cui bono” wrote: “I confidently expect that he [Grant] will accomplish what he has undertaken, because he is determined, has tenacity of purpose, measures his adversary at his true value, expects hard fighting, and prepares for it.” It was trying almost to discouragement, to this brave, honest, patient seeker after truth, to find with what chaff and husk of imaginary news, manufactured in Washington and elsewhere, the editors of newspapers had to satisfy the hungry souls of the waiting ones at home.

In one of the engagements, when our right wing had been forced by the Confederates; when the loud rebel yells were heard so near that the teamsters of the Sixth Corps were frightened into a panic, and, cutting the traces, ran so far and wide that it was two days before they were got together again; when, to many army officers, it seemed the day had been lost, as lost it had been, save for the stubborn valor of the Sixth Corps; when many a face blanched, Carleton looked at Grant. There was the modern Silent One, tranquil amid the waves of battle. Sitting quietly, with perfect poise, eyes on the ground, and steadily smoking, he whittled a stick, neither flesh nor spirit quailing. “He himself knew what he would do.” And he did wait, and, in waiting, won. Carleton’s faith in Grant, strong from the first, was now as a mountain, unshakable.