The American Civil War in 1864 by Charles River Editors

With Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia continuing to frustrate the Union Army of the Potomac’s attempts to take Richmond in 1862 and 1863, President Lincoln shook things up by turning command of all the armies of the United States to Ulysses S. Grant in March 1864. , Lee had won stunning victories at battles like Chancellorsville and Second Bull Run by going on the offensive and taking the strategic initiative, but Grant and Lincoln had no intention of letting him do so anymore. Attaching himself to the Army of the Potomac, Grant ordered Army of the Potomac commander George Meade, "Lee's army is your objective point. Wherever Lee goes, there you will go also."

From May 5-7, the two most famous generals of the Civil War squared off for the first time. The 100,000 strong Army of the Potomac was double the size of Lee’s hardened but battered Army of Northern Virginia. It was a similar position to the one George McClellan had in 1862 and Joe Hooker had in 1863, and Grant’s first attack, at the Battle of the Wilderness, followed a similar pattern. Nevertheless, Lee proved more than capable on the defensive.

The Battle of the Wilderness was fought so close to where the Battle of Chancellorsville took place a year earlier that soldiers encountered skeletons that had been buried in shallow graves in 1863. Moreover, the  woods were so thick that neither side could actually see who they were shooting at, and whole brigades at times got lost in the forest. Both armies sustained heavy casualties while Grant kept attempting to move the fighting to a setting more to his advantage, but the heavy forest made coordinated movements almost impossible.

On May 5 and May 6, both armies attempted desperate attacks and counterattacks to strike a knockout blow, but they were ultimately unable to dislodge each other. Given the terrain and the nature of the fighting, it was one of the most horrendous battles of the war, with some wounded men literally burning to death in fires ignited by the battle that sparked the nearby underbrush and spread rapidly. The defending Confederates technically won a tactical victory by holding their ground, but they did so at a staggering cost, inflicting 17,000 casualties on the Army of the Potomac and suffering 11,000 of their own.

On May 7, Grant disengaged his army from the battle. His objective had been frustrated by Lee’s skillful defense, the same position as Hooker at Chancellorsville, McClellan on the Virginian Peninsula, and Burnside after Fredericksburg. His men got the familiar dreadful feeling that they would retreat back toward Washington, as they had too many times before. This time, however, Grant made the fateful decision to keep moving south, inspiring his men by telling them that he was prepared to “fight it out on this line if it takes all Summer.” The Battle of the Wilderness would only be the beginning of the Overland Campaign, not the end of it.

Despite the fierce fighting, Grant continued to push his battered but resilient army south, hoping to beat Lee’s army to the crossroads at Spotsylvania Court House, but Lee’s army beat Grant’s to Spotsylvania and began digging in, setting the scene for on and off fighting from May 8-21 that ultimately inflicted more casualties than the Battle of the Wilderness. In fact, with over 32,000 casualties among the two sides, it was the deadliest battle of the Overland Campaign.

Although the Battle of Spotsylvania technically lasted nearly 2 weeks, it is best remembered for the fighting that took place on May 12 at a salient in the Confederate line manned by Richard S. Ewell’s corps. Known as the Mule Shoe, a Union assault on the salient produced 24 hours of the most savage fighting conducted during the war, forever christening that point in the line as the Bloody Angle.