Headquarters Army Of Potomac
Monday, May 23,1864
. . . I asked on all sides for General Wright. One said he
had gone this way; another that he had gone that; so finally I just stood
still, getting on the edge of the woods, on a ridge, where I dismounted and
wrote a short despatch to General Meade, midst a heavy rain that now began to
come down. Just before me was a very large field with several undulations,
close to me was a battery firing, and in the wood beyond the field was the
fighting. I stood there a short time, while the second line was deployed and
advanced in support of the first. The Rebels were firing a great many explosive
bullets, which I never saw before. When they strike they explode, like a
fire-cracker, and make a bad wound; but I do not suppose, after all, that they
are worse than the others. Presently there came along Captain Arthur McClellan
(brother of the General and a very nice fellow). He said he would show me where
General Wright was, which proved to be not far off, in a little hollow place.
There was the stout-hearted General, seated with his aides, on the ground. He
had just been hit on the leg by a great piece of shell, but was smiling away,
despite his bruises. A sterling soldier he is! I soon found that the hollow did
not exclude missiles, which fly in curves, confound them! There came a great
selection of bullets about our ears, in the first of it. By-and-by a Rebel
battery began to suspect that, from the number of horses, there must be a
general about that place, and so, whing! smash, bang! came a shell, striking
in the woods just beyond. “My friend,” said calm Colonel Tompkins, addressing
the invisible gunner, “if you want to hit us you must cut your fuses shorter” —
which indeed he did do, and sent all sorts of explosives everywhere
except in our little group, which was only reached by a fragment or two. None
of us got hurt, but one horse was wounded and another killed. There I staid for
five hours (very long ones), and pelted all the time, but most of the balls
flew too high, and, as is well known, shells make a horrid noise, but hurt
comparatively few.
All this time the enemy was rolling up his fresh troops and
frantically endeavoring to regain that salient. He made as many as five
desperate charges with the bayonet, but in vain. At one place called the “Corner”
the lines stood within fifty feet of each other, for hours!1 The breastwork made a
ridge between, and any living thing that showed above that line fell dead. The
next day the bodies of friend and foe covered the ground. Some wounded men were
then taken out from under three or four dead ones. One body, that lay exposed to
the fire, had eighty bullets in it. At 12.30 I rode back to General Meade, to
tell him our extreme right was hard pressed; and he sent me back to say that
the whole 5th Corps had been moved to the left and that Griffin's division
could go to Wright's support. I found that Wright had been fairly shelled out
of his little hollow, and had retired to the Landron house. We clung to the
salient, and that night the Rebels fell back from that part of their lines,
leaving twenty-two guns, eighteen colors, and 3500 prisoners in our hands. . . . That night our Headquarters were at the
Armstrong house. It was a day of general battle, for Warren attacked on the
right and Burnside on the left, which kept the enemy from sending
reinforcements. You will notice that the army was gradually shifting to the
left, having now given up the Po River and Todd's Tavern road.
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1 "The great historical fight of this day
extended over a front of only 1000 to 1500 yards, along the faces of the
salient, or the ‘Death-angle,’ as it was afterwards called. Within that narrow
field two corps were piled up to assault and in support. Indeed we had too
many troops, as the generals justly said. The lines got mixed and jammed
together and were hard to handle. The amount of bullets fired may be known from
the fact that a red oak, twenty-three inches in diameter, was reduced, about
six feet from the ground, to a fibrous structure and blew down that night!
Bodies that lay between the lines were shot to pieces and could only be raised
in a blanket! The result was damaging to the enemy — very — but the army of Lee
was not cut in two — an issue clearly looked for by Rawlins and some others of
Grant's Staff, but not so confidently assumed by those who knew a little more.”
— Lyman's Journal.
SOURCE: George R. Agassiz, Editor, Meade’s
Headquarters, 1863-1865: Letters of Colonel Theodore Lyman from the Wilderness
to Appomattox, p. 112-4
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