To-day has been occupied with strategy; but our strategy is
of a bloody kind, and even the mere movements have not passed without the
sounds of cannon and musketry for two or three hours. Sharp as steel traps
those Rebs! We cannot shift a hundred yards, but presto! skirmishers forward!
and they come piling in, pop, pop, pop; with reserves close behind and a
brigade or two hard on the reserves, all poking and probing as much as to say: “Hey!
What! Going are you! Well, where? How far? Which way? How many of you are
there?” — And then they seem to send back word: “There they go — down there; head
'em off! head 'em off quick!” And very soon General So-and-so, who thinks he
has entirely got round the Rebel line, begs to report that he finds them
strongly entrenched in his front! Yesterday the 6th Corps drove the enemy from
their lines, in their front, and took a good many prisoners. The division of Ricketts,
which Hancock called a “weakly child,” suddenly blazed out, and charged with
the bayonet; an example I hope it will follow up! The “weary boys” at first
broke and ran as usual, but Ricketts, their new commander, a man of great
personal courage, pitched into them and kept at them, till finally, on the 1st
of June, he got them to storm breastworks, and now I hope and believe they will
continue good troops. Such are the effects of good pluck in generals. You hear
people say: “Oh, everyone is brave enough; it is the head that is needed.”
Doubtless the head is the first necessity, but I can tell you that there are not
many officers who of their own choice and impulse will dash in on
formidable positions. They will go anywhere they are ordered and
anywhere they believe it is their duty to go; but fighting for fun is
rare; and unless there is a little of this in a man's disposition he lacks an
element. Such men as Sprigg Carroll, Hays (killed), Custer and some others,
attacked wherever they got a chance, and of their own accord. Very few officers
would hold back when they get an order; but the ordeal is so awful, that it
requires a peculiar disposition to “go in gaily,” as old Kearny used to say.
Last night the 2d Corps marched, to form on the left of the
6th at Cool Arbor; it was badly managed, or rather it was difficult to manage,
like all those infernal night marches, and so part of the troops went fifteen
miles instead of nine and there was any amount of straggling and exhaustion. I
consider fifteen miles by night equal to twenty-five by day, and you will
remember our men have no longer the bodily strength they had a month before;
indeed, why they are alive, I don't see; but, after a day's rest, they look
almost as fresh as ever. . . . We set out in the morning by half-past seven
and, partly by roads, partly by cross-cuts, arrived at Kelly's via Woody's
house. Of all the wastes I have seen, this first sight of Cool Arbor was the
most dreary! Fancy a baking sun to begin with; then a foreground of
breastworks; on the left, Kelly's wretched house; in the front, an open plain,
trampled fetlock deep into fine, white dust and dotted with caissons, regiments
of many soldiers, and dead horses killed in the previous cavalry fight. On the
sides and in the distance were pine woods, some red with fires which had passed
through them, some grey with the clouds of dust that rose high in the air. It
was a Sahara intensified, and was called Cool Arbor! Wright's Headquarters were
here, and here, too, I first beheld "Baldy" Smith, a short, quite
portly man, with a light-brown imperial and shaggy moustache, a round, military
head, and the look of a German officer, altogether. After getting all
information, General Meade ordered a general assault at four P.M. but
afterwards countermanded it, by reason of the exhausted state of the 2d Corps.
We pitched camp in the place shown on my map by a flag, where we since have
remained — ten whole days. Towards evening Warren was to close in to his left
and join with the rest of the line, his right resting near Bethesda Church,
while Burnside was to mass and cover his movement; but they made a bad fist of
it between them. The enemy, the moment the march began, rushed in on the
skirmishers. A division, 5th Corps, got so placed that it bore the whole brunt
(and a fine division too). Between the two corps — both very willing — the
proper support was not put in. The enemy in force swung round by Via's house
and gobbled up several miles of our telegraph wire, besides several hundred
prisoners.1 We ought to have just eaten them up; but as it
was, we only drove them back into some rifle-pits we had formerly abandoned,
and then the line was formed as originally ordered, with Burnside swung round
to cover our right flank from Bethesda Church towards Linney's house, while the
enemy held Via's house and a line parallel to our own. . . .
You know I was never an enthusiast or fanatic for any of our
generals. I liked McClellan, but was not “daft” about him; and was indeed
somewhat shaken by the great cry and stories against him. But now, after seeing
this country and this campaign, I wish to say, in all coolness, that I believe
he was, both as a military man and as a manager of a country under military
occupation, the greatest general this war has produced. You hear how slow he
was; how he hesitated at small natural obstacles. Not so. He hesitated at an
obstacle that our ultra people steadily ignore, the Rebel Army of Northern
Virginia; and anyone that has seen that army fight and march would, were he
wise, proceed therewith with caution and wariness, well knowing that defeat by
such an enemy might mean destruction. When I consider how much better soldiers,
as soldiers, our men now are than in his day; how admirably they have been
handled in this campaign; and how heroically they have worked, marched, and
fought, and yet, how we still see the enemy in our front, weakened and
maimed, but undaunted as ever, I am forced to the conclusion that McClellan
(who did not have his own way as we have) managed with admirable skill. Mind, I
don't say he was perfect. I say he was our best. Think how well we are off. Do
we want the very garrison of Washington? Grant beckons, and nobody is hardy
enough to say him nay. McClellan had over 20,000 men taken from him at the very
crisis of the campaign. Suppose at the culmination of our work, a telegraph from
the President should come: “Send General Wright and 25,000 men at once to
Winchester.” How would that do? In all this I praise the present
commanders. The handling of this army, in especial, has been a marvel.
Through narrow roads (the best of them not better than the “lane” opposite our
back avenue), ill known and intricate, over bogs and rivers, we have
transported cannon and army waggons in thousands, and a vast army has been
moved, without ever getting in confusion, or losing its supporting distance. I
don't believe there is a marshal of France that could do it with his army. I am
sure there is not.
[It was known that the order had been given to attack next
morning. Rhodes says:2 “Officers and men had a chance to chew upon
it, and both knew that the undertaking was hopeless. Horace Porter, an
aide-de-camp of Grant, relates that, when walking among the troops on Staff
duty, the evening before the battle, he noticed many of the soldiers of one of
the regiments designated for the assault pinning on the backs of their coats
slips of paper on which were written their names and home addresses, so that
their dead bodies might be recognized on the field, and their fate be known to
their families at the North."]
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1 “When Grant heard of it, he said to Meade: ‘We
ought to be able to eat them up; they have placed themselves in such a
position. Generally I am not in favor of night attacks; but I think one might
be justified in such a case as the present.' Indeed it was a wretched affair.”
— Lyman's Journal.
2 History, IV, 446.
SOURCE: George R. Agassiz, Editor, Meade’s
Headquarters, 1863-1865: Letters of Colonel Theodore Lyman from the Wilderness
to Appomattox, p. 138-42
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