On the 5th we
marched all day on the plank road from Orange Court House to this place. We got
into a hard fight on the left of the road rather late in the afternoon. The
fighting was desperate for two or three hours, with the least cannonading I
have ever heard in a battle. I suppose this was due to the level country and
the thick undergrowth. It is low, flat and entirely unfit for cultivation.
After night Major
Hammond rode up to where we doctors were and told us that about two miles to
the rear there was a poor Yankee who was badly wounded. He insisted that
someone of us go back to help him. I went, and found him paralyzed from a shot
in the back. I gave him water and morphine, and made him comfortable as
best I could. The poor fellow seemed very grateful.
After I returned to
our lines the order came to move back with our medical stores to Orange Court
House. We marched nearly all night, but just before day we were ordered back to
the Wilderness again, and we reached there soon after sunrise. Longstreet came
up about this time, having made a forced march all night. Then the fighting
began in earnest-continuing fearful and desperate all day. The tremendous roar
of the artillery and the rattle of the musketry seemed to make the woods
tremble.
Late in the
afternoon of this day I went among the wounded of the Third Regiment South
Carolina Volunteers and of the Yankees who had fallen into our hands. As usual
on such occasions groans and cries met me from every side. I found Colonel
James Nance, my old schoolmate, and Colonel Gaillard of Fairfield lying side by
side in death. Near them lay Warren Peterson, with a shattered thigh-bone, and
still others who were my friends. Many of the enemy were there. Not far from
these was an old man, a Yankee officer, mortally wounded. I learned that he was
Brigadier-General Wadsworth, once Governor of New York.
I picked up an
excellent Yankee overcoat on the battlefield, but the cape is off. I will have
a sack coat made of it. I also found an India rubber cloth that is big enough
for four men to lie on or to make a tent of. I have never before seen a
battlefield so strewn with overcoats, knapsacks, India rubber cloths and
everything else soldiers carry, except at Chancellorsville. The dead Yankees
are everywhere. I have never before seen woods so completely riddled with
bullets. At one place the battle raged among chinquapin bushes. All the bark
was knocked off and the bushes are literally torn to pieces.
Tell Bob that as
soon as I draw some of the new issue I will send him the pay for your catskin
shoes.
[NOTE.—After two
days of hard fighting at the Wilderness and the same at Spottsylvania, and
failing to break through the Confederate lines, General Grant decided to make
one more determined effort by concentrating in front of the angle in the
Confederate breastworks. About daylight on May 12 a desperate charge was made
upon this angle, which was occupied by General Bradley T. Johnson of Maryland.
This overwhelming charge by the enemy was too much, and the Confederates were
borne down, and General Johnson and his command of four thousand men and twenty
pieces of artillery were captured. General Lee was in the rear with a reserve
force, consisting of McGowan's South Carolina Brigade and some Mississippians,
whom he rushed forward, and they reoccupied the angle. The Federals jumped back
over the works, but did not retreat, and, after fighting all day and a greater
part of the night, both sides were utterly exhausted, and ceased. A large oak
standing on the works was cut down by bullets alone.]
SOURCE: Dr. Spencer
G. Welch, A Confederate Surgeon's Letters to His Wife, p. 93-6
