“Historians and general readers often wonder who was the better general: Lee or Grant? The Battle of the Wilderness is the perfect case study for exploring that simple question.”

By John Reeves

“MORE DESPERATE fighting has not been witnessed on this continent than that of the 5^th and 6^th of May.”

That was Ulysses S. Grant’s appraisal of his first showdown against Robert E. Lee at the 1864 Battle of the Wilderness, one of the bloodiest engagements of the Union army’s spring Overland Campaign.

It was in the Wilderness of Spotsylvania County that Grant, the newly appointed general-in-chief of the Union, took on the Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia.

And Grant was right; the Wilderness proved to be one of the most horrific battles in American history. As the fighting raged in the dense and tangled undergrowth roughly 70 miles north of the Confederate capital of Richmond, the woods caught fire on several occasions resulting in agonizing deaths for hundreds of injured men who had been left on the field.

In all, the Union Army suffered 17,666 casualties, officially, though the real number was probably much higher.

During the clash, Lee’s troops succeeded in pinning down Grant’s men as they passed through the Wilderness, an inhospitable landscape of dense woods and thickets in Virginia. Unfazed, Grant hammered Lee all across the line for two entire days. His assaults severely weakened, but did not destroy, the smaller Confederate army.

After the two days of slaughter, one Union staff officer recorded in his journal: “Grant told Meade that Joe Johnston would have retreated after two such days’ punishment. He recognized the difference in Western Rebel fighting.”

This grudging concession by Grant would have pleased Major General George Meade and his Army of the Potomac veterans, who believed Lee was a far better general than anyone Grant had faced out west.

Similarly, Lee admitted that Grant had performed well during the first week of the Wilderness Campaign. When Lee’s staff criticized Grant for his willingness to assault fortified positions, Lee was more charitable.

“Gentlemen,” he said. “I think General Grant has managed his affairs remarkably well up to the present time.”

Historians and general readers often wonder who was the better general: Lee or Grant? The Battle of the Wilderness is the perfect case study for exploring that simple question. It was the first time they confronted one another on the battlefield. And even though Lee was outnumbered, he still possessed talented and experienced senior officers at the beginning of the spring campaign in 1864.

One could argue that Lee’s performance at the Wilderness was mixed. His bold movements on May 5 caught Grant and Meade by surprise. Despite having fewer men and resources, Lee threatened both flanks of Grant’s army on different occasions. Yet, he also bore some responsibility for the disordered state of Lieutenant General A.P. Hill’s troops prior to the timely arrival of Lieutenant General James Longstreet just before dawn on May 6.

Lee did lose control at Widow Tapp Farm, when it looked like his army might be routed early on the second day of fighting. He recovered well, however, and touched off a chain of events that ultimately led to Longstreet’s successful flank attack around mid-day on May 6. Later that day, Lee’s 4:15 p.m. assault on Major General Winfield Scott Hancock’s well-fortified lines at the Brock Road seems reckless in retrospect, but he had an unshakeable confidence in his men.

“This attack ought never, never to have been made,” Brigadier General Edward Porter Alexander wrote of that assault. “It was sending a boy on a man’s errand. It was wasting good soldiers whom we could not spare. It was discouraging pluck & spirit by setting it an impossible task.”

Grant’s performance at the Wilderness was equally mixed.

According to Major Washington Roebling, who would later become famous for building the Brooklyn Bridge, “The Wilderness was Grant’s first great fizzle.”

The young staff officer blamed Grant’s impulsiveness and poor tactical sense for many of the missed opportunities over the two days. At the outset of the battle, Grant pressured Major General Gouverneur Warren into attacking too soon, which resulted in unnecessary casualties. And Major General Ambrose Burnside’s Ninth Corps, which reported directly to Grant, was a non-factor for most of the battle.

“The Wilderness was a useless battle,” Roebling believed, “fought with great loss and no result.”

Grant deserved credit, however, for moving his large army into position, and he nearly destroyed Lee’s right wing on May 6. Indeed, his decision to head south to Spotsylvania Court House after two days of carnage may have been the most crucial decision of the entire war.

Unlike Union commander Joseph Hooker, who according to an enduring myth chalked up his defeat a year earlier at Chancellorsville to his having “lost faith in Joe Hooker,” Grant never lost faith in himself or the campaign.

“The Wilderness campaign was necessary to the destruction of the Southern Confederacy,” Grant told a reporter years later. The Union commander and future president’s persistence and determination in the face of unfathomable losses would be a persistent theme that would continue from the Wilderness to Appomattox 11 months later.

Many years after the war, Grant complained that Lee had received too much praise by the Northern press. He told a reporter in 1878 that Lee “was a good deal of a head-quarters general” and “was a man who needed sunshine.” In a clear attempt to diminish the reputation of Lee, Grant declared that Lieutenant General Joseph Johnston gave him “more anxiety than any of the others.”

Lee also downplayed the skill of his rival. When asked by a nephew which of the Union generals he considered the best, Lee responded, “McClellan by all odds.”

Regardless of their postwar recollections, the Battle of the Wilderness showed that Lee and Grant were two of the most talented generals of the Civil War. Each was the other’s most formidable rival.

History is often fond of brilliant commanders like Hannibal, Napoleon, and Lee, who eventually lost the wars they waged. More recently, historians have been more appreciative of what Grant accomplished in the Wilderness and beyond. Perhaps he was one of the few Union commanders with the moral courage to pay the extraordinary price that victory required.

John Reeves is the author of A Fire in the Wilderness: The First Battle Between Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee. You can follow him on Twitter at @reevesjw