for one that his opponent had lost, and that would have put any one of his predecessors on the retreat; but he had not had a tremor. He had calculated that he could afford to lose two men if his hammering cost his antagonist one, and he would fight again.

What might have happened if Longstreet had been up when Lee struck Grant while his army was toiling through the narrow roads of the Wilderness, expecting to reach open country before forming line of battle, must be relegated to the gloomy sphere of the "might have been." Lee, opening the battle of the Wilderness when his opponent had three men for every one that he could put in his battle line, won the honors of one of the fiercest battles of the war and added new laurels to the chaplet of his imperishable renown.

Next day the two armies lay in each other's front, each strengthening his position as best he might and expecting the other to assault. As the Union commander was the aggressor, and had more than double Lee's force, the latter might well await his attack. Toward afternoon, however, it became known that Grant was moving his baggage-train covered by his heavy lines. It was believed by some in both armies that he was on the retreat for the Rappahannock. Lee's adjutant-general and military secretary recorded in his notebook a query as to this new general, adding that any one of his predecessors would have recrossed the river after such a defeat. Stuart, who was always alert, reported to Lee in the afternoon that Grant was moving his wagons toward Chancellorsville. Lee alone

1 1 Ibid., p. 333.

divined that in moving, Grant would head, not for the north bank of the Rappahannock, but for the north bank of the James. All day he spent on his lines studying his enemy's designs, and, while his staff officers felt assured that Grant was fixed in their front, he penetrated his purpose with an infallible instinct. In wise anticipation of Grant's design, Stuart had already been sent to Spottsylvania Court House to guard the important roads which met there; and at nightfall Lee detached four brigades of Longstreet's Corps, now commanded in Longstreet's absence by R. H. Anderson, and sent them to this point, despatching with him his adjutant-general to apprise Stuart of the approach of the infantry. He was not a moment too soon. Grant had already formed his plan of withdrawing from Lee's front by night and, marching by the left flank, of seizing the strategic point of Spottsylvania Court House; and that night at 9 o'clock he began his march. So assured, indeed, was he of the successful execution of his movement that next day he sent his government a despatch speaking of it as though it were an already accomplished fact. He "stated the positions to be occupied by his several corps at the end of the first day's march, in which Warren's corps was placed at Spottsylvania Court House." But as Colonel Taylor, Lee's adjutant-general, says in his "General Lee," "Lee disarranged this part of the programme."

Warren, marching for the Cross Roads at Spottsylvania Court House, found himself seriously delayed in the darkness by the staff and head-quarters equipment of Meade, as well as of the commanding general, which

occupied the road ahead of him; and when he arrived within two or three miles of his destination he found Sheridan's cavalry in his front, held back by Fitz Lee's Cavalry, posted across the Brock Road and another road which joined it two miles from Spottsylvania. The gossip of the army was, that in an interview between Warren and Sheridan at this point were laid the seeds which were to bear such bitter fruit for Warren at the battle of Five Forks, nearly a year later. It is reported that Warren ordered Sheridan to get his men out of his way, and stated that if he could not drive the enemy from their front he (Warren) had men who could do it, a speech which offended Sheridan deeply. However this may have been, acting in accordance with this idea, Warren moved his men forward in line of battle and drove the Confederate cavalry from the position. which they had hitherto held, driving them across an open field into the woods beyond it. Warren's line advanced across the field in pursuit, and when within a few score yards of the edge of the woods, found themselves unexpectedly facing Anderson's lines lying behind a fence on the edge of the woods, who suddenly poured into their faces a sheet of flame. Breaking under the shock, they were driven back across the field and along the Brock Road, and the lines were eventually established near this place in a wide crescent, with Lee's left and right resting on the Po and the coveted Cross Roads of Spottsylvania Court House well covered in the centre.

Humphreys pays General Fitz Lee the tribute of saying that he saved Spottsylvania that morning for

General Lee. This is quite true. But General Lee saved it for the Southern Confederacy by the masterly ability with which he divined and met Grant's movement.

CHAPTER XVI

SPOTTSYLVANIA COURT HOUSE

THE lines of the two armies at Spottsylvania Court House were, says Humphreys, formed to hold the positions which each one occupied at the close of the fighting on the first day, the 8th. This accounts for the Salient.

About midway of Lee's line of fortifications, which on his left ran nearly eastward from the Po, lay a tract of rising ground about a half mile in width and from three-quarters of a mile to a mile in depth. Just back of it was a low bottom through which crept a small branch in front of a farm-house at the top of a gentle slope. This rising ground appeared to command the ground in front of it, and in order to avoid the low ground and hold the elevation, the entrenchments suddenly swerved north-eastward for about three-quarters of a mile, following the conformation of the ground, then turned back at an angle and ran south-eastward for a distance of between three and four miles to the Po River. This space thus enclosed within the outjutting entrenchments came to be known later, when thousands of brave men had died for its possession, as the "Bloody Salient," or the "Bloody Angle." More properly, however, a crook in the western

The McCool house.