Lance Weller Novelist. Awkward.

The American Civil War Battle of the Wilderness was fought on May 5 and 6, 1864 in the Wilderness of Spotsylvania Country, Virginia.  The battle marked the opening of what would become known as the Overland Campaign and was the first clash between the pre-eminent generals of either side: Robert E. Lee for the  Confederates and Ulysses S. Grant for the Union.

Grant’s overall plan for the campaign was to strike hard for Richmond to draw Lee’s forces out in such a manner that the far superior numbers of the Union Army could be brought to bear against them.  To this end, he set the army in motion across the Rapidan River and into the Wilderness with the hopes of getting through the dark and tangled woods as fast as possible to meet the Confederates on more open ground of his choosing.  Lee, with typical prescience and speed, threw his army into the Wilderness and into Grant’s, knowing that—outnumbered and ragged as they were—their best chance of bloodying the Union juggernaut was to use those thickets to their advantage.

The Civil War remembrances of Abel Truman in Wilderness: A Novel treat, in part, with the opening clash of this opening campaign in a little place of cleared land known as Saunders’ Field.

For additonal information about the Battle of the Wilderness please see the following websites:

Civil War Trust-Wilderness 2010

Civil War Preservation Trust