As I child I spent many days in The Wilderness. My father was something of a Civil War buff and on the weekends he would, in moments of desperation, put my brothers and I in the car and drive us to a nearby battlefield where we could run around to our heart’s content. As a result, I have visited the battlefields of central Virginia countless times. The Wilderness was always my favorite. I could say it was because of some enduring fascination with those violent days in May 1864, but in reality, that came later. The Wilderness is fundamentally just a dense forest, and as a kid who liked being outside in the woods that made it infinitely more appealing than an open field.
For all the time I’ve spent wandering those woods (most recently in 2023 with my daughter, because these traditions must be passed down), my knowledge of the battle was pretty limited. On my last trip I decided to correct this by grabbing a book on The Wilderness from the Chancellorsville visitor’s center (there isn’t a dedicated center for The Wilderness, but Chancellorsville is spitting distance). That book was The Wilderness Campaign, a collection of chapters edited by the eminent Civil War scholar Gary W. Gallagher, whose edited volume on the Lost Cause I really enjoyed.
Edited volumes can be a bit of a gamble, at least when it comes to learning about a new subject. I have read, and enjoyed, many edited volumes that while they contained interesting chapters the overall work failed to cohere together enough for me to consider it a good book on its stated subject. In these cases, the individual articles provide great insight into aspects of the subject, but there is no connective tissue, and certain concepts may be overlooked. Those books can still be excellent, but they are a supplement to other reading, not an introduction for a relative neophyte.
What I prefer, though, are books that manage to focus on individual aspects of their subject in each chapter, but the chapters as a whole have been carefully selected to create a coherent work. The Wilderness Campaign is an excellent example of this latter type. The first three chapters discuss the lead up to the Overland Campaign through discussion of Grant’s relationship with the press, and the expectations that were set for his coming East, a reexamination of the morale of the Army of Northern Virginia in early 1864, and a thorough analysis of the how the Army of the Potomac was reorganized to prepare for the coming campaign. The battle itself is told almost vignette style thanks to chapters on the poor performance of the new Union cavalry officers (most notably Sheridan) taking command in the Army of the Potomac, the performance of the Confederate generals Ewell and A.P. Hill’s in the battle, a narrative discussion of the actions of the Texas brigades and their “Lee to the Rear” incident, the hard fighting of the Vermont brigade, and finally the dramatic Confederate flank attack that ended in General Longstreet’s serious wounding. Together these chapters create a larger picture of the battle as a whole.
While not necessarily as comprehensive as Rhea’s hefty volume on the battle, which I will have to tackle soon I expect, The Wilderness Campaign does some deep digging, and I think encourages lively reconsideration of long held truths about the war in 1864. I don’t want to drone on about each individual chapter, but here are a few I had some thoughts on.
Brooks D. Simpson’s chapter on Grant and the northern press was a thoroughly satisfying deep dive into a subject that is often mentioned but only briefly in other works. The role of the press and public opinion in influencing military policy cannot be ignored, but most general histories of the Civil War don’t have space to really dig into it so it was great to read a deeper exploration of its impact on this campaign. It is particularly relevant to the beginnings of the Overland campaign as Grant came east with such high expectations but knew that the summer ahead would be a brutal slog, not a quick victory. I will also confess that it had not occurred to me just how much of an influence Napoleonic era warfare had on public perception of the Civil War, as writers and their audience were both constantly looking for an American Waterloo.
I’m partial to any dedicated re-examination of a long-held historical truth, so of course I devoured Peter S. Carmichael’s chapter on Ewell and Hill and their performance at The Wilderness. These two generals have never had a particularly sterling reputation, and Carmichael is not determined to redeem them in general. Rather, Carmichael sets out a strong argument that their specific performance at The Wilderness was not so poor as is often held and that historians have too often relied on the memoirs of their subordinates, who were incredibly hostile to both generals. Carmichael shifts much of the blame for Ewell and Hill’s failures at The Wilderness back up the chain to Lee – a figure that postwar historiography was determined to absolve of all mistakes – and points to effective command in the moment by both generals in less-than-ideal circumstances. I found this a compelling argument that added a lot of nuances to a narrative that often tends towards simplicity.
Perhaps the only (minor) disappointment for me in The Wilderness Campaign was Robert K. Krick’s chapter on the “Lee to the Rear” incident. While by no means a bad chapter, it is a detailed exploration of the events around the Widow Tapp’s farm on May 6, I felt like it lacked the kind of strong thesis and arguments that made the other chapters shine. It is perfectly good narrative history, but I wanted slightly more. I would have loved a deeper discussion of how the “Lee to the Rear” incident became famous and what it meant to soldiers and veterans of the war. Instead, its importance is assumed, and the chapter digs deep into trying to assemble the timeline of what happened rather than what it means. I will admit that this is partly down to personal preference, but this chapter just didn’t impress me to the same degree as others in the book.
The final two chapters provide excellent insight into the brutality of the fighting and the personal stories, particularly those of the Vermont brigade in the chapter on the “Other Grant”, while also not slouching on providing excellent analysis of what it all meant. The discussion of the Confederate flank attack on Hancock in the final chapter includes excellent analysis on the wider use of flank attacks by the Army of Northern Virginia and the interesting parallel between Jackson’s death in a dramatic flank attack at Chancellorsville and Longstreet’s severe wounding during a flank attack at The Wilderness, only a few miles to the west and almost exactly a year later. While these two chapters only tell a narrow section of the overall battle – the struggle between the two parts of the armies located further north is entirely absent from these chapters and discussed only briefly in earlier ones – together they still give valuable insight into what the battle was like for those who fought in it.
Overall, The Wilderness Campaign is an excellent read that packs a lot of history into fewer than 300 pages. It is eminently readable and requires only limited preexisting knowledge of the American Civil War but is still a great showcase for some of the excellent scholarship that has come to define writing on the subject over the past few decades. While now nearly thirty years old it never felt antiquated and to my mind at least it is still worthy of your attention and time.