Benson J. Lossing, Pictorial Field Book of the Civil War. Volume 3.

[300] when his wearied troops also laid down upon their arms, the combatants so near each other that both drew water from the same brook. At midnight all was silent in The Wilderness, where the roar of battle had been sounding for many hours, during which time the opposing forces exhibited the curious spectacle of each being divided almost as effectually as if a high wall was between them. Hancock was entirely separated from Warren and Sedgwick by a thicket that forbade co-operation, and for the same reason Hill and Well were unable to assist each other.

Notwithstanding their heavy losses, the opposing commanders determined to renew the struggle in the morning on that strange battle-field — an arena more fitted for the system of ,savage warfare than for that of civilized men. Preparations were made accordingly. Burnside was summoned to the front by Grant, and Longstreet was called up from Gordonsville by Lee. Burnside arrived before daybreak on the morning of the 6th;

May, 1864.

and Longstreet, arriving before midnight of the 5th, had bivouacked not far from the intrenchments on Mine Run. Burnside took position in the interval between Warren, on the turnpike, and Hancock, on the plank road, and Longstreet was directed to take position on Hill's right. Meade's line of battle, fully formed at dawn, was five miles in length, facing, westward, with Sedgwick on the right of Warren, and Burnside and Hancock on the left. Lee's army remained the same as on the evening of the. 5th, Ewell's corps, forming his left, being on the turnpike, and Hill's on the right, lying upon the plank road. Each line had been extended so as to form a

Battle of the Wilderness.

connection, and Longstreet was ready to take his prescribed position on Hill's left.

So stood the two great and veteran armies in the morning twilight on the 6th of May, 1864, ready for a struggle that must be necessarily almost hand to hand, in a country in which maneuvering, in the military sense, was almost impossible, and where, by the compass alone, like mariners at murky midnight, the movements of troops were directed. The three hundred guns of the combatants had no avocation there, and the few horsemen not away on outward duty were compelled to be almost idle spectators. Of the two hundred thousand men there ready to fall upon and slay each other, probably no man's eyes saw more than a thousand at one time, so absolute was the concealments of the thickets. Never in the history of war was such a spectacle