Perhaps his greatest element of strength lay in the
conscious pride of the Confederate army that through all fluctuations of
success and failure, it had for three years effectually barred the way
of the Army of the Potomac to Richmond. But to offset this there now
menaced it what was before absent in every encounter, the grim,
unflinching will of the new Union commander.
General Grant devised no plan of complicated strategy for the problem
before him, but proposed to solve it by plain, hard, persistent
fighting. He would endeavor to crush the army of Lee before it could
reach Richmond or unite with the army of Johnston; or, failing in that,
he would shut it up in that stronghold and reduce it by a siege. With
this in view, he instructed Meade at the very outset: "Lee's army will
be your objective point. Where Lee goes, there you will go, also."
Everything being ready, on the night of May 4, Meade threw five bridges
across the Rapidan, and before the following night the whole Union army,
with its trains, was across the stream moving southward by the left
flank, past the right flank of the Confederates.
Sudden as was the advance, it did not escape the vigilant observation of
Lee, who instantly threw his force against the flanks of the Union
columns, and for two days there raged in that difficult, broken, and
tangled region known as the Wilderness, a furious battle of detachments
along a line five miles in length.
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