heard above the shots of the guns, he said, "What
does this mean?" In reply, hundreds of hands pointed toward the enemy on
our left, and some voices said, "They're getting in our rear." Gen. Lee
said, "Tut, tut, tut; go back, go back." And without a word every man
wheeled around and started back for the position he had left. Gen. Lee
perhaps knew that there were forces enough there to take care of the
enemy, who, as we saw it, was getting behind us.

As I said before, this kind of warfare continued for two days, and all
the time it was going on we could hear the booming of the artillery on
our left, telling us that Grant was doing all he could to beat back or
break through Lee's lines, and we knew, too, that he was not
accomplishing his purpose. We could always tell which way the battle was
going by the direction from which the sound came.

The night of the second day Grant silently and rapidly withdrew the main
portion of his army from Lee's front and marched toward Spottsylvania
Courthouse, which was some distance to the right of where the cavalry
was fighting.

His object was to surprise Gen. Lee, and get between him and Richmond.
But Gen. Lee had anticipated that very movement, and when Grant's
infantry moved forward at Spottsylvania Courthouse, he found Lee's army
there confronting him. Then began the bloodiest battle of all the war,
so it is said.

It was during the Battle of the Wilderness that Gen. Grant sent that
famous dispatch to Washington, "I will fight it out on this line if it
takes all summer." If he meant the line between his army and Lee's, he
changed his mind within 24 hours. But if he meant a line stretching from
Wilderness to Petersburg, he kept his word. It took him all summer to
get his army south of the James river, and cost him the loss (it is
said) of 100,000 soldiers.

He could have placed his army there without firing a shot by following
the route taken by McClellan, but Grant well knew he must first cripple
Lee's army before he could capture Richmond, and that he could afford to
lose five men to Lee's one in doing it, and I presume he thought the
district called the "Wilderness" a good place to begin the work.

While Grant's army was moving under the cover of night and the dense
forests toward Spottsylvania Courthouse, our cavalry also moved in the
same direction. And when Grant ordered his lines forward the next
morning, the first to receive them was our cavalry.

The enemy's cavalr