tory of this fight could afterwards be
read by the windrows of dead men." As to its effect he also says: "We
could not check the Confederate advance and they forced us back, and
back, and back. The charging Confederates broke through the left of the
Ninth Corps and would have cut the army in twain, if not caught on the
flank, and driven back. Massed for the attack on the Sixth Corps, they
were skillfully launched, and ably led, and they struck with terrific
violence against Shaler's and Seymour's Brigades, which were routed,
with a loss of four thousand prisoners. The Confederates came within an
ace of routing the Sixth Corps. Both their assaults along our line were
dangerously near being successful." Such was the description of a brave
enemy, an eye-witness of this assault. At last, as dark fell, the fire
slackened and died out.

The Battle of the Wilderness was done. Grant was pinned into the
thickets, hardly able to stand Lee's attack, no thoroughfare to the
front and twenty odd thousand of his men dead, wounded and gone. That
was about the situation when dark fell on the 6th of May!

That night we drew off some distance to the right, and lay down,
supperless, on the ground around our guns; it was very dark and cloudy
and soon began to rain. There had been too much powder burnt around
there during the last two days for it to stay clear. And so, as it
always did, just after heavy firing, the clouds poured down water
through the dark night. Lying out exposed on the untented ground, with
only one blanket to cover with, we got soaking wet, and stayed so.

The comfortless night gave way, at last, to a comfortless day--May
7th--gloomy, lowering, and raining, off and on, till late in the
evening. During the morning, a little desultory firing was heard in
front, and then all was quiet and still. We knew enough to know that
Grant's push was over at this point. Some of us had gone up to look at
the ground over which Longstreet had driven the enemy yesterday. We knew
that the Federal troops could never be gotten back over that awful,
corpse-covered ground to attack the men who had driven them. We knew we
had to fight somewhere else, but where? By and by, talk began to
circulate among the men that Spottsylvania, or around near
Fredericksburg, might be the place. Of one thing we were all satisfied,
that we would know soon enough.

In this waiting and excited state of mind, the long, long, rainy day
wore on, and dark fell agai