WILDERNESS, BATTLE OF THE

The main area of the western and Carolinas campaigns, 186165. Use left sidebar to control (May 57, 1864), in the American Civil War, first stage of a carefully planned Union campaign to capture the Confederate capital at Richmond, Virginia. Crossing the Rappahannock River near Fredericksburg, Virginia, early in May, General Ulysses S. Grant advanced with a Union army of 115,000 men. On May 5 he met a Confederate army of 62,000 troops under General Robert E. Lee. The confrontation occurred in dense thickets, called the Wilderness, where orderly movement was impossible and cavalry and artillery were almost useless. Burning brush killed many of the wounded. After indecisive but intense fighting for two days, Grant saw the futility of further hostilities in this area and moved on to do battle at Spotsylvania Court House, nearer Richmond.