Sherman's army was equally efficient, and Sheridan's cavalry soon proved that sweeping raids could be carried out by one side as well as by the other.
Crossing the Rapidan at the Germanna Ford, Grant marched south through the Wilderness on the fifth of May. The Wilderness was densely wooded; the roads were few and bad; the clearings rare and too small for large units. When Lee attacked from the west and Grant turned to face him the fighting soon became desperate, close, and somewhat confused. Neither side gained any substantial advantage on the first day. Next morning Grant, preparing to attack at five, was forestalled by Lee, who wished to keep him at arm's length till Longstreet came up on the southern flank. Again the opposing armies closed and fought with the greatest determination for over an hour, when the Confederates fell back in some confusion. Then Longstreet arrived and restored the battle till he was severely wounded. After this Lee took command of his right, or southern, wing and kept up the fight all day.
Meanwhile Sheridan had countered the Confederate cavalry under Stuart, which had been trying to swing round the same southern flank. The main bodies of infantry swayed back and forth till dark, with the woods and breastworks on fire in several places, and many of the wounded smothering in the smoke.
On the seventh reassuring news came in from Sherman and Butler, Sheridan drove off the Confederate cavalry at Todd's Tavern, and the southward march continued. As Grant and Meade rode south that evening, past Hancock's corps, and the men saw they were heading straight for Richmond, there was such a burst of cheering that the Confederates, thinking it meant a night attack, deluged the intervening woods with a heavy barrage till they found out their mistake.
The race for Richmond continued on the eighth, each army trying to get south of the other without exposing itself to a flank attack. Grant had sent his wagon trains farther east, to move south on parallel roads and keep those nearest Lee quite clear for fighting. This movement at first led Lee to suspect a Federal retirement on Fredericksburg, which caused him to send Longstreet's corps south to Spotsylvania. The woods being on fire, and the men unable to bivouac, the whole corps pushed on to Spotsylvania, thus forestalling Grant, who had intended to get there first himself.
This brought on another tremendous battle in the bush. Lee formed a semicircle, facing north, round Spotsylvania, in a supreme effort to stem, if not throw back, Grant's most determined advance. Grant, on the other hand, indomitably pressed home wave after wave of attack till the evening of the twelfth. The morning of that desperate day was foggy; and the attack was delayed. The Federal objective was a commanding salient, jutting out from the Confederate center, and now weakened by the removal of guns overnight to follow the apparent Federal move toward the south.
The gray sentries, peering through the dripping woods, suddenly found them astir. Then wave after wave of densely massed blue dashed to the assault, swarming up and over on both sides, regardless of losses, and fighting hand to hand with a fury that earned this famous salient the name of Bloody Angle. Back and still back went the outnumbered gray, many of whom were surrounded by the swirling currents of inpouring blue. But presently Lee himself came up, and would have led his reinforcements to the charge if a pleading shout of "General Lee to the rear!" had not induced him to desist. Every spare Confederate rushed to the rescue. From right and left and rear the gray streams came, impetuous and strong, united in one main current and dashed against the blue. There, in the Bloody Angle, the battle raged with everincreasing fury until the rising tide of strife, bursting its narrow bounds, carried the blue attackers back to where they came from. But they were hardly clear of that appalling slope before they reformed, presented an undaunted front once more, and then drew off with stinging resistance to the very last.
After five days of much rain and little fighting Grant made his final effort on the eighteenth. This was meant to be a great surprise. Two corps changed position under cover of the night and sprang their trap at four in the morning. But Lee was again before them, ready and resolute as ever. Thirty guns converged their withering fire on the big blue masses and seemed to burn them off the field. These masses never closed, as they had done six days before; and when they fell back beaten the fortnight's battle in the Wilderness was done.
During it there had been two operations that gave Grant better satisfaction: Sheridan's raid and Sherman's advance. As large bodies of cavalry could not maneuver in the bush Grant had sent Sheridan off on his Richmond Raid ten days before. Striking south near Spotsylvania, Sheridan's ten thousand horsemen rounded Lee's right, cut the rails on either side of Beaver Dam Station, destroyed this important depot on the Virginia Central Railroad, and then made straight for Richmond. Stuart followed hard, made an exhausting sweep round Sheridan's flank, and faced him on the eleventh at Yellow Tavern, six miles north of Richmond. Here the tired and outnumbered Confederates made a desperate attempt to stem Sheridan's advance. But Stuart, the hero of his own men, and the admiration of his generous foes, was mortally wounded; and his thinner lines, overlapped and outweighed, gave ground and drew off. Richmond had no garrison to resist a determined attack.
But Sheridan, knowing he could not hold it and having better work to do, pushed on southeast to Haxall's Landing, where he could draw much-needed supplies from Butler, just across the James.