The Higgerson Farm

The Higgerson Farm was one of only a few major clearings on the Wilderness Battlefield. On the afternoon of May 5, Union troops swept across this open space, bound for bewildering combat in the thickets to the north and west. When Federals trampled her fence and garden, Permelia Higgerson emerged from her house, berated the Yankees, and predicted their quick repulse. After a succession of bloody clashes in the distant woods, the Federals retreated back across the field, and Mrs. Higgerson taunted them as they passed. A Confederate prisoner summed up the confused fighting by telling his captors that at Chickamauga there was at least a rear, but here there was neither front nor rear, only a mess of howling mobs.

Virginia · United States