“A Wild, Wicked Roar”

On the morning of May 5, Lt. Gen. Richard S. Ewell’s Second Corps arrived along the Orange Turnpike and challenged the Union march through the Wilderness. At midday, more than 12,000 Federal troops advanced on a jagged, mile-long front, and the spearhead of the assault struck Ewell’s line on the western edge of Saunders Field. Three Union brigades rolled over the Confederates and pushed nearly a half mile through thickets and brambles before Ewell rallied his men and a “wild, wicked roar” of musketry engulfed the Union lines. Lacking support, the Federals halted and then retreated, with thousands of blue-clad fugitives rushing back through Saunders Field. After this attack, the heaviest fighting shifted south along the Orange Plank Road, where the Battle of the Wilderness would be decided. That afternoon Saunders Field burned, becoming a raging inferno in which many of the wounded perished and the dead were blackened beyond recognition.

Virginia · United States