Military
6
On the morning of May 5, Lt. Gen. Richard S. Ewell's Confederate Second Corps arrived along the Orange Turnpike and challenged the Union march through the Wilderness. At midday more than 6,000 troops of the Union Fifth Corps 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 Confederate line and pushed forward through thickets and brambles for nearly a half mile. Ewell rallied his men, and soon a "wild, wicked roar" of musketry engulfed the Union lines. Without support, the Federals halted and then retreated, with thousands of blue-clad fugitives dashing back across Saunders Field. The Confederates then began building powerful earthworks there, while the heaviest fighting after May 5 shifted southward to the Orange Plank Road.
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