Valuable Crossroads

Just after noon on May 5, 1864, Union troops raced toward the Plank Road-Brock Road intersection as Confederates from General A.P. Hill's corps swept down the Orange Plank Road from the west, and blue-clad troops under George W. Getty arrived there just moments before the Confederates. The Federals immediately began building earthworks to defend the crossroads, and remnants of those works are still visible along the Brock Road. Later on May 5, men of the Union Second Corps launched attacks westward from these earthworks but did not get far, crashing into Hill's entrenched line about 200 yards away among the leaves. For the next five hours, fighting raged in the woods, neither side gained an advantage, thousands fell, and May 6 promised a bloody renewal of the contest for the intersection.

Lake Wilderness, Virginia · United States