Texans Always Move Them

154 years ago today in 1864, Ulysses S. Grant chooses to disengage the Army of Northern Virginia after Robert E Lee personally rallied his men yesterday in the Battle of the Wilderness.

Grant would be the 6th commanding general to face Lee. The numbers and supplies would be in Grant’s favor, however Lee had a determined veteran army holding defensive positions in terrain they were familiar with. The battlefield would be a dense woods with tiny roads and a few pockets of clearings for farms. On the first day of the battle, the rebels managed to hold off the Federals and hope for much needed reinforcements to arrive the next morning. The woods caught fire and burned throughout the night, consuming many wounded men on both sides who could not escape the flames. Grant is reported in some of his staff’s memoirs to have wept the night after the battle, however he would wake up the next day determined to renew the attack.

On the 2nd day of the battle, the Federals were about to break through the center of the rebel position when Robert E Lee personally lead a Texan brigade to hold the position in a famously recorded incident:

“Scarce had we moved a step, when Gen. Lee, in front of the whole command, raised himself in his stirrups, uncovered his grey hairs, and with an earnest, yet anxious voice, exclaimed above the din and confusion of the hour, "TEXANS ALWAYS MOVE THEM!”...never before in my lifetime or since, did I ever witness such a scene as was enacted when Lee pronounced these words, with the appealing look that he gave. A yell rent the air that must have been heard for miles around…”

“ As the 800 members of the Texas Brigade moved across the Widow Tapp’s fields, Lee rode with them. By the time the leading ranks had reached the middle of the clearing it became apparent that he intended to remain. Lee was spurring on his horse when members of the Texas brigade around him noticed the general's foolhardy intention. Alarmed for his safety they began to repeatedly shout along the line, "LEE TO THE REAR!” and some of the men pleaded with him directly, saying, "Go back, General Lee, go back!" A sergeant took hold of the horse's reins, and after conferring with the Texan general, Lee thought better of his spontaneous urge to attack with the men. Lee turned back and rode off through cheering Confederate troops. "I thought him at that moment the grandest specimen of manhood I ever beheld," one soldier who witnessed the event later recounted, "He looked as though he ought to have been, and was, the monarch of the world." ”

Of the 800 soldiers who charged with Lee, all but 250 of them would be killed or wounded. But their sacrifice would delay the Federals long enough for additional reinforcements to stabilize their position.

By time nightfall came, the Federal army failed to gain any significant positions. But for the first time in their history after a confrontation with Lee, the “Army of the Potomac” would continue their campaign the next day rather than stall or retreat. Grant was not going to disengage after one encounter with the rebels and took his army southeast where he fought with Lee over the next 12 days in the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House.

[Online References]

(http://www.history.com/topics/american-civil-war/battle-of-the-wilderness )

(https://www.civilwar.org/learn/articles/battle-wilderness )

(http://www.historynet.com/battle-of-the-wilderness )

“Texans always move them”

Private Robert Campbell of the 5th Texas Infantry Memoirs:

(https://www.amazon.com/Lone-Star-Confederate-Williams-Ford-University/dp/1585442380 )

(https://books.google.com/books?isbn=1585442380 )

“Lee to the Rear”:

(http://www.civilwarhome.com/leetorear.htm )

(https://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/media_player?mets_filename=evm00001417mets.xml )

United States Army Center of Military History “The Overland Campaign” (full book available online)

(https://history.army.mil/html/books/075/75-12/index.html )

Authored by R.E. Foy