The Washington Star of last evening says:
A messenger got in last night from the army who left Spotsylvania Court House yesterday at twelve o'clock, and came on horseback to Aquia Creek, and thence came up on a gunboat. At twelve o'clock yesterday a heavy fight was going on a Spotsylvania Court House. we held the place at that hour, and Lee gave evidence of being weakened and of falling back. The messenger had an escort of one hundred and fifty cavalry, and guerrillas were frequently encountered on the way, and it is not improbable that many of the escort were captured when returning to the army. Our wounded is reported at 15,000, most of whom are at Fredericksburg, and so thick lying in the streets and upon the pavements, that a cavalry patrol ordered out could not do duty, as it was difficult to pass between the rows of wounded without trampling on them. It is said there are between two thousand and three thousand rebel wounded left on the field there also. The colored troops attached to Gen. Burnside's command have not been in the fight, being held back as a reserve.
A Brisk Fight on Saturday and Sunday -- The Rebels Again Retreat -- They Retreat to North Anna River
Washington, May 10, 2 A.M. --Gen. Meade again moved on the enemy, and had a brisk fight at Todd's Tavern, just north of Po river. By night it was found that the rebel army was retreating on three roads running south, towards Richmond. On Sunday, the rebels attempted to make another stand, but Meade again fell upon them, and dispatches to-night confirm the report that they are retreating still further, to the North Anna river. They had succeeded in getting off most of their own wounded up to Saturday night. o The colored troops were not put into the engagement, but were held as a reserve with Burnside. We have lost but two pieces of artillery altogether. -- Phil. Inquirer.
THE BATTLE OF FRIDAY.
Fourteen Hours of Fighting -- Desperate Attempt by Lee to Break up Sedgwick's Division -- Heroic Resistance -- Varying Successes, but Final Repulse of the Rebels.
Field of the Battle of the Wilderness, Friday, May 6 -- 11 P.M. -- Fourteen hours of severe fighting to-day, and still nothing decisive. The position this morning was that of last night, substantially. Gen. Sedgwick, with two of his divisions, Ricketts's and Wright's, has fought upon the right; General Hancock, with the four divisions of his corps, viz: Birney's, Carr's, Barlow's and Gibbons's, with Getty's Division of the Sixth corps, has fought upon the left; and General Warren with his full corps and Stephenson's division of the Ninth corps (Burnside's,) has fought in the centre. Burnside's corps has constituted the reserve, and has marched and countermarched incessantly, and gone in by brigades at the centre and on the left. Sedgwick was to advance at five A.M., but Ewell, who commands opposite him, attacked at 4.45. This action on our right was spirited and well fought. At the expiration of an hour the rebels were handsomely borne back, the firing ceased, and each side held the ground they had bivouacked upon. Our loss was severe, and the enemy's could not have been less. This action barely over, and suddenly we heard from the extreme left that peculiar and monotonous swell and volume of sound which tells of large numbers engaged -- so many that single shots and even volleys of long lines are not distinct, but are merged in the mighty noise of a great battle. Hancock was engaged. The details of his two hours' steady struggle I do not know, but I know that he did his work cleanly and completely. Longstreet had joined the rebel right, and this was a second determined attempt to turn our left and a second utter discomfiture. At 11o'clock the enemy press close upon Warren and Sedgwick, and train a number of guns exactly upon the latter's headquarters. A man and three horses were killed within twenty feet of the General, and in the very centre of his grouped staff. Finding the enemy disposed to renew the engagement of the early morning, Sedgwick accepts the challenge, and advances his whole line. The men go in with more dash and hold on more steadily than in the morning.. Ewell is driven back to his second line, where his guns are in position, and there makes a stand. At this juncture, Warren, who connects with Sedgwick's left, is extremely anxious to go in with all his might, but the enemy's position in his front seems too formidable.
I see a troop of horsemen riding rapidly up to the perilous edge of battle and recognize Warren and his white horse, as Jehu was recognized by the prophet of old, for they came furiously. With him are Gens. Griffin and Hunt, and officers of Gen. Grant's and Meade's staffs. Halting at the first line, they dismount and walk more than half a mile in front of the men, who are flat upon their breasts, and firing rapidly. We hold the woods on one side of an open space, perhaps one-fourth of a mile across, and rebels lay along the trend of the woods upon the other side. The entrenchments are plainly visible, and the open mouths of their artillery peer over.
No; it will not do to charge across. It were stark madness. The sharpshooters may continue to reply to this, but no man shall start across the plain and live. Warren had perhaps hoped that his own judgment would be overruled by the officers with him, but all declare that no advance can be made here. But more to the left, where Wadsworth's and Robinson's divisions of Warren's corps lap up Hancock, the prospect is better, and there an assault is ordered. It is noon, and Sedgwick's second fight is over, and he again rests on the line of his last night's bivouac. Wadsworth advances and finds the enemy -- A. P. Hill's Corps -- Strong and Prepared. The divisions on his right and left become engaged with him, and the work warm. Here, as elsewhere, the contest is in a tangled jungle, and the soldiers push aside the bushes and find mortal enemies bursting through the adjoining growth of bushes, and face to face with them. Half or three-fourths of an hour of alternating success and repulse, and Gen. Wadsworth orders a charge to recover his command from a slight wavering. He is cheered loudly by his men, who love the gray-haired chieftain. One horse is shot under him. He mounts a second and spurs to the front, hat in hand, and we should have won then, but his men saw him fall. He was shot through the head, killed instantly, and his body fell into the hands of the enemy. His command fell back to their original position with comparative order.Wadsworth's death is a heavy loss. But this battle does not pause for a hero slain. From noon until five o'clock, a number of sharp assaults at various points were made and invariably repulsed whether made by us or the enemy. Prisoners came in at the rate of 100 an hour. The day was excessively hot, and the men were much exhausted. We had neither gained nor lost ground, but continued this thing long enough, and we hoped to finally weary them out. At half-past five o'clock Hancock was preparing for a grand movement of our entire left. He did not make it, for the enemy anticipated him, and he had to repel, perhaps, the most wicked assault thus far encountered -- brief in duration but terrific in power and superhuman momentum. The first few minutes we were staggered. Stragglers for the first time in all this fighting streamed to the rear in large numbers choking the roads and causing a panic by their stampede and incoherent tales of frightful disaster. It was even reported at general headquarters that the enemy had burst entirely through and supports were hurried up. Grant and Meade seated their backs against the same tree, quietly listened to the officer who had brought the report, and consulted a moment in low tones. The orders for sending reinforcements were given, and for a little time not a word was spoken in the group of more than twenty officers. They but looked into each others' Grant faces.
At length Grant says,with laconic emphasis, 'I don't believe it.' He was right. Long before that Hancock had recovered from the first shock, held his own awhile, and now was gaining ground. In forty minutes from this attack the enemy was completely beaten back with tremendous slaughter, and the loss of some hundreds of prisoners.
It was now nearly sunset. From one end of the line to the other not a shot could be heard. Our line of to-night would be that of last night. The auguries were good. In two days' fighting we had lost heavily, but not more than the enemy. Our assaults had been futile, but the enemy's had been equally so; and it is by these massed assaults that he has ever achieved his victories. The inference was clear that we had overmatched him fighting at his best and strongest.
The sun went down red. The smoke of the battle of more than two hundred thousand men destroying each other with villainous saltpeter through all the long hours of a long day, filled the valleys, and rested upon the hills of all this Wilderness, hung in lurid haze all around the horizon, and built a dense canopy overhead, beneath which this grand army of freedom was preparing to rest upon the morrow. Generals Grant and Meade had retired to their tents. Quiet reigned, but during the reign of quiet the enemy were forging a thunderbolt.
Darkness and smoke were mingling in grim twilight, and fast deepening into deep gloom, when we were startled out of repose back into fierce excitement. The forged thunderbolt was sped, and by a master. A wild rebel yell away to the right. we knew that they had massed and were charging. We waited for the volley with which we knew Sedgwick would meet the onset. We thought it by but a night attack to ascertain if we had changed our position. We were mistaken o it was more. They meant to break through, and they did. On Sedgwick's extreme right lay the 2d brigade, 3d division of his corps under Gen. Seymour, who had been assigned to it but two days before. The brigade is new to the 6th Corps, and is known as the Milroy brigade; connecting on the left of Seymour by Shaler's and then Neill's brigades, the later being a brigade of Getty's division that had not been sent to Hancock. These troops were at work entrenching when fallen upon. The enemy came down like a torrent, rolling and dashing in living waves, and flooding up against the whole 6th Corps. The main line stood like a rock, but not so the extreme right. That flank was instantly and utterly turned. The rebel line was the longer, and surged around Seymour's brigade, tided over and through it, beat against Shaler, and bore away his right regiments. All this done in less than ten minutes, perhaps not five. Seymour's men, seeing their pickets running back, and hearing the shouts of the rebels, who charge with all their chivalry, were smitten with panic, and, standing on no order of going, went at once, and in an incredibly short time made their way through a mile and a half of woods to the plank road in the rear. That reported, in the frantic manner usual with stampeded men, the entire corps broken. Grant, as in Hancock's case, didn't believe it. But when three of Sedgwick's staff rode in to the army headquarters separately and stated how they had ridden from Sedgwick's to keep Seymour's men to their work, had been borne back by the panic, and had last seen Sedgwick and Wright hard to the front working like Trojans to hold the wavering line, the situation appeared more critical. No word came in from Sedgwick. It began to be feared that he and Wright, disdaining to fly, were prisoners. Artillery moved quietly to commanding positions, to be prepared for the worst, and cool heads felt that were the whole 6th Corps broken, the army, as an army, would still be invincible. Warren's Corps is instantly, but in perfect composure, disposed to meet the situation. Grant and Meade and Warren are in Grant's tent, to a from which officers come and go with a certain earnest air that bespeaks urgent and important cares. So during an hour. No firing has been heard the last three-quarters of an hour. The rebels must have ceased to advance; but how far have they penetrated, and what is the present situation? The 6th Corps' flag comes in. Where is the 6th Corps' chieftain? My watch says ten o'clock at night. A dispatch received. John Sedgwick safe. Wright safe. The 6th Corps holds a strong line; only Seymour's and a part of Shaler's brigade have been broken. The enemy can do nothing more.
THE LATEST FROM GEN. GRANT
The Enemy Make a Stand at Spotsylvania Court House
Death of Gen. Sedgwick.
Sharp Fighting but No General Battle.
General Grant Replenishing from his Supply Trains.
Washington, May 10. -- To Maj. Gen. Dix. Dispatches have been received from General Grant, dated at 1 o'clock yesterday. The enemy have made a stand at Spotsylvania Court-House. Some hard fighting, but no general battle has yet taken place there.
I deeply regret to announce that Maj. Gen. Sedgwick was killed in yesterday's engagement at Spotsylvania, being struck by a ball from a sharpshooter.
His remains are at Fredericksburg and are expected here tonight. -- E.M. Stanton, Secretary of War. GRAPHIC ACCOUNT OF THE BATTLES OF THURSDAY, FRIDAY AND SATURDAY.
The New York Tribune has received from its correspondent the following stirring details of the terrible fighting last week between the armies of Generals Grant and Lee.
On Thursday, the 5th, at 20 minutes past 1 P.M., after desultory skirmishing all the earlier part of the day, the sixth army corps, forming the right of the line, became seriously engaged. Gen. Neill's brigade, which formed the extreme right of the Sixth corps, received the brunt of the fight. The enemy had succeeded in turning their flank, and seven regiments of Louisiana troops came charging through the woods, giving them a raking fire, which drove them back for a few rods, when the 4th New Jersey, 7th Maine and 5th Wisconsin came to their support, and the enemy was driven back more than half a mile.
Pub Date: 05/21/99