May 5–7, 1864 · Orange and Spotsylvania Counties, Virginia
The Wilderness: a battle in the burning woods
Second-growth forest so thick a regiment could not see the one beside it. The Wilderness opened Grant's Overland Campaign, and it is part of Grant's Campaigns in Civy War, on Nathaniel Michler's postwar survey.
One scenario, playable from either side. Every battle runs five minutes on the clock against a Green, Regular or Veteran enemy: the attacker has to break the line before nightfall, the defender has to hold.
The Wilderness
Grant's Campaigns
May 6, 1864 · 5 a.m.
As the Union, drive Hill's corps off the Plank Road before Longstreet arrives. Hancock's II Corps, Birney's, Mott's, Gibbon's and Barlow's divisions, attacks west with Getty's division of the VI Corps and its Vermont Brigade, and Wadsworth's division of the V Corps. Take the Widow Tapp farm.
As the Confederacy, hold the Tapp farm until Longstreet comes up. Heth's and Wilcox's divisions fought to exhaustion yesterday. Poague's guns stand in the open at the Tapp field. Longstreet's brigades, Gregg's Texans, Law's Alabamians, Benning's and G. T. Anderson's Georgians, then Kershaw's division and Mahone's brigade, come up the road during the fight.
The battle
In May 1864 Grant, now commanding all the Union armies and travelling with Meade's Army of the Potomac, crossed the Rapidan River. Lee struck him in the Wilderness, the tangled forest west of Chancellorsville, where artillery was nearly useless.
At dawn on May 6 Hancock's attack swept Hill's men back to the Tapp field, where Poague's guns fired canister into the woods and Longstreet's Texans arrived at the run. Lee tried to lead them in himself until the men shouted him to the rear. Later that morning Longstreet's flank attack along an unfinished railroad rolled up Hancock's left, and Longstreet was shot by his own men a few miles from where Stonewall Jackson had fallen a year before. Brush fires burned through the woods, and wounded men died in them.
After two days and some 17,000 Union casualties the armies stood where they had started. Then, instead of retreating as every Union general before him had done, Grant ordered the army south, and the soldiers cheered.
Free or paid
Paid: part of Grant's Campaigns, a one-time purchase of six battles from Champion Hill to Appomattox (Fort Donelson, the first, is free). The map is from the surveys of the Wilderness under Brevet Brigadier General Nathaniel Michler, 1867, from the Library of Congress.
Thirteen battles, the Drill Field and the Field Manual are free. The Historical Campaigns, Grant's Campaigns and The Western Campaigns are optional one-time purchases that restore on every device signed in to the same Apple ID.
