Battle of the Wilderness

“ Argonne Wood, our present day battle of the wilderness, takes time and its awful toll of human lives, but yields, for the first time in history, to an attack by American troops; Grand Pré and open country beyond. ”

“ Brigades and solid squadrons are marching out of camp; He hears their stirring music, he hears their steady tramp: The Wilderness the arena, a nation’s life the prize, Their watchword, “On to Richmond!” He hears their battle-cries.
For days, for weeks together, repulsed, defeated, slain, As sands restrain old ocean, their ranks roll back again, Till rising higher, higher, with loud, exultant roar, The foaming, raging billows sweep o’er the crumbling shore. ”

“ Why not let the tragedy go on to its inevitable close? All this in an instant. Then, the law of humanity laid hold on Donald; the command of the wilderness that drives men through unheard-of perils to another's help.
With a shout, he leaped from his cover, sped down the bank, and out upon the frozen river. The dogs, tangled in their harness, were fighting their own last battle, while drifting down-stream, struggling against the deadly haul of the sledge that dragged them under. The fur-wrapped figure showed now and then, rolling amid the jagged ice. ”

“ In the tangled underwood of the Wilderness artillery and cavalry were of little use, and the battle became a fierce struggle between the foot soldiers of either army. The forest was so thick that officers could only see a small part of their men, and could only guess at what was going on by the sound of the firing, and the shouts exultant or despairing, of the men who were drive to and fro in the dark and dreary thickets. In the end neither side gained anything except an increased respect for the foe. ”

“ Look, through the pines what line comes on?
⁠Longstreet slants through the hauntedness?
'Tis charge for charge, and shout for yell:
⁠Such battles on battles oppress—
But Heaven lent strength, the Right strove well,
⁠And emerged from the Wilderness. ”

“ Bad as was being shot by some of our own troops in the battle of the Wilderness,—that was an honest mistake, one of the accidents of war,—being shot at, since the war, by many officers, was worse. ”

“ But in America, war assumed a new and striking aspect. A wilderness was its sublime arena. Army met army under the shadows of primeval woods; their cannon resounded over wastes unknown to civilized man. And before the hostile powers could join in battle, endless forests must be traversed, and morasses passed, and everywhere the axe of the pioneer must hew a path for the bayonet of the soldier. ”

“ He was a veteran of the Civil war, and commanded 20,000 troops at the battle of the Wilderness, besides having the confidence and esteem of officers and men. Every contingency was guarded against, at least as far as it was possible to foresee it. The troops organized for the attack were Bernard's and Perry's troops of cavalry, and Green's and Mason's infantry, numbering 250 men; Captain Applegate's and Captain Kelley's volunteers, numbering 225 men, Donald McKay's Indian scouts numbering fifty and the California volunteers under John Fairchilds and Presley Dorris. ”

“ The sun sank, black night came, and the battle closed. There lay in the Wilderness perhaps two thousand dead in grey and five thousand wounded. There lay in the Wilderness more than two thousand dead in blue and twelve thousand wounded. There were three thousand in blue captured or missing. There were fifteen hundred grey prisoners.
Night was not so black in all parts of the Wilderness. In parts it 297was fearfully red. The Wilderness was afire. Pine and oak scrub and the dry leaves beneath and the sedge in open places,—they flared like tow. ”

“ As the third decade of the nineteenth century came in, the trappers and traders began more than ever to long for the conquest of the great mountain Wilderness, whose solemn front, ending the wide rolling plain, reared its craggy barriers with soothing outlines tantalisingly suggestive of wealth and wonder easily accessible behind. ”

“ Here with traps, a good rifle, and plenty of ammunition, notwithstanding encounters with the native striving to preserve his happy hunting-grounds, their lives were full of pleasure and that resolute and healthy vigour which comes to the intelligent man alert to protect life and limb. They appeared to have been born for this particular operation of breaking the final strongholds of the Wilderness. ”

“ While the war-whoop of the savage still echoed within the surrounding valleys and his council fires blazed upon the hills, those daring adventurers penetrated the hitherto pathless wilderness and passed through unexampled hardships with heroic endurance. They opened up the roads, bridged the streams, and cut down the forests, turning the wilderness into a place fit for man's abode. ”

“ Without were already gathered hundreds of warriors attracted by rumors of war and promise of pillage; and these were growing in number and increasing in ferocity each day. I had ridden through them once, when their mood was only to annoy, and realized with a shudder of horror what it would mean to face them in our retreat, with all restraint of their chiefs removed. I thought of those long leagues of tangled forest-land stretching between us and the nearest border settlements, of ambuscades, of constant and harassing attack on the ever-thinning column as we fought for each foot of the way. ”

“ The backwoods folk, the stark hunters and tree-fellers, and the war-worn regulars who fought beside them in the forest, pushed ever westward the frontier of the Republic. Year after year each group of rough settlers and rough soldiers wrought its part in the great epic of wilderness conquest.
The people that for one or more generations finds its allotted task in the conquest of a continent, has before it the possibility of splendid victory, and the certainty of incredible toil, suffering, and hardship. ”

“ Our soldiers fighting in an unexplored wilderness, along the dark borders of swamp and morass, crawling many times on hands and knees through the tangled matted underbrush, fighting these children of the forest who knew every inch of their ground could hope for little less than defeat. ”

“ The wind was gone, and the sun smiling on the still leaves and dewy grass—the flood torrent of the river dancing and laughing in its light, and the calm bright air breathing with the sweet perfume of the damp plants, and all the freshness and fragrance of the forest wilderness." We back it against the forest of Ardennes!
Every true hunter is humane. What! you say—do you call it humane to persecute the unfortunate stag, the monarch of the wilds, to the death?—to drive rifle-bullets into the target of the harmless roe? ”

“ The great wilderness, like the great ocean, retains no traces of the passage of hostile bodies. Sometimes, indeed, the signs of a woodland encampment were visible in the midst of the forest, on the margin of some sluggish brook or around a sylvan fountain, where the impression of recent hoof-prints, the scattered fragments of brushwood cut for temporary shelter, and the still smouldering ashes of camp fires, showed that masses of men had been in motion. The deer fled, too, with a more frightened bound towards their coverts, as if lately alarmed by the pursuit of the huntsman ”

“ On the Downs above rose the camp or refuge of the tribe—an earthwork rudely constructed in accordance with the natural lines of the hills—to which the whole body of people, with their women, children, and cattle, retreated in case of hostile invasion from the villagers on either side. It is not likely that any foreigners from beyond the great forest belt of the Weald would ever come on the war-trail across that dangerous and trackless wilderness ”

“ Arriving at the mouth of that river on the 20th of September, he set forth with an army of 1,100 men, embarked in heavy batteaux, to voyage up the wild stream where hitherto had floated only the light craft of the Indian, the scout, and the hunter. Battling with dogged persistence against the angry rush of rapids, and now dragging their bulky craft over portages of swamp or rugged steeps, they made their slow and weary progress through the heart of the pitiless wilderness at the rate, at best, of little more [Pg 126] than four miles a day. ”

“ Over the platform bears and men went rolling and struggling, in the wild battle of life and death. Through the trees, and into the deep drift, staining the snow with their mingled blood! Here, two or three men were engaged with a single foe—there, some brave hunter stood battling alone. ”

“ Personally, I am a great deal more interested in the modern tussle for a promised land than in those old time frays for a fertile patch in a sterile wilderness; and I see the same call for the hero's fighting edge; and I like the MacDonalds, who jump out from behind the Safety Line to fight for right, though it bring but the bloody bullet holes in the soft of the temple; and I like the Waylands, who take up the game trail to run down crime though it bring the sword of dismissal dangling over their own heads ”

“ I fear, nevertheless, that the British infantrymen will soon resume acquaintance with them, for the War isn't over by a long chalk yet. Meanwhile, however, the sight of an at present comparatively unblemished countryside must be a great joy to men sick of the howling wilderness created on the ground that has been contended for since July, 1916. I know those Somme battlefields—every square yard of soil honeycombed with shell-holes, all traces of verdure vanished, trees reduced to withered skeletons, blasted forests, fragments of houses, with the poor human dead rotting all around. ”

“ To the westward, the vast plains, as yet scarce pressed by the adventurous feet of white explorers, faded away into a mysterious unknown country, roamed over by countless tribes of savages; to the northward lay an unbroken wilderness for hundreds of leagues, save for a few scattered traders at Green Bay, until the military outpost at Mackinac was reached; to the eastward rolled the waters of the Great Lake, storm-swept and unvexed by keel of ship, an almost unsurpassable barrier, along whose shore adventurous voyagers crept in log and bark canoes ”

“ For four breathless days the broad, raw trail of a thousand men in headlong flight was the trampled path we traveled. Smashing straight through the northern wilderness, our enemy with horses, wagons, batmen, soldiers, Indians burst into the forest, tearing saplings, thickets, underbrush aside in their mad northward rush for the safety of the Canadas and the shelter denied them here. Threescore Oneida hatchets glittered in their rear ”

“ I have brought my hunters, who are brave and trusty men, to serve you as scouts and spies. In your front and in your rear, and on either hand, we will scour the woods, and beat the bushes, to stir up the lurking foe, that your gallant men fall not into his murderous ambuscade. To us the secret places of the wilderness are as an open book; in its depths we have made our homes this many a year: there we can find both food and shelter. We ask no pay, and our rifles are all our own. ”

“ I was too thoroughly trained in the stern and careful school of the frontier not to be cautious at such a time, for I knew that silence and seeming desolation were no proof of savage desertion; nor did I believe that Indian strategy would leave the north of the Fort wholly unguarded. Any rock, any black ravine, any clump of trees or bushes, might well be the lurking-place of hostiles, who would only too gladly wreak their vengeance upon any hapless straggler falling into their hands. I was unarmed, save for the long hunting-knife I carried in the bosom of my shirt ”

“ These with equal pity look into the wilderness; they see the naked hunter groaning out his fierce soul on his native turf, slain by the tomahawk of his own savage tribe, or wounded by some neighboring hordes that prowl through an existence little elevated above the brute. ”

“ The sound seemed to release a spring, for instantly the fawn bounded away, his white flag raised, and joined the others in the safety of the wilderness.
Providence was kind to the buck and his family and in spite of their many enemies late autumn found them still together. Through October, the hunters' month, when the law permits the shooting of males, they all grew exceedingly wary. The sound of a gun in the still forest would send them fleeing swiftly and tirelessly toward the denser coverts to the north. ”

“ Subdue the wilderness within you! Step by step, little by little, as you have fought your way across this land from the Eastern mountains to the Western river, driven out every enemy and now hold it as your own, begin likewise to take possession of the other until in the end you may rule it also. If you are feeble; if fainthearted; if you do not bring into your lonely, silent, unwitnessed battles every virtue that you have relied on in this outward warfare of twenty years, you may never hope to come forth conquerors. ”

“ We skirted rocky bluffs, toiled painfully over fallen timber, or waded ankle deep in softened clay, in the black gloomy shadows of dense woods which seemed interminable, meeting with nothing human, yet constantly startling wild game from the hidden coverts, and feeling more and more, as we advanced, the loneliness and danger of our situation,—realizing that each league we travelled only added to the length and peril of our retreat if ever disaster came or Fort Dearborn were found deserted. ”