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number of Union commanders from the Wilderness/ Chancellorsville/Fredericksburg area in defeat and disgrace over the preceding two years. For the war-weary north, a repulse of Grant might well have been the straw that broke the Union’s back, permanently splitting the country in two. The future of the nation was at both metaphorical and actual crossroads as the New Englanders stood their ground... and held! Though it took almost another year, Grant was on to Richmond. What had seemed probable with Pickett’s repulse at Gettysburg was now assured by Vermont on the Brock Road. For the Army of Northern Virginia, in Benet’s words, “each dusty road led (inexorably) to Appomattox now!” But that assurance came at unthinkable cost.
Historian Howard Coffin reports that there is no record of any Vermont veterans ever returning to this spot in the Wilderness; “it was just too terrible, too grim, too awful to relive.” No wonder, as Coffin recalls Bruce Catton’s description of the scene: “The fighting ... was simply brutal, amid the constricting trees and saplings, brush and brambles, vines and thorns, a dim and green hell filled with smoke and thunderous noise ... The bullets struck everywhere, smashing faces, disemboweling, shattering arms and legs, ripping through chests, blowing away brains and hearts, bursting through lungs, destroying hands, feet, private parts.”
The mind’s eye looks away at even the thought of such a caldron. But despite the difficulty in reflection it is well to note that this was not some i Middle Eastern desert or Asian ' jungle and the participants were not Toreigners’, though in r fact nearly all were descen
93.6%