Burnside had failed in ’62, Hooker would fail in ’63, but in 1864 the Union’s newly appointed commander of all armies, Ulysses S. Grant, would succeed.  Although the Battle of the Wilderness, with its two days of ruthless fighting in the burning tangle of underbrush, was a tactical draw, Grant, unlike his predecessors, would not accept retreat as an option and pushed on toward Richmond.  Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia was now the objective.  Where Lee would go, so would the Army of the Potomac.  The 25,000 combined casualties of the Wilderness battle would pale in comparison to the Overland Campaign’s final toll.  The Battle of the Wilderness would be the beginning of the end of the American Civil War.

The Friends of Wilderness Battlefield is a 501(c)(3) charitable organization which works in partnership with Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park, a unit of the National Park Service, to protect, pre­serve, and interpret the Wilderness Battlefield in Virginia’s Spotsylvania and Orange Counties.