For miles around this quaint old village-pump surged the lines of two vast
contending armies, May 8-12, 1864. In this picture of only a few months
later, the inhabitants have returned to their accustomed quiet, although
the reverberations of battle have hardly died away. But on May 7th
Generals Grant and Meade, with their staffs, had started toward the little
courthouse. As they passed along the Brock Road in the rear of Hancock's
lines, the men broke into loud hurrahs. They saw that the movement was
still to be southward. But chance had caused Lee to choose the same
objective. Misinterpreting Grant's movement as a retreat upon
Fredericksburg, he sent Longstreet's corps, now commanded by Anderson, to
Spotsylvania. Chance again, in the form of a forest fire, drove Anderson
to make, on the night of May 7th, the march from the Wilderness that he
had been ordered to commence on the morning of the 8th. On that day, while
Warren was contending with the forces of Anderson, Lee's whole army was
entrenching on a ridge around Spotsylvania Court House. "Accident," says
Grant, "often decides the fate of battle." But this "accident" was one of
Lee's master moves.
[Illustration: THE APEX OF THE BATTLEFIELD