THE ULTIMATE PRICE
By mid-morning May 6, 1864, Brig. Gen. James Samuel Wadsworth had endured a rough 24 hours in Virginia’s Wilderness. It was about to get tragically worse.
The previous day, when Union and Confederate forces opened on each other in the tangled, second-growth forest just west of Chancellorsville, Wadsworth advanced his bluecoats—members of the 4th Division, 5th Corps—into “the dark, trammeling woods” and quickly fell afoul not only of Confederates but also the terrain. Later, after the division regrouped in the open fields around 5th Corps headquarters, corps commander Maj. Gen. Gouverneur K. Warren sent them back in again. Wadsworth once more pushed through the dense foliage, arrowing straight toward an unguarded gap in the Confederate line near the Orange Plank Road. A surprise counterattack by the 5th Alabama Battalion sent the division scrambling rearward for the second time that day.
Despite the setbacks, Wadsworth “was conspicuous beyond all others for his gallantry, prompter than all others in leading his troops again and again into action,” noted Army of the Potomac chief of staff Maj. Gen. Andrew A. Humphreys. Now, on May 6, the 56-year-old Wadsworth faced his most severe crisis yet—and from it would emerge one of the most unlikely stories of human decency displayed during the entire war.
A 4:30 a.m. assault led by Union Maj. Gen. Winfield S. Hancock’s 2nd Corps, centered on the Orange Plank Road, had driven exhausted Confederates back more than a mile. Positioned as support, Wadsworth swung his division down from the northeast to help protect Hancock’s flank. But even as the entire right wing of the Rebel army faced annihilation, Wadsworth’s men became ensnarled with advancing troops from the 2nd Corps, necessitating a halt to sort things out.
Then the timely arrival of Lt. Gen. James Longstreet’s Corps reversed the momentum and the Federals found themselves falling back pell-mell. Brigadier General Lysander Cutler, whose 1st Brigade broke under the onslaught, tried to find Wadsworth, his division commander, amid the chaos. Instead, he found a pair of the general’s aides and the divisional headquarters flag. Wadsworth’s horse had been killed in the assault, leading the men to believe Wadsworth had been slain as well.
But Wadsworth reappeared atop a new horse, apparently risen from the dead. He was always at the front, attested a member of the 150th Pennsylvania Infantry, urging his men on in an almost fatherly way. The
