The Battle of the Wilderness

The Battle of the Wilderness occured on May 5-7, 1864 and was near the Confederate Capital, Richmond, Virginia. The battlefield was the Wilderness of Spotsylvania, an expanse of nearly impenetrable scrub growth and rough terrain that encompassed more than 70 square miles of Spotsylvania County and Orange County, which were in central Virginia. A number of battles were fought in the vicinity between 1862 and 1864, including the bloody Battle of Chancellorsville in May 1863. It is often said that the Wilderness and Chancellorsville were fought in the same spot, but the 1864 battle was actually fought a few miles to the west, and only overlapped the old battlefield along the Brock Road on the Union army's left flank.
On May 2, 1864, the Army of Potomac, normally under the command of Major General George Meade, but taking orders from General Ulysses S. Grant, crossed the Rapidan River at three separate points and converged on the Wilderness Tavern, which had been the concentration point for the Confederates one year to the day earlier when they launched their devastating attack on the Union right flank at Chancellorsville. But Grant chose to set up his camps to the west of the old battle site before moving southward. Different from the Union army from before, General Grant did not want to fight in the Wilderness.
For General Lee it was imperative to fight in the Wilderness for the same reason as the year before. It was because his army was extremley outnumbered, with 61,000 men to Grant's 101,000, and his artillery had fewer and worse cannons than those of Grant's. Fighting in the harsh woods would annihilate Grant's massive advantage in artillery, and also the close quarters and raging confusion there could give Lee's outnumbered force better odds. While waiting for the arrival of Lt. Gen. James Longstreet and his two divisions of the First Corps (Pickett's division was absent, still recovering from its losses at the Battle of Gettysburg, manning the defenses of Richmond) which had been posted 25 miles (40 km) to the west to guard the crucial railroad junction of Gordonsville, Lee pushed forward his Second Corps, commanded by Lt. Gen. Richard S. Ewell, and the 22,000 man Third Corps under the command of Lt. Gen. A.P. Hill, in a successful attempt to engage Grant before he moved south. On May 5, Ewell, on Lee's left flank, and Hill on the right, engaged Union soldiers.
On the left, Ewell met up with the V Corps under the command of Maj. Gen. Gouverneur K. Warren, and fought it to a standoff. For much of the day Ewell's 18,500-man corps actually held a slight numerical advantage on this part of the field. But on the right, Hill was hit hard and driven back by the Union II Corps under Maj. Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock and a division from the VI Corps. He held his ground, however.
On May 6, Hancock, now commanding close to 40,000 men, resumed the attack on Hill's corps, while heavy Union reinforcements on Ewell's front prevented Lee from sending Second Corps men to aid Hill. By late morning, Hancock had driven Hill's corps back more than two miles (3 km) and inflicted heavy casualties. With the Third Corps in dire straits Lee began to look desperately for Longstreet, who had been expected hours before.
Longstreet and the 12,000-man First Corps finally arrived at around noon, with perfect timing: Hancock's men were tired and disorganized from six hours of fighting. When Longstreet attacked the Union forces they withdrew, and within two hours the situation was totally reversed: Longstreet had regained all the ground lost and advanced one mile (1.6 km) further, forcing Hancock to regroup along the Brock Road. At a crucial moment in the fighting Longstreet attacked through a cutting of an unfinished railroad that had split the Union forces, increasing the confusion. However, Longstreet did not have enough men to complete his victory, and the fighting soon petered out near the Brock Road. As the fighting wound down on this part of the battlefield, Longstreet was badly wounded by friendly fire and did not return to the Army of Northern Virginia for several months. (By coincidence, Longstreet was accidentally shot by his own men only about 4 miles (6.4 km) away from the place where Stonewall Jackson suffered the same fate a year earlier.)
Just as this phase of the battle was ending a division of the Second Corps under Maj. Gen. John B. Gordon launched a final assault on the Union right, partially turning the Army of the Potomac's flank and taking close to 1,000 prisoners. But darkness fell and ended the battle, before the Confederates had a chance to press their advantage.
In one of the more horrifying incidents of the war, a brushfire broke out between the two armies' lines during the night. Hundreds of wounded soldiers left on the field died screaming as they were burned alive in front of their comrades. In the end, the Battle of the Wilderness was a draw.

I got this off of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_wilderness