Today in History:

499 Series I Volume XXXVI-II Serial 68 - Wilderness-Cold Harbor Part II

Page 499 Chapter XLVIII. CORRESPONDENCE, ETC.-UNION.

MAY 7, 1864-7 a. m.

General HUMPHREYS:

Major Roebling, just in from the front, says the rebels are cheering as if in considerable in the direction toward Parker's Store and to the right. I have informed General Burnside. It is too smoky to see anything. I have received your dispatch in relation to report of General Ricketts. General Griffin has pushed out his skirmishers. I have directed him to keep firing down the pike and along its edge with artillery, to prevent the enemy using it in the smoke.

G. K. WARREN,

Major-General.

MAY 7, 1864-7 a. m.

General HUMPHREYS:

I will send up General Cutler's command, about 2,400 strong, to help General Sedgwick, if he wants them. I think it is the enemy's policy to attack our right flank, and think we should be prepared for it, so that troops should be sent up from the left at once. They won't assault there again, I think.

G. K. WARREN,

Major-General.


HEADQUARTERS ARMY OF THE POTOMAC, May 7, 1864.

General WARREN:

Your dispatch received. General Meade has ordered Ricketts to send back Getty's brigade to Sedgwick's right. You need not send Cutler, but hold him ready for supporting where required.

A. A. HUMPHREYS,
Major-General.

MAY 7, 1864-7.40 a. m.

General HUMPHREYS:

I have no doubt the enemy is forwarding a heavy force along my front. The high ground toward Parker's Store commands and enfilades my front, and I expect the heaviest kind of shelling from that direction. We are not strong here, commensurate with the importance of the position, and if the whole army lies quiet and they concentrate upon us we may be driven out, and in this fog and smoke we could not reform unless a provisional line is formed on the other side of Wilderness Run facing west, near the edge of the wood. Batteries of Reserve Artillery might do this, and the heavy artillery move with them that I do not want (Colonel Kitching's I mean). The belief is that the enemy are all leaving General Burnside's front. May they not also be leaving General Hancock's, and should he not as he has such a large force make a determined attack there to see? You know how much more important our right is to our army just now than the left.

Respectfully,

G. K. WARREN,

Major-General.


Page 499 Chapter XLVIII. CORRESPONDENCE, ETC.-UNION.