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Night-time Horror
Civil War combat rarely continued after dark, but on the night of May 2, 1863, desperation and fear filled these gloomy woods. At midnight, about 3,000 Union soldiers of Brigadier General David B. Birney's division moved through these woods, intent on retaking the Orange Plank Road and re-establishing contact with the rest of the Union army. In this area, Birney's men collided with skirmishers of General James Lane's North Carolina brigade.
Blinding sheets of musketry tore through the dark woods. Unable to see, Union soldiers fired into their own men. Both Union and Confederate artillery shells ripped indiscriminately through the timber. Birney's men panicked. They fell back to Hazel Grove, their mission not accomplished. In the morning they would be called upon to fight again, in a battle far more terrible and costly than any they had endured.
"The scare wasn't confined to the privates. Officers dodged hither and thither, some of them so frightened they couldn't have told their names."
-- Private John Haley, 17th Maine
Believing that the uproar here signaled a Confederate attack, Union cannons at Fairview randomly shelled these woods, killing friend and foe alike. "The lightning flash of the batteries, the roaring of artillery, the crashing of timber... was a spectacle to be seen and heard that night-more to be imagined than described," wrote one Union officer. |