Sunday, May 25, 2014

May 22, 1864


May 22, 1864


---Atlanta Campaign:  Sherman flanks Johnston again, going around his flank at Altoona and marching toward Dallas, Georgia.


---In Virginia, the Army of Northern Virginia and the Army of the Potomac are once again in a race for the next vantage point: the crossings of the North Anna River.  Hancock’s corps continues their march, and eventually Wright (VI Corps) and Burnside (IX Corps) head south on the Telegraph Road.  But the Confederates have anticipated Grant’s move: Breckinridge and his small division, fresh from victory at New Market, are at the North Anna crossings, and so are two brigades of cavalry under Gen. Fitz Lee.  Grant’s several columns get tangled in the nighttime woods, and Lee (having discovered that Grant is no longer in his fortifications at Spotsylvania) begins to move swiftly southward.

 

---Maj. Stephen Minot Weld, of the Army of the Potomac, writes in his journal of the march for the North Anna:

Sunday, May 22. — We marched until 4 or 5 this morning. We passed through Guinea Station, and halted in a ploughed field beyond it. We passed through the most beautiful and fertile part of Virginia that I have yet seen. The trees were all in leaf, and the corn and wheat well started. The country is rolling, with numerous streams intersecting it. I hear that we are the rear guard, with the trains. . . .

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