Today I visited the Wilderness Battlefield area of Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park. The Battle of the Wilderness took place on May 5th and 6th, 1864, a year after the Battle of Chancellorsville, and just a few miles farther west. The first place where I stopped in was the site of General Grant's headquarters, which was a short walk from Virginia Route 20. There's nothing to mark the place other than two informational plaques, one of which is seen here.
Further west along Route 20 is the place where I made a brief stop last December. (See this blog's archives for that month, specifically the post "Some Pictures From Virginia".) Instead of the cannon which was there back then, the place had these two caissons, connected together.
As I did during that earlier visit, I took a picture of the monument to the 140th New York State volunteers.
My self-guided tour continued with a stop at Saunders Field, where the Confederate soldiers dig these trenches. Note the cannon in background, in some shade.
The Confederate troops also built this long embankment to the right of a trench.
Back near the road is this marker indicating the four cardinal directions. The same cannon as seen above is behind it.
This field was once part of the Higgerson farm. The Orange County Review has an article about what happened there during the war.
I eventually reached an intersection which had a cannon on one side thereof.
The last stop on my tour was a monument to the Vermont Brigade, seen here from its north-facing (and thus shaded) side.
On its south-facing side is a quote from Brigadier General Lewis A. Grant.
The Battle of the Wilderness marked the start of a Union Army offensive intended to reach the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia, which was led by Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant. This better-known General Grant had spent most of the war leading campaigns farther west near the Mississippi River. As far as I know, the two Generals Grant were not related.
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