The Tangled Battlefield of the Wilderness

Upon rejoining the Army of the Potomac in the spring of 1864, the 20th Indiana Volunteer Infantry Regiment first encountered the Confederate Army in an area known as “The Wilderness”. Of this area Erasmus Corwin Gilbreath wrote:

“It was located in Orange and Spotsylvania Counties and was the poorest part of Virginia. The clayey soil lacked fertility to such a degree that enterprise had been discouraged and the face of the country had been given over to nature.”