Wilderness and Spotsylvania 1864
- Grant and Lee fought near Chancellorsville
- VA in a confusing series of battles amidst brush thickets and wildfires
- Unlike previous campaigns
- Grant simply kept flanking Lee
- Trying frontal assaults at Spotslvania's 'mule-shoe' and Cold Harbor along the way to laying seige to Richmond and Petersburg
- In May 1864 the Union Army of the Potomac under General George Meade had been in a leisurely pursuit of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia for nearly a year after the defeat of the Rebels at Gettysburg
- Confederate commander General Robert E
- Lee still retained his awe-inspiring reputation for wrecking Union armies that got too close to Richmond and Meade was still cautious
- His tactics at Gettysburg were defensive and he was unsure that he was able to take the offensive against Lee
- However
