Reconsidering the Wilderness’s Role in Battle, 4–6 May 1864

This article questions the traditional interpretations of how the Wilderness, a forest some sixty miles south of Washington, D.C., affected strategy and combat during the Battle of the Wilderness, 4–6 May 1864. It argues that other factors besides the Wilderness determined the Federal and Confederate commanders’ strategies. It also undermines the contentions that the Confederates held a tactical edge in the Wilderness and that the Wilderness was a unique landscape.