270 SEVENTH REGIMENT INFANTRY.

furrows, or stumbled over carcasses. At intervals, darkness would be made visible on
the right by a blazing brand dropping from some distant tree-trunk, still aglow in the
depth of the Wilderness, like a signal-light of goblins. The low, damp air, reeked with
the pungent, acrid snuff of horse and human slaughter.

Combat with Fitz Lee.

Shortly before daylight (Sunday, 8th of May, 1864), the head of column emerged into
the open country around Todd's Tavern, where a cavalry division was found, and
a halt was ordered. No sooner were arms stacked than the men dropped, falling asleep
directly they touched ground. Before, however, they had fairly stretched themselves,
they had to be punched, kicked and shaken up to learn that more fighting was in order,
before either lodging or breakfast. The crack-crack of carbines, reverberating in the
forest glades ahead, closed up yawning jaws and put snap into numb legs.

Merritt's cavalry division, on the road to Spotsylvania Court House, was meeting a
serious obstacle in Fitzhugh Lee, and, after considerable dismounted fighting, got out of
the way of the infantry, which had been annoyed by the shifting movements of the led
horses. The Maryland brigade was then deployed on both sides of the road, the Fourth
on the skirmish line. Successive barricades of felled timber across the road were struck
and carried, the enemy making a stand at each obstruction. In the language of the
Confederate courier who bore the verbal message from Stuart to Fitz Lee, informing
him of the march of Anderson's Corps to his relief and "urging him to hold out to the
last at any sacrifice," it was of the "last importance that Fitz Lee should delay the ad-
vancing column and cover the position at Spotsylvania Court House as long as possible.
His division of cavalry encountered the head of the Federal column of infantry near
Todd's Tavern, about four miles from the Court House, and, dismounting his men and
fighting with carbines, fell slowly and stubbornly back. The fighting was dreadfully
severe, and many of the flower of Virginia's youth went down before the terrific volleys
of the Federal infantry." The same writer then gives a spirited account of the reckless
daring with which the horse artillery was handled by Major Breathed in covering the
retreat, to which he attributes great importance in retarding the advance of the Mary-
land brigade, which led the Federal column, until the arrival of Anderson's Corps.
(In Memoriam.—Major James Breathed, No. 3.)

Substantially the same account of this action is given by Stuart's chief of staff, who
calls it "one of the severest conflicts in which Fitz Lee's division was ever engaged."
(McClellan's "Campaigns of Stuart's Cavalry," 407.)

Yvrhile this was the way the affair looked to the cavalry, their infantry opponents,
whose loss was trifling, took it much less seriously. In fact, compared with what was
to immediately follow, it seemed to them more like a pic-nic.

Parallel March of Anderson's Corps.

All this time nothing whatever was known of the parallel and unobstructed march
upon an inside track of Anderson's (late Longstreet's) Corps for the same objective
point. Nothing of it appears to have been learned by the Union cavalry, although the
routes pursued by the opposing forces were but one or two miles apart. Meade and
Sheridan had some hot words over it later on, each holding the other responsible.
(Personal Memoirs of P. H. Sheridan, Vol. I, p. 367.)