The Wilderness of Spotsylvania County
The armies fought the Battle of Chancellorsville in the heart of a 70-square-mile region of tangled undergrowth known locally as the Wilderness. This inhospitable terrain added a new dimension of horror to the fighting on May 3. Fires erupted from muzzle blasts of rifles and cannon and spread rapidly through the thick woods. Some wounded soldiers, unable to escape the flames, faced a gruesome fate. Union general John C. Caldwell described the scene: "It was pitiful to see the charred bodies hugging the trees, or with hands outstretched, as if to ward off the flames. We saw around some of them little cleared circles where they had evidently raked away the dead leaves and sticks to stay the progress of the fire."
Marker can be reached from Bullock Road.
Courtesy hmdb.org
