"I am heartily tired of hearing about what Lee is going to do..." 

With this powerful retort, Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant sent a nervous subordinate back to the ranks with the command to find a way to wrest the initiative away from Robert E. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia.

Grant's iron resolve was exactly what the Union Army of the Potomac needed that day in the Wilderness of Virginia. Two days of stumbling, savage combat in the second growth thickets of Virginia had produced enormous casualties.  But unlike previous Union commanders, Grant was not about to let one battle drive him back above the Rappahannock.

CWPT is proud to announce a new campaign to save 49 acres at the center of the Wilderness Battlefield.  Historian Gordon Rhea says that this new tract at the famed Saunders Field is a property that "witnessed some of the Wilderness' most brutal combat."