Crossing the Rapidan - Part I

The 150th seems to be flying by as we now find ourselves in the middle of the commemorations of the 1864 Overland Campaign.  With my work in Gettysburg I'm sadly missing out on the many living histories and reenactments going on around Fredericksburg.  But, giving tours on the Gettysburg Battlefield is still a great way to spend my weekends, so I shouldn't really be complaining.  This doesn't mean I can't vicariously experience the Overland Campaign 150th, though, and my favorite way to do that is through period photos from the Library of Congress' digital collections.

Three photos that have caught my eye recently are of the Army of the Potomac's crossing of the Rapidan River in early May of 1864 on the eve of the Battle of the Wilderness.  The three I'll focus on today each offer amazing views of what the AotP would have looked like on the move, and provide exquisite detail thanks to the high resolution copies made available by the LoC.

So, let's have a look at our first image:

This shot shows wagons of the V Corps crossing a river.  There are contradicting captions for this image on the LoC website, but I think it shows the V Corps' crossing of the Rapidan in early May of 1864.  I feel confident of the date because of the corps insignia painted on the covers of the wagons.

You'll see that there is a I Corps circle nested into the V Corps Maltese cross insignia.  During the AotP's reorganization in early 1864, the I Corps was discontinued and consolidated into two divisions under John C. Robinson and James S. Wadsworth.  Not wanting to let go of their old insignia, the men of the former I Corps were allowed to wear their old badges, and I reckon to distinguish their wagons from the other V Corps Divisions they utilized the combined symbol.  I haven't found documentation to back up this claim, but would be interested to know how this might have come about.  This to me shows that the spring of 1864 is the earliest date this photo could have been taken.

There are other markings seen on these wagons that are harder to decipher.

On the leftmost wagon in this shot, there's a "3 4" visible.  My first thought was this might belong to a regiment with the numeral 34.  Unfortunately it's not that simple, because the only unit in the AotP at this time numbered 34 was the 34th New York Light Artillery Battery, which was a part of the IX Corps.

All the men pictured seem rather nonchalant.  If I was in the middle of a swift river standing on a temporary pontoon bridge weighted down by several tons of wagons, ammunition, supplies, men, and horse muscle that could break loose any moment, I'd be a little uneasy.  On the bright side, the traffic jam up the road that caused these wagons to pause enabled these men to be photographed, preserving their memory for the use on blogs 150 years later.

In the background we see that there's plenty more wagons coming around the bend and maneuvering down the steep bank to the bridge.  This photo really provides an amazing view into what the seemingly endless trains of men, guns and wagons looked like when an army of 100,000 men was on the move.

Finally, there's one figure in this photo who I'd be very curious to know about.  That's the man sitting next to the dog tent and what looks like a little shack to the right of the bridge on the far bank.  What's this guy's purpose here?  Is the shack his office?  Is he tasked in some way with managing the crossing, maybe keeping track of whose going over and what they have?  I'm not sure, but I can't help imagining his job being something like this:

While he may not of asked each person who crossed five three questions, the name "Bridge of Death" would probably be a good name for the crossing he overlooked in the photo.  While mostly veterans, I think its safe to say the men of the AotP who crossed at Germanna Ford in early May of 1864 could not have imagined the grueling campaign that lay before them.  Inside of two months from when this photo was taken between 50 and 60,000 federal soldiers would be killed, wounded, or captured.

This is just the first installment of photo analysis from the AotP's crossings.  In the next few day's I'll take a look at two more images struck at about the same time, so stay tuned.