Battle of the Wilderness

Readers, I'm winding down my obnoxious parade of Washington D.C. vacay photo essays, I swear. I just wanted to tell you a few things about the Battle of the Wilderness area, which we drove through on our way to Monticello, the home of Thomas Jefferson (also the B-side of our very own 5 cent piece: the fabulous U.S. nickel!).

The battle took place over three days in May, 1864, in the dense forest region of Spotsylvania, Virginia. Lee's army was vastly outnumbered (61,000 Confederates against Grant's 101,000) and had inferior artillery, both of which would be somewhat nullified in the confusing close quarters of the Wilderness, which played host to the most bloody fighting in the most brutal conditions of the war. Accounts vary, but it is generally agreed that the Union lost close to 17,000 men to the Confederacy's 8,000. While Grant's losses were greater and he was the one to disengage from fighting, it was not a true victory for Lee as Grant continued his aggressive offensive on towards Richmond rather than retreating North.

It was in this battle that a Union surgeon, William Chester Minor, saw much of his war action. Along with his (often futile) efforts trying to save the lives of the wounded, Minor was also charged with the duty of punishing those that tried to flee, branding their skin with the letter "D" for deserter. He survived the battle and the war, but in 1868 began exhibiting signs of mental instability. He was institutionalized at St. Elizabeth's hospital, an asylum in Washington D.C., for a year and a half with no improvements to his condition reported. He was then allowed to retire from the army and collect his pension, and in 1871 wandered to a slum in London, where his paranoia led him to fatally gun down a random man in the street.

Minor was found not guilty on grounds of insanity, and committed to Broadmoor asylum. Because he had an income (his army pension) and he was not judged to be dangerous, he was allowed to live in comfortable quarters along with his massive collection of books. It was during this time that he began corresponding with the creators of what was to become the most ambitious attempt to collect and document the English language: the Oxford English Dictionary. England's Philological Society had called for volunteers to help collect notations for words (their definitions and origins), and Minor devoted the rest of his life to the project, compiling over 10,000 entries, becoming the most prolific of the OED volunteers, and in the meantime befriending one of the project leaders, Dr. James Murray (who was, incidentally, unaware of Minor's situation until, believing that Minor was the hospital's administrator, he visited the asylum himself--only to discover his pen pal was an inmate, not its director).

By 1902 Minor's condition began to deteriorate further, his health failed, and he was eventually allowed to return to St. Elizabeth's in Washington, where he was diagnosed with schizophrenia. He died in 1920.