At the start of Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant's 1864 Overland Campaign, Wadsworth led his division in Maj. Gen. Gouverneur K. Warren's V Corps at the Battle of the Wilderness. On this day Wadsworth was Grant's oldest divisional commander at 56 years old, about nine years older than the next oldest. On May 5, Wadsworth was ordered to counter march and help defend the left of the Union position. However, he had lost his direction in the dense Wilderness underbrush and drifted to the north, exposing the left of his division to a sudden and harsh attack, which in turn led to the same treatment of the Union division next to Wadsworth.