The fighting 193Federal reinforcements pressed southwest
toward the Po, hoping to get beyond Lee's
flank; Confederates arrived to counter them.
When both armies' flanks reached the Po,
Federals began to push in the opposite
direction, northeast from the Brock Road.
Confederates countered that initiative too,
but in the process created an unfortunate
anomaly in their position.
General Edward 'Allegheny' Johnson (the
nickname came from an early war victory at
a place called Allegheny) led his Confederate
division northeast from the Brock Road long
after sundown. In the inky darkness,
Johnson's staff and the van of the division
emerged from thick woods into the edge of a
clearing. They could see Federal campfires in
the distance at what seemed to be a lower
elevation, so they stopped and began to erect
defensive works. By morning, the
Confederate line they had fortified and
extended stretched far north of the generally
east-to-west axis of the troops nearer the
Brock Road. This 'salient' swung up and back
through a broad arc that prompted some of
the farm lads who fought there to bestow
upon it the name 'Mule Shoe.'
The Mule Shoe salient, about one mile
(1.6km) deep north-to-south and half that
wide, became the paramount military feature
through most of the Battle of Spotsylvania.
The location of the line did take advantage
of high ground, and it did afford protection
for Confederate supply routes farther south;
but it proved to be fatally vulnerable in a
tactical sense. Southern infantry erected a
vast, complex array of defenses of dirt and
felled trees to strengthen the salient. They
also constructed traverses - interior defensive
walls perpendicular to the main line - to
protect against fire coming in from hostile
country opposite their flanks. No
fortifications, however, could extinguish the
elemental defect of a salient: an enemy who
broke through at any point across the entire
arc immediately had at his mercy the rear of
every defending unit.
General Grant's strength in numbers and
materiel gave him the luxury of dictating the
action. For two weeks he intermittently
General John Sedgwick, commander of the Federal
VI Corps, declared 'they couldn't hit an elephant at
that range' just moments before a sharpshooter's bullet
killed him. (Public domain)probed at Lee's line, occasionally
bludgeoning it with a massive attack. On
9 May the Army of the Potomac lost the
reliable veteran commander of its VI Corps,
General John Sedgwick. The corps
commander's troops had been building
breastworks next to the Brock Road when
long-range Confederate rifle fire, from about
650yds (600m) away, drove them from their
jobs. Sedgwick sought to inspire them to do
their duty by standing tall. 'They couldn't
hit an elephant at that range,' he said. A dull
whistle announced the passage of another
well-aimed bullet which whistled past. The
one after that hit Sedgwick beneath his left
eye and killed him instantly. He was the
highest-ranking Federal officer killed during
the war.
Federals probed west of the Po, where
Confederates blocked them successfully, but
the heaviest fighting surged back and forth
across the entrenched positions in the Mule
Shoe salient. On 10 May, General Emory
Upton, the bright young New Yorker in
command of a Federal brigade, sold army
headquarters on the notion of attacking a