194 The American Civil Warvulnerable segment of Lee's line. Upton led a
dozen regiments to the edge of a wood that
looked across 150yds (135m) of open field
toward the northwest corner of the Mule
Shoe. There a salient on the salient - a small
bulge on the corner of the larger projection -
offered an attractive target. The Federals
waiting to attack dreaded the deadly fire
they would face the moment they emerged
from cover. 'I felt my gorge rise,' one of
them wrote, 'and my stomach and intestines
shrink together in a knot ... I fully realized
the terrible peril I was to encounter. I looked
about in the faces of the boys around me,
and they told the tale of expected death.
Pulling my cap down over my eyes, I
stepped out.'
Upton's direct assault surprised the
Confederates - Georgians under General
George Doles. It burst over the works,
captured several hundred Southerners, and
seemed poised to rupture the whole Mule
Shoe position; but Confederate
reinforcements hurriedly sealed the shoulder
of the breach, some of them led by Lee
himself. Federal supports did not come
forward with the same elan Upton and his
men had shown. When the fighting waned
at dark, the breakthrough had been repulsed.
General Grant apparently considered
Upton's success as admonitory. In the
Wilderness, all of Grant's efforts to maneuver
against Lee had been less than successful,
and he wound up with both of the Union
flanks turned and shattered. Now Upton had
gone straight ahead. Perhaps the solution
was simply to overwhelm the outnumbered
Confederates? On 12 May, Grant launched
an immense assault intended to do just that.
The immediate result was the heaviest day of
fighting at Spotsylvania and one of the most
intense hand-to-hand combats of the war. In
the longer term, Grant's preliminary success
on the 12th probably convinced him to
adopt the notion of full-scale, head-on
frontal assaults that led to vast and futile
effusions of blood over the next few weeks.
Through the night of 11-12 May, Federal
troops marshaled opposite the northeast face
of the Mule Shoe. Relentless rain and a
pitch-black night complicated their
preparations (one general called the result
an 'exquisitely ludicrous scene'), but by
4.30 am a force of about 25,000 men had
consolidated into a dense mass, ready to
attack. General Winfield Scott Hancock sent
them forward in what would prove to be the
most successful assault of its kind by Federals
during the entire war in Virginia. Hancock's
leadership and the men's bravery contributed
to the attack's initial success, but it also
benefited from two bits of happenstance: in