The fighting 195a dreadful stroke of bad timing, the
Confederate artillery had been withdrawn
from the Mule Shoe to be ready in case
Grant moved eastward; and the rain and
humidity had rendered most of the
Confederate infantry's weapons inoperative.
The noise of the gathering enemy had
been audible all night to Confederates
(McHenry Howard said it sounded 'like
distant falling water or machinery'), and
they had scrambled to get the artillery back
in position. When the attackers approached,
Modern aerial view of Spotsylvania Court House
Battlefield, looking southeast from above the Federal lines
toward the Bloody Angle. The Confederate position stood
at the edge of the trees beyond the field. The modern
road winds down the shoulders of the Mule Shoe salientthey made an incomparable target for
canister or other artillery rounds - rolling
forward in a wide, deep formation,
impossible to miss. Most of the Confederate
guns scurrying back toward the nose of the
Mule Shoe, however, arrived just in time to