Grant hoped to begin his
maneuver around Lee’s right
flank without being detected by his
adversary. He slipped most of the
army behind Hancock’s Second Corps,
still manning the Brock Road and thus
masking the movement. The press of
wagons and exhausted men made for
slow going. As Grant and his staff rode
through the logjams, thousands of
begrimed soldiers, seeing his horse was
trotting south, raised cheer after lusty
cheer. Finally, they were not retreating
before the Army of Northern Virginia.
Lee had not failed to spot the clouds
of dust from Grant’s wagons and felt
certain they were heading toward
the key point of Spotsylvania Hemomentum that it actually breached
the salient. Despite its eventual repulse
(although the attackers carried with
them a number of prisoners), this
fleeting success convinced Grant, as a
steady rain began falling, to plan a
similar, only much bigger, assault,
spearheaded by Hancock’s Second
Corps. The target would be the apex
of the salient.The Union assault
Dawn on May 12 brought more rain,
along with a mist so thick that the
Confederates manning the apex
defenses barely heard the tramp and
splash of innumerable feet until some
20,000 Union soldiers were upon them.
If faulty intelligence had not persuaded
Lee to remove 22 cannon from the
salient, and if many of its defenders had
not let their powder get dampened by
the rain, the onslaught might have
been repulsed.
The Northern attackers easily
surmounted the works and were
seemingly everywhere, killing orGeneral John Sedgwick
Union Sixth Corps commander General John Sedgwick
famously chided troops scurrying for cover from snipers
with the words: “They can’t hit an elephant at this
range.” Moments later he was fatally wounded.Confederate fieldworks
Abatis—obstructions made of felled treetops—and rows
of sharpened stakes were erected by Lee’s soldiers in
front of their earth-and-log breastworks.GRANT, SHERMAN, AND TOTAL WAR 1864ordered Richard Anderson,
who had replaced Longstreet,
to move the First Corps out at
dawn. The fires that night,
however, still lit up the
Wilderness in a terrifying
display few of the veterans
ever forgot; so Anderson,
unable to bivouac his soldiers
there, got an early and, in the
event, lucky start.Lee’s response
Throughout the day on May
8, Confederate cavalrymen
fought fierce delaying actions,
slowed the Union advance, and allowed
Anderson’s soldiers, hastening down a
parallel route, to choose their ground.
They arrived at the village minutes
ahead of the Union vanguard, and
General Jeb Stuart deployed them
across the high ground to the west,
where they were soon repulsing one
piecemeal attack after another. As
darkness fell, more and more units
were fed into the ensuing fight, each
stumbling into position along a
lengthening front. As Grant had
feared, Lee had his troops dig in.
By morning, a forbidding arc of
Confederate earthworks, fronted by
abatis (felled treetops) and sharpenedstakes, was snaking through the woods
and fields. At a 1-mile (1.6-km) bulge
in the line, known as the Mule Shoe
Salient by the Confederates, these
works were dauntingly impressive—
packed-earth breastworks framed by
log revetments (retaining walls), rifle
ports topped by shielding head logs,
and stout traverses (intercepting
embankments) jutting rearward to
protect the defenders against flanking
fire or crossfire. However, because the
position had been hastily sited in the
dark, for all its defenses it had a
weakness: a breach by Grant could
divide Lee’s army.Attempted breakthroughs
Having failed to outmaneuver his
opponent, Grant hammered away at
Lee’s defenses. Numerous attacks
against the Rebels entrenched on Laurel
Hill and the Spindle Farm were
ill-coordinated and bloodily repulsed.
Then, on the evening of May 10, in the
woods across from the Mule Shoe
Salient, Colonel Emory Upton quietly
packed 12 Union regiments into one
dense wedge. Bursting out of the
woods, the column charged with suchThe casualty total
of the two armies at
Spotsylvania Court House. Although the
Union losses (18,000 killed and wounded)
were larger, Lee’s much smaller force
suffered more heavily in proportion.30,000
Felled oak
Now in the American History
Museum of the Smithsonian,
this 22-in (56-cm) oak tree
stump was felled by bullets—
testimony to the fierceness of
the fighting at the Bloody
Angle, a once-peaceful
meadow in Virginia.