BGuthrie Photos: VA -- Spotsylvania Natl Battlefield

VA -- Spotsylvania Natl Battlefield:

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Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
1. SPOT_031122_02.JPG: Marker to Union General John Sedgwick. During the battle of Spotsylvania, his men were trying to hide from Confederate sniper fire. Sedgwick stood in front of his men and said, "Listen boys, these snipers couldn't hit an elephant at this dis..." He never finished the sentence; a sniper bullet hit him in the head and went out his eye.
2. SPOT_031122_20.JPG: Spotsylvania Campaign May 12, 1864. About 6am, Wright's VI Corps, advancing to support Hancock's attack, occupied the area in front of the Confederate works on the west face of the Salient. Here at a slight bend in the line, the area ever after known as Bloody Angle, occurred the most savage, long-sustained hand-to-hand combat of the War. The opposing troops fired muzzle-to-muzzle and bayoneted and clubbed one another across the logs of the parapet. Musketry fire slashed the springtime greenery and toppled trees, one an oak almost two feet in diameter. Rain poured down and the dead piled up in the mud. Before daylight on the 13th, the exhausted Confederates withdrew to a better line.
3. SPOT_031122_33.JPG: Landram House These stone chimneys are all that remain of the Landram House, a prominent landmark during the Spotsylvania campaign. The Confederate picket reserve stood here shivering in the early morning fog on May 12, 1864 when the silence was suddenly shattered by the assault of 20,000 Federals of the II Corps. The sentries were quickly engulfed and the blue wave swept over the 550 yards of rolling open terrain, crashing into the surprised rebels at the salient. Shortly after 7:00am, General Hancock, commanding the II Corps, moved his headquarters forward to the Landram House in plain view of the day-long fighting. Unlike so many soldiers who passed it, the Landram House survived the battle only to fall prey to fire in the more peaceful times of 1905.
4. SPOT_031122_40.JPG: The killing fields that Union forces advanced across before hitting the salient. The Landram House stood behind the camera.
5. SPOT_031122_49.JPG: This cannon is standing where a Confederate gun would have been on May 12, 1864. It faces the direction that Hancock's corps attacked from. We're roughly in the middle of the Bloody Angle. Sign: The Bloody Angle -- May 12, 1864 Hancock's thrust penetrated the Salient as far as the secondary line south of the McCoall House. Counterattacks drove Hancock's men back to, but not beyond, the top of the Salient. Wright's VI Corps was then thrown into action along the west face of the Salient, and here ensued the struggle of the Bloody Angle. Though Warren and Burnside could not shake the Confederate flanks, Lee knew that his desperately renewed hold on the Salient was bound to weaken. Thus, while his soldiers here fought grimly on, other troops were constructing a new line to which the weary defenders could retreat. Situation -- May 13, 1864 Lee has now evacuated the "Mule Shoe" and pulled his defenders back to the new line. The new center and the old flanks present a more defensible position. The top of the old Salient has been incorporated into the shifting Federal trench system. During the next several days, Grant will continue to maneuver by his left, farther eastward and southward.
6. SPOT_031122_65.JPG: The marker on the far left indicates that this was the "site of 22-inch oak tree felled by small arms fire." The stump from that tree is in the Smithsonian American History Museum. The little ridge that the bridge goes over are remnants of Confederate trenches.
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Wikipedia Description: Battle of Spotsylvania Court House
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Battle of Spotsylvania Court House, sometimes simply referred to as the Battle of Spotsylvania, was the second battle in Lieut. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant's 1864 Overland Campaign of the American Civil War. It was fought in the Rapidan-Rappahannock river area of central Virginia, a region where more than 100,000 men on both sides fell between 1862 and 1864.

The battle was fought from May 8 to May 21, 1864, along a trench line some four miles (6.5 km) long, with the Army of Northern Virginia under Gen. Robert E. Lee making its second attempt to halt the spring offensive of the Union Army of the Potomac under the command of Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant and Maj. Gen. George G. Meade. Taking place less than a week after the bloody, inconclusive Battle of the Wilderness, it pitted 52,000 Confederate soldiers against a Union army numbering 100,000.

Background:

After Lee checked the Union advance in the Wilderness, Grant decided to take advantage of the position he held, which allowed him to slip his army around Lee's right flank and continue to move south toward the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia. He already had troops on the move by the night of May 7, just one day after the Wilderness fighting ended, and on May 8, he sent Maj. Gen. Gouverneur K. Warren and his V Corps to take Spotsylvania, 10 miles (16 km) to the southeast. Lee anticipated Grant's move and sent forces to intercept him: cavalry under Maj. Gen. J.E.B. Stuart and the First Corps, commanded by Maj. Gen. Richard H. Anderson (its usual leader, Lieut. Gen. James Longstreet, had been wounded in the Wilderness).

Battle:

The Confederates won the race to Spotsylvania, and on May 9, each army began to take up new positions north of the small town. As Union forces probed Confederate skirmish lines on May 9 to determine the placement of defending forces, Union VI Corps commander Maj. Gen. John Sedgwick was killed by a s ...More...
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- 2014_VA_Spotsylvania: VA -- Spotsylvania Natl Battlefield (20 photos from 2014)
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Sort of Related Pages: Still more pages here that have content somewhat related to this one :
- 2001_VA_CWPT_Spots_010505: CWPT Annual Conference (2001) in Washington, DC -- Tour group: Spotsylvania Courthouse (41 photos from 2001)
Same Subject: Click on this link to see coverage of items having the same subject: [Civil War] [Park (National Park Service)]
2003 photos: Equipment this year: I decided my Epson digital camera wasn't quite enough for what I wanted. Since I already had Compact Flash chips for it, I had to find another camera which used CF chips. That brought me to buy the Fujifilm S602 Zoom in March 2003. A great digital camera, I used it exclusively for an entire year. Trips this year: Three-week trip this year out west, mostly in Utah. Number of photos taken this year: 68,000.
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