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:
- SPOT_060304_001.JPG: The Sedgwick Memorial
- SPOT_060304_012.JPG: Military types still consider strategy and tactics at battlefield parks
- SPOT_060304_048.JPG: These are along the Bloody Angle
- SPOT_060304_094.JPG: The Bloody Angle, May 12, 1864:
Hancock's thrust penetrated the Salient as far as the secondary line south of the McCoull House. Counterattack 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 its 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.
- SPOT_060304_095.JPG: Spotsylvania Campaign: (old-style NPS sign)
May 12, 1864. Union commanders Grant and Meade determined to exploit the Confederate "Mule Shoe." Early in the morning they sent Hancock's II Corps against the apex of the Salient (300 yards east). Hancock took the trenches on either side of the apex and pushed deep within the Confederate lines. As Gordon's Division and other troops counterattacked to drive the Federals back, the troops of Rodes' Confederate Division charged up the trenches to this point. Brigade after brigade was thrown into the fight. The bitterest part of the struggle took place in this vicinity.
- SPOT_060304_115.JPG: The McCoull House:
This was the home of farmer Neil McCoull and his unmarried sisters Mary, Eliza, and Milly. McCoull's farm was typical of those that dotted Spotsylvania County: a few hundred acres that produced a modest income from corn and other grains. Like his neighbors the Harrisons, McCoull owned slaves, a circumstance common to more than half of Spotsylvania's residents.
Around the house stood a kitchen and other outbuildings. Simple dirt roads connected the McCoulls to their neighbors the Harrisons (to the south) and Landrams (0.75 miles north). Neil McCoull was absent during the fighting here in May 1864, but his sisters survived the battle by taking shelter in the basement of the house. When they emerged, they found a landscape dominated by death.
Like so many Spotsylvania County homes, the McCoull house survived the Civil War only to be destroyed by fire in later years.
Of nearly 900 farms in Spotsylvania County, none would witness more death than Neil McCoull's. Union burials on this farm numbered 1,492. The number of Confederate burials is not known.
Mayhem in the Muleshoe:
Surrounded on all sides by low ridge lines, Neil McCoull's house sat in the center of the famous Muleshoe Salient. On the night of May 8, 1864, Confederate engineers built the bulging line of earthworks that wrapped around McCoull's farm to the west, north, and east. When Union troops broke through the Muleshoe on May 12, Confederates swarmed over McCoull's farm, desperate to reclaim their lines.
Thousands of troops passed this house en route to some of the most desperate fighting the world had ever seen -- at the Bloody Angle, only a few hundred yards in front of you. Hundreds of thousands of bullets pelted the earth around the house, artillery shells by the hundreds screeched overhead. When the Confederates fell back to a new line early on the morning of May 1, they left behind McCoull's bullet-riddled house a field strewn with corpses.
- SPOT_060304_119.JPG: The 17th Michigan Volunteer Infantry Regiment marker. On the back it says:
At 2pm, May 12th, two Ninth Corps brigades were ordered to attack the Confederate works one-quarter mile southeast of this spot. The 17th Michigan was on the extreme left of the Federal line. As the regiment approached its objective, Brig. Gen. James Lake's North Carolina brigade emerged from the thick woods and struck it on the left flank. In the bloody hand-to-hand fighting that followed, the 17th Michigan lost its national colors and 189 of the 225 men it carried into battle. Three soldiers later received the Medal of Honor for their brave but unsuccessful efforts to save the colors.
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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 sharpshooter; he was succeeded by Maj. Gen. Horatio G. Wright. Lee deployed his men in a trench line stretching more than four miles (6.5 km), with artillery placed that would allow enfilade fire on any attacking force. There was only one major weakness in Lee's line—an exposed salient known as the "Mule Shoe" extending more than a mile (1.6 km) in front of the main trench line. Lee recognized this weakness during the fighting of May 10, when twelve Union regiments under the command of Col. Emory Upton followed up a concentrated, intense artillery attack by slamming into the toe of the Mule Shoe along a narrow front. They actually broke the Confederate line, and the Second Corps had a hard time driving them out. Upton's attack won him a promotion on the spot to brigadier general, and it became a staple of military textbooks on how to break an enemy trench line. Similar tactics were used by Germany in Operation Michael, its successful March 1918 offensive during World War I.
Seeing the danger, Lee began to lay out a new defensive line across the heel of the Mule Shoe that night, but before he could get it finished, Grant sent his entire II Corps of 15,000 men, commanded by Maj. Gen. Winfield S. Hancock, to attack the position in the same manner Upton had. This time, the breach in the Confederate line was complete, thanks in large part to an order from Lee that had already pulled much of the Confederate artillery back to the new line. The II Corps took close to 4,000 prisoners and probably would have cut the Army of Northern Virginia in half if the IX Corps (Maj. Gen. Ambrose E. Burnside), supporting it with an assault on the Confederate right flank, had pushed its attacks home with force. Instead, Lee was able to shift thousands of his men to meet the threat. Because of ineffective leadership displayed by Lt. Gen. Richard S. Ewell, Lee felt compelled to personally lead Second Corps soldiers in the counterattack. His men realized the danger this would pose and refused to advance until Lee removed himself to a safer position in the rear. The battle in the Mule Shoe lasted for an entire day and night, as the Confederates slowly won back all the ground they had lost, inflicting heavy losses on the II Corps and the reinforcing VI Corps in the process. The angle between the II and VI Corps became known as the "Bloody Angle of Spotsylvania," where perhaps some of the most savage fighting of the whole Civil War took place. Whereas bayonet battles usually are very short, at the Bloody Angle, Union and Confederate troops fought with bayonets for hours in the same trenches.
By 3 a.m. on May 13, just as the Confederates had completed expelling the II Corps from the Mule Shoe, the new line was ready, and Lee had his battered men retire behind it. More than 10,000 men fell in the Mule Shoe, which passed to the Union forces without a fight. On May 18, Grant sent two of his corps to attack the new line, but they were met with a bloody repulse. That convinced Grant, who had vowed to "fight it out on this line if it takes all summer," that Lee's men could not be dislodged from their Spotsylvania line.
Grant, checked by Lee for a second time, responded as he had two weeks earlier. He shifted the weight of his army to the right flank and again moved to the southeast along roads Lee was unable to block. By May 20–May 21, the two armies were on their way to take positions along the North Anna River, another dozen miles closer to Richmond.
Aftermath:
Once again, Lee's tactics had inflicted severe casualties on Grant's army. This time, the toll was over 18,000 men, of which close to 3,000 were killed. In two weeks of fighting, Grant had lost 35,000 men, and another 20,000 went home when their enlistments ended. In fact, Grant at one point on the North Anna had fewer than 65,000 effectives. But Lee did not come out of these battles unscathed, either. At Spotsylvania, he lost another 10–13,000 men, and the Confederates had to pull men away from other fronts to reinforce him. Making matters worse, the army was taking heavy losses among its veteran units and its best officers. This may have saved Grant from a disaster on the North Anna, when his decimated army was positioned badly and was ripe to be attacked. Lee never did, because the Army of Northern Virginia was unable to do so. In fact, Lee's army would never regain the initiative it lost in those two weeks of May 1864.
Estimates vary as to the casualties at Spotsylvania Court House. ...
Portions of the Spotsylvania Court House battlefield are now preserved as part of Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park.
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