Existing comment:
The Mule Shoe Salient
Lee's army built strong, complex earthworks at Spotsylvania, but much of the general's chagrin, his engineers built some of them at night in the wrong place. The result: a half-mile-wide bulge in the Confederate line that soldiers called the "Mule Shoe Salient."
Salients are difficult to defend because an enemy could concentrate their fire into the line from many directions at once while defenders' fire was dispersed, firing outward along the arc of the salient.
Death by Trial and Error:
The miles-long line of earthworks built by Lee's army to protect the courthouse crossroads presented a new problem to Union commanders. Never had they faced such a carefully constructed, formidable line. Throughout the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House, they experimented with new ways to overwhelm the Confederate works. The first such effort came the evening of May 10, when massed Union columns crashed into Confederate lines at Doles's Salient, a bend in the larger Mule Shoe Salient along General George Doles's line. |