v1.1.3 / chapter 67 of 93 / 01 sep 11 / greg goebel / public domain
* Following the bloody collision in the Wilderness, Grant shifted southeast to attack again, this time at Spotsylvania Court House. The fighting was every bit as ferocious, with heavy casualties on both sides. Among the dead was Union General John Sedgwick, the highly regarded VI Corps commander. As if to compensate for the loss, Sheridan conducted a raid into the Confederate rear, accomplishing among other things the killing of Confederate General Jeb Stuart near Yellow Tavern.
After a series of frustrating battles at Spotsylvania, Grant concluded he was stalemated. He decided to shift again to the southwest, beginning another desperate race.
* General Richard Anderson led the Confederate First Corps out of the Wilderness at about 9:00 PM in a race against Grant's shift to the southeast. Anderson was not noted for initiative, but this night he shined. Although his orders from Lee had indicated he should give his troops a few hours rest in the rear before moving to Spotsylvania, he kept them marching through the night. The "road" that Pendleton's men had cut was hardly worthy of the name, being littered with stumps and felled trees that kept the night march to a crawl, so Anderson decided to push on without stopping. He was feeling energetic in his new command, and besides he couldn't find any sensible place to stop and let his men rest.
Soldiers on both sides were already dead tired and the march didn't improve matters. On the Union side, there was confusion and traffic jams, particularly when a regiment of Pennsylvania cavalry decided to forcibly liberate a greenhorn cavalry regiment of their fresh mounts, resulting in an idiot brawl that lasted an hour and helped make things even more confused. The Pennsylvanians got their fresh horses, but cost Grant precious, and as it turned out, critical, time.
The Federal march was also slowed down by the energetic actions of Jeb Stuart and his cavalry. Stuart had ordered three of the brigades in his command to protect the Confederate march while the other three were to harass the Yankees. The rebel troopers felled trees in front of the Union line of march and had skittish hit-and-run shooting matches with Sheridan's cavalry, causing Federal commanders to stop momentarily and sort matters out.
* By the time the sun came up on the morning of Sunday, 8 May, the Federals had emerged from the woods and were only about two miles (3.2 kilometers) from Spotsylvania. Major General Fitzhugh Lee, Robert E. Lee's nephew and a cavalry division commander under Stuart, ordered his men to dismount, pile up fence rails across the roads and in the adjoining fields to build a barricade, and sent off riders to urge Anderson to get his men there as fast as possible.
For the moment, Fitz Lee's men were only opposed by Sheridan's troopers, but very soon masses of Union infantry would come up in overwhelming force. In fact, one of the divisions of Warren's V Corps, under Brigadier General John C. Robinson, the old-time regular famous for his bushy beard, was moving up to sweep the rebel cavalry out of the way. However, Robinson's men were too exhausted to move forward quickly.
Anderson had halted his men for breakfast after sunup, but they were on the march by the time Fitz Lee's couriers reached Anderson's lead division, under Brigadier General Joseph Kershaw. Kershaw ordered the tempo of the march stepped up. As the lead brigade neared Fitz Lee's barricade, one of the rebel cavalry called out to them: "Run for our rail piles! The Federal infantry will surely reach them first if you don't run!"
The rebel soldiers ran and fell into line less than a minute before a solid line of Federal infantry fell on them, with the Yankees driven back after a nasty fight that lasted almost an hour. Robinson was forced to commit his men piecemeal and his division was all but wrecked, to later be disbanded and the survivors parceled out to other divisions. Robinson took a bullet in the knee that led to the amputation of his leg, taking him out of the war for good. Warren brought up his other divisions to hit the Confederate line much harder.
* Anderson continued to be in excellent form that morning. On hearing that Union cavalry was in Spotsylvania, he ordered Kershaw's two other brigades to move there quickly and chase the Yankees out before they could dig in. Anderson also ordered his second division, under Major General Charles Field, into line alongside Kershaw's lead brigade. The division got into position just in time to repel a stronger Federal attack.
Sheridan, fearing that his troopers in Spotsylvania would be swallowed up by masses of rebel infantry, had actually ordered his cavalrymen to withdraw, and so Anderson sent the two brigades back up to the roadblock. Fitz Lee and his men faded back down the road to Spotsylvania, where they joined Jeb Stuart and Confederate cavalry to make sure that Yankee troopers didn't come back to claim the place again. Kershaw's two brigades arrived at the roadblock just in time to confront a third, still heavier Federal assault.
Warren also committed his troops piecemeal, and they were driven back with heavy losses. By noon, Warren was forced to admit that the rebels were too much for him. Meade ordered Sedgwick to bring up his VI Corps for yet another attack in greater force. Both sides began to dig and prepare for more fighting.
* Everyone was tired and cranky. Phil Sheridan went to Meade's headquarters, where Meade lit into him. Sheridan's cavalry had been supposed to clear the road to Spotsylvania and Meade was angry that it hadn't been done; Sheridan's troopers had also helped contribute to the traffic jam that had slowed down the movement. In fact, Meade had canceled some of Sheridan's orders without telling him, and given the exhausted condition of the army it was hard to assign any real blame for what had or had not been done. Sheridan, who could be hot-tempered himself, shot back that he was fed up with having people countermand his orders -- and that if he could get his cavalry command together and use it the way cavalry should, as a mobile strike force, he could "whip Jeb Stuart out of his boots".
Meade went over to complain to Grant. Grant seemed much less bothered by Sheridan's insubordination than he had been over Griffin's a few days earlier, Sheridan being one of Grant's own men and subject to different rules. When Meade reported that Sheridan felt he could whip Jeb Stuart, Grant replied: "Did Sheridan say that? Well, he generally knows what he is talking about. Let him start right out and do it."
Meade had to swallow his annoyance. Orders came down for Sheridan to take his three divisions, 10,000 troopers with horse artillery, on an arc around the battlefield on a course that would take them deep into the Confederate rear, threatening Richmond and forcing Jeb Stuart to respond. The Federal cavalry would depart in the morning.
* At about 2:30 PM, Lee arrived on the scene, ahead of Ewell's Second Corps. Lee sent orders back to Ewell to hurry up. The day was unseasonably warm and the march was hard on the tired Confederates, but the heat was wearing down the Federals even more. When the Yankees finally went forward at about 5:00 PM, they found the line reinforced by Ewell's lead division, and the attack was once again driven back.
The fighting was over for the day. The Union had lost the race to Spotsylvania. By the time the sun went down, Hancock had arrived with II Corps and Burnside was filing in with IX Corps. The opposing forces were nervous and took potshots at each other in the dark.
* Sheridan's cavalry set out on their raid early on the morning of Monday, 9 May, riding at a deliberate pace on an arc that took them took them back through the Wilderness. The roads were clogged with ambulances and wagons carrying an endless stream of wounded out of the woods, the debris of the last few days' battle. The troopers were forced to ride through the underbrush. Some of them stopped to give some of the wounded water out of their canteens. They weren't supposed to do that, but even the hardest troopers couldn't stand the moans and cries of pain.
The wounded had a very hard time of it. They were originally supposed to have been moved north of the Rapidan to the Orange & Alexandria Railroad, but with most of the troops gone south there was no one to protect them, and Mosby's Rangers would pounce on any unprotected train. The ambulances and wagons were sent to Fredericksburg instead. Most of the doctors and other medical staff were supporting the fighting to the south, so the wounded had little help. Stretcher-bearers had been detailed from combat commands to help, but these "assistants" did as much harm as good. Officers had detailed the men they felt they could most easily spare, which often meant the shirkers. Doctors found that nearly all the dead and many of the badly wounded had their pockets slashed open so their contents could be removed.
The head of the column had got into Fredericksburg in the dark hours of the morning, and the wounded were being placed anywhere there was space for them, in churches, warehouses, and private homes. As the day went on, the town filled up with wounded. That was bad enough, but the wounded were still coming, now being produced by the fighting near Spotsylvania Court House. So many wounded were being generated that Meade ordered all his generals to turn over ambulances they were using for personal transport. This managed to free up about 50 ambulances to help haul back the wounded.
To make matters even worse, many of these wounded were being brought back by "good samaritans" who found the exercise a good way to get away from the fighting, and Fredericksburg was also being overloaded with the army's human trash. Some of the shirkers put on discarded bloody bandages so they could sham as wounded and be evacuated.
In principle, transports could steam straight up the Rappahannock, but in practice they had to go through territory full of Confederate guerrillas. The steamers would need light-draft gunboat escorts to take this route, and though the Navy had dispatched a few, they would take time to arrive. For the moment, the only alternative was to cart the men again over 15 miles (24 kilometers) of agonizingly rough corduroyed roads to the old Aquia Creek and Belle Plain anchorages off the Potomac. It was done, and soon steamers began to arrive at the landings. At first, the wounded were checked by civilian doctors before being loaded onto the steamers, but they were unfamiliar with the tricks of shirkers and were easily fooled. Army surgeons would come there in a few days and put a stop to the games.
The steamers did bring supplies to help the wounded, but the first priority was to support the fighting to the south, and supplies for the injured were inadequate. A nurse who had been through many major battles and who was in a II Corps hospital in Fredericksburg found conditions there miserable in the extreme: "Oh God! Such suffering it never entered the mind of man or woman to think of!" At least when the steamers were unloaded, they could carry a full load of wounded back up the Potomac, but even in Washington the hospitals were becoming overloaded.
* The troops of the Army of the Potomac had asked for a general who wanted to fight. Now they had one and were paying in torrents of blood for it. However, there was little fighting on the morning of 9 May. Grant was bringing up Hancock's II Corps and Burnside's IX Corps to give greater mass to an assault, and so Warren and Sedgwick's men contented themselves with improving their positions and scouting out those of the Confederates.
General John Sedgwick had been depressed at the grinding bloodshed, but by nature he couldn't stay unhappy for long. That morning, he was out near the front lines encouraging his troops, who were being harassed by rebel sharpshooters. Sedgwick ordered the pickets to move out a bit and scare the Confederates off, and told his men to go on with their business, telling them over and over: "They couldn't hit an elephant at this distance!" However, the rebels were not armed with conventional rifles; they were carrying long-range British Whitworth sharpshooter weapons with telescopic sights, just brought in by blockade-runner. There was another shot, and a cry went up: "The General!" Sedgwick was lying on the ground, with a neat hole under his left eye. He was conscious for a bit, even seemed to smile at the joke on him; then he died. He was 50 years old.
When Grant heard the news, his eyes went wide in shock and he yanked the cigar out of his mouth: "Is he really dead?!" He was told that Sedgwick was in fact dead, but as if he couldn't accept it, he asked again: "Is he really dead?!" Grant would later tell his staff that losing Sedgwick was as bad as losing a whole division. Meade wept, and even Lee, who had been friends with Sedgwick before the war and thought much of him, was saddened by his death. Sedgwick was replaced in command of VI Corps by General Horatio Wright.
* With time to consolidate their defenses, the Confederates had made their line all but unbreakable, and even built a secondary line of defense to deal with any breakthroughs. Grant had left the Wilderness to try to move around an obstacle, only to find that he was confronted with one that was just as nasty or worse.
On hearing a report from Burnside that a sizeable force of rebels was on the move in the rear of the Union line, Grant decided that Lee was splitting his forces in one of his characteristic bold moves. With equally characteristic aggressiveness, Grant decided that he would use this seeming golden opportunity to attack what he believed was the remnant of the Army of Northern Virginia left behind the defenses. He sent Hancock with three of the four divisions II Corps to the east to circle around the rebel line across the Po River, and then hit Lee's force in the flank.
Hancock set out that afternoon, crossed the Po on pontoon bridges, and managed to get his men to a position to recross the river and move on Lee's flank before darkness came and forced a halt. The next morning, Tuesday, 10 May, the sun came up to show the Confederates heavily entrenched on the other bank of the river, having dug in all night to block the Yankees.
Hancock was not easily discouraged, deciding to move further downriver. He was doing so when he received orders from Meade to return to his former position with two of his three divisions, where he would lead an assault at 5:00 PM. Hancock was baffled by these orders, since everyone was aware that the rebel defenses there were as ugly as anything the Union Army had seen at Fredericksburg, but he did what he was told.
What had happened was that Grant found out that Burnside had been mistaken in his belief that Lee had divided his army; the troops that had alarmed him turning out to be dismounted cavalry. Grant concluded that if Lee hadn't divided his army, then if Grant divided his, Lee would be able to destroy it in detail. In addition, Warren had scouted out the Confederate defenses, concluded they were not as strong as they appeared, and sold Grant and Meade on a frontal assault by V Corps and II Corps. In fact, Warren was so upbeat that he managed to convince Grant and Meade to start early, even though only one of Hancock's two divisions was back in line, and the two generals agreed.
The first assault went forward at 4:00 PM. Warren proved thoroughly mistaken about the supposed weakness of the rebel defenses, with Federal troops repeatedly driven back with heavy losses. Warren quickly came to regret making the attack, but now Grant and Meade still wanted to go on. When Hancock returned with his second division at about 5:00 PM, he was ordered to lead another assault by V Corps and II Corps at 6:30 PM.
* Wright's VI Corps had done their bit to support the futile assault, but accomplished no more than Warren. However, one of his brigade commanders, Colonel Emory Upton, came up with a scheme to crack the Confederate line.
The Confederates always laid out their defenses to make the shrewdest use of terrain, but even the best engineering will have its weaknesses. The rebel lines came together at an angle and terminated in a big protruding loop of trenchworks, manned by Ewell's troops. Such a salient invited an assault, since attacking forces could concentrate on it and overwhelm the defense. The Confederates understood the vulnerability of this position, which they called the "Mule Shoe" because that's what it looked like on the map, and had loaded it up with 22 artillery pieces.
Upton still felt he could crack the Mule Shoe. To accomplish this, he proposed to organize his troops into four successive ranks. All the troops would have loaded muskets with bayonets fixed, but only the front rank would fit percussion caps to their muskets. The other three ranks would not "cap" their muskets until they reached the rebel line. When the first rank reached the entrenchments, it was to fan out left and right to clear out the rebels, while the second rank pushed on through to overrun the backup line. The other two ranks would lie down in front of the trenches so they could be called on as needed.
Upton sold his division commander on the scheme, and the two officers then went to Wright and sold him on the idea as well. Upton was given twelve regiments. Three regiments would be in each rank. If the assault was successful, Upton's men would be followed by the division from II Corps that had been left behind by Hancock. This division was commanded by General Gersham Mott.
At 6:10 PM, after a preliminary bombardment, Upton's men got up and went forward. Since they could not give themselves even the illusion of protection by shooting back, all they could do was dash ahead as fast as they could, screaming like maniacs. They took casualties, but made to the rebel line. As Upton reported later, the Confederates "absolutely refused to yield the ground." The Federals rammed bayonets through the slits of the rebel field works or held their rifles up and shot overhand into the trenches. After a nasty hand-to-hand fight, the Yankees broke into the trench. The first assault line fanned out and the second assault line overran the trenches in the rear. It all went precisely as calculated.
The Confederates were certain to counterattack and try to seal the hole in their line as soon as they regained their wits. Mott's division had gone forward in parallel with Upton's regiments, partly as a diversion as well as backup to exploit the hoped-for breach. Unfortunately, this division was one of the old III Corps organizations that had been absorbed into II Corps and the troops had never quite regained their morale. Worse, they had suffered terribly in the Wilderness in the past week and were even more demoralized.
Mott's soldiers had to advance across an open glade where they were taken under fire by the 22 rebel guns in the Mule Shoe. Such a punishment would have intimidated much more determined soldiers, and the attack was broken before it ever got close to enemy lines. Officers found many of the shaken men skulking deep in the woods that night, making coffee around campfires. They had good reason to be shaken, having been so badly chewed up that the division was disbanded three days later, its elements absorbed into other II Corps divisions.
Farther west on the line, Hancock went forward with II Corps and V Corps as planned at about sunset. Unfortunately, the bloody failures earlier in the day had left most of the troops demoralized and disorganized, and the orders for the attack were careless in the extreme. Said one of the soldiers who was to make the charge:
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No officer of higher rank than a brigade commander had examined the approaches to the enemy's works on our front, and the whole expression of the person who brought the message seemed to say: "The general commanding is doubtful of your success." The moment the order was given the messenger put spurs to his horse and rode off, lest by some misunderstanding the assault should begin before he was safe out of range of the enemy's responsive fire.
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The assault itself was just as haphazard, with the troops making a half-hearted dash forward to blast a few ineffectual volleys at the enemy, and then falling back in disorganization to the rear to get out of harm's way. These were not shirkers, they were the "best men in the Army", and the whole fiasco was due to a simple failure of leadership.
In the meantime, Upton's men were stranded, with Confederate reinforcements coming up to hammer on them. Finally, with no help in sight and darkness falling, Upton called the retreat, and his regiments faded back to Union lines, leaving about a thousand of their number behind on the field, about the same number of casualties that they had inflicted on the Confederates.
The exercise had been a shining opportunity that became a dismal failure. Grant seemed undiscouraged. General Horatio Wright spoke to Grant later and said that the attack would likely had succeeded had it been better supported. If a trick worked once, it might well work again. Grant commented: "A brigade today -- we'll try a corps tomorrow." The wheels went in motion for a big push.
The next morning, Grant wrote his patron, Congressman Elihu Washburn, saying that he proposed to "fight it out on this line if it takes all summer." The phrase ended up splashed all over newspaper headlines as a testimony to Grant's bulldog stubbornness.
* There was no assault the next day, since there was no way to move a substantial chunk of the Army of the Potomac around so quickly. As a result, on 11 May the two sides passed their time in long-range squabbling that accomplished little but to increase the number of casualties. Rain began to fall that afternoon, ramping up to a downpour, and the day faded into a dismal, damp, dark night. Troops moved around to their jump-off positions where they would begin their assault at daybreak.
Hancock's II Corps, now reassembled, was ordered to perform a much more powerful attack on the Mule Shoe. They were to make the assault using the tactics that Upton had devised, running forward in ranks without stopping to fire, with most of the troops carrying uncapped muskets.
Burnside's IX Corps was sited to the east of II Corps and Wright's VI Corps was sited to the west. The two corps were to provide support after the hoped-for breakthrough. Warren's V corps was on the far east of the Union line and was to hit the rebels if they tried to shift troops and shore up the hole in their lines. The odds seemed good for a great victory, and the charge was to be led by soldiers under the command of Winfield Scott Hancock, one of the Army of the Potomac's best fighting generals. They also were blessed with a remarkable stroke of good luck: for once, Robert E. Lee had miscalculated Grant's intent and was unprepared for the attack.
The evening before, Lee had been at Henry Heth's headquarters, chatting with Heth and A.P. Hill. A staff officer had called Grant a "butcher" but Lee differed: "I think General Grant has managed his affairs remarkably well up to the present time." Lee then told Heth: "My opinion is the enemy are preparing to retreat tonight to Fredericksburg. I wish you to have everything in readiness to pull out at a moment's notice, but do not disturb your artillery till you commence moving. We must attack those people if they retreat." Heth replied that he would prefer that the Federals continue to attack their breastworks, but Lee knew this wouldn't do, explaining matters to Heth and the others, and summing up with: "This army cannot stand a siege. We must end this business on the battlefield, not in a fortified place."
Lee understood that to remain on the defensive was to surrender the initiative to a more powerful force, sacrificing the agility that was his primary advantage. He believed that Grant was withdrawing to consolidate for a new attack. If the Yankees withdrew, Lee had to attack them. In fact, what his scouts had interpreted as a retreat was nothing but the ghastly flow of Union wounded towards the rear; the volume of traffic was so great that it looked like an army on the move. In any case, the 22 guns in the Mule Shoe were limbered up and pulled back to the rear where they could be moved quickly if necessary. As a result, the Mule Shoe was stripped of artillery.
* Despite all the good luck for the Federals, everyone involved with planning the assault seemed to be fumbling things that rainy night. All the troops, from generals to privates, were exhausted, wet, miserable, beaten-up, under pressure to do things in a hurry, and there was just so much people could endure and still remain effective. As a result, when murky daylight began to fade in, nobody had any very clear idea of what their orders or objectives were, or much in the way of intelligence about what they were up against.
Four divisions, totaling about 15,000 men, were to make the attack. The spearhead of Hancock's assault was a division under Francis Barlow, the lawyer-soldier who had been wounded and captured at Gettysburg, to be left behind when the rebels pulled out. His wound had been judged mortal, but he was back in service.
Barlow was supposed to be advised by staff officers sent down from above. However, they had no clear idea of what they were supposed to do, and one of them, Hancock's chief of staff, was loud and angry about the confusion. Barlow suddenly felt a flash of dark humor at the situation, and asked the man if he could at least give him any assurance that there wasn't a canyon a thousand feet deep between them and the rebels. The officer flatly replied with embarrassing honesty that he did not. That set off Nelson Miles, the same man who as a colonel had gone on fighting at Fredericksburg even after being shot in the throat and now one of Barlow's brigadiers; Miles complained so bitterly that Barlow finally told him to shut up. Soon even Barlow's patience grew thin, and he asked the staff officers: "For Heaven's sake, at least face us in the right direction, so that we shall not march away from the enemy and have to go round the world and come up in their rear."
They did so, and Barlow felt that he had at least a general idea of what to do. The staff officers left and the troops went forward at about 4:30 AM. Some of the troops were so ignorant of the situation that the assumed that it was just another change of position, and so cook wagons and other baggage useless in a fight brought up the rear.
Yankee skirmishers came on the Confederate picket line in the wet haze and overwhelmed the rebels before they could fire a shot. The Federals then came up on a ridge where they thought the Confederate entrenchments lay, and dashed up to it in a wild cheering rush, only to find no rebels there. The actual Confederate line was at the other end of a hollow beyond the ridge, and an abatis lay in between the Yankees and their objective. Barlow's men kept up their forward dash through the hollow, tearing apart the abatis with their bare hands. The rebels had of course been aroused by the commotion and were starting to fire at the Yankees. The Confederate officers in charge in those defenses had heard the movements of the Federals during the night, and begged to have the 22 guns that had been pulled to the rear brought back to the line. While the Federals were rushing forward, the guns were being put in place.
The guns were too late; one or two of them managed to get off a wild shot before Barlow's troops overran the line, the cannonball flying high to the rear and blasting apart a poor mule loaded down with frying pans and bacon. Despite the poor planning, Barlow's men had broken the Confederate line with amazingly light casualties, capturing twenty cannon and about three or four thousand rebels. The Federals had actually swept up the entire Stonewall Brigade, almost intact. Unfortunately, the Yankees were now thoroughly disorganized by their success and in no condition to conduct a fight with an organized and aggressive enemy. Confederate troops were hanging on to their positions on both sides of the break in the lines, and were certain to respond as soon as they figured out what best to do.
Robert E. Lee had been roused from an early breakfast by the clatter and panic. He rode up to the line, ordering troops who were fleeing to go back and fight, and linked up with John Gordon. Gordon had already thrown one of the three brigades in his division into the battle to slow down the Yankees, and was preparing to counterattack with the other two.
Lee approved these measures, and Gordon was about ready to call the charge when he realized that Lee was up on the line, clearly intending to go forward with the troops. Gordon was horrified, and went back to plead with Lee to go back, talking loudly so the troops would hear. They did and the cry went up: "LEE TO THE REAR! LEE TO THE REAR!" A sergeant finally came up, took the reins of Traveler, and took the horse and rider to the rear through ranks of cheering troops.
Gordon's men hit back with all the traditional fury of the Army of Northern Virginia, assisted by the rebel units still in the Mule Shoe that remained in shape to fight. The muddled Federal assault was immediately broken and the Union men fell back to the trenches they had captured. In the meantime, granted some breathing space, Lee was reaching out for reinforcements and organizing the rapid construction of a new defensive line to cap off the gaping hole in his defenses.
Soldiers of II Corps were still pouring into the breach in the Mule Shoe, but the assault was less of an irresistible steamroller than a traffic jam, with more men crowding in with no clear place to go. Barlow tried to sort them out, but as soon as he seemed to make some progress, new troops would pile in and restore the chaos. Barlow managed to get a horse and rode off to tell Hancock to stop sending in troops.
Burnside's IX Corps had gone forward with the initial assault to drive at the Confederate defense to the east of the Mule Shoe, but they had little success, being driven back by furious countercharges. Burnside did not press the attack, allowing the defenders to help focus on the breach in the lines. At 6:00 AM Wright's VI Corps went forward against the western corner of the Mule Shoe, and hit with great force.
The Confederates fought back desperately, with Lee throwing reinforcements into the battle, trying to stave off disaster. He came under artillery fire and his horse Traveler reared up in panic at the noise of confusion, lifting himself and Lee above the flight of a cannonball that would have otherwise killed them both. Soldiers pleaded with him to get out of the line of fire, and he finally told them: "If you will promise me to drive those people from our works, I will go back." They cheered at him and went off into battle.
* The fighting was now taking place along a front a mile wide. The two sides slugged it out, in many places no more than a few yards apart. Rain began to fall, turning the battleground into an even bigger quagmire. The dead were trampled into the mud. Bullets were flying around so heavily that corpses were turned into unrecognizable raw meat, and trees were shattered into splinters by Minie balls.
On the western part of the Mule Shoe, the trenches took a little zigzag, and the Confederates managed to recapture this section of the trenchworks with an energetic counterattack. However, there was a ditch on the north side of the breastworks protecting the trench, and Wright's soldiers remained in place. The two sides were literally at arm's reach to one another, and stayed there and fought it out. They stabbed at each other through the breastworks with bayonets, jumped up to fight with clubbed muskets, and fired at point-blank range. The bodies began to fall in piles. Confederate defenders even kept their dead in the fight, using the curled hands of corpses to hold cartridges. The little zigzag in the trenches would acquire a name that day, the "Bloody Angle". There had been "bloody angles" at other battles, notably Gettysburg, but after this fight the phrase by itself would always mean Spotsylvania.
Usually, when the two armies met in hand-to-hand combat, the matter was settled quickly: one side broke and fell back, or was overwhelmed. At the Bloody Angle, nobody broke, nobody ran, and the two sides were too evenly matched for one to prevail. They just stood there and killed each other in the mud and blood, with the rain occasionally falling in sheets.
Emory Upton was riding around the battlefield, miraculously escaping injury, and when he saw the fight at the Bloody Angle, he ordered guns brought up. Two cannon were thrown into the fight, firing canister at point-blank range and tearing rebels to pieces, with the gunners eventually pushing the guns up to the breastworks to blast death into the other side. Soon the Yankee guns fell silent, since of the 24 gunners who had come up to tend them all but two had been shot. All the horses had been shot as well, but soldiers managed to drag the two guns back out of rebel hands, leaving behind the shattered limbers.
The firing was so intense that some groups fell out to the "rear", a dozen paces away, to clean their muskets, which were fouled to the point where they could not be fired any more. The men up front had to toss the corpses behind them so they could fight without stumbling over them. As the struggle continued, some of the soldiers simply faded back a few steps from the fighting and dropped into the mud, absolutely overcome with exhaustion and indifferent to the danger of being trampled.
Warren sent V Corps against the eastern end of the Confederate line at about 9:00 AM in hopes of distracting the rebels. This assault was driven off immediately and with heavy casualties, allowing Lee to pull more reinforcements into the fight for the Mule Shoe. The fighting went on into the darkness, not ending until after midnight, when the new Confederate defensive line was finished and the rebels fell back to its comparative safety. They left behind a battleground where the dead were piled four or five deep. Sometimes a moan could be heard from a pile, and a wounded man was pulled from the bottom. Some of the wounded drowned in the mud.
* When the fighting sputtered out, in the dark of the night a Confederate regimental band began to play a dirge. It just seemed like the thing to do. When they were done, a Yankee band replied with "Nearer My God To Thee", and the two bands traded tunes until the Federals finished the exchange with "Home Sweet Home".
The only way many of the men on the battlefield would ever go home again was in a pine box. A Union soldier of the Iron Brigade called the fight for the Bloody Angle "the most terrible twenty-four hours of our service in the war." A VI Corps officer said later: "I never expect to be fully believed when I tell what I saw of the horrors of Spotsylvania, because I would be loath to believe it myself were the cases reversed." The Federals had lost almost 7,000 men and had gained nothing by it, except to kill, wound, and capture a roughly equal amount of Confederates. That was actually a silver lining to a very black and ugly cloud, since up to that time the rebels had been taking out two Yankees for each of their own casualties.
However, the Confederates had also been losing a disproportionate number of their generals, who had been shot or captured while trying to direct the most desperate struggles from the thick of the fighting. Longstreet had been the most prominent and sorely-missed casualty in the campaign to this time, but while Hancock was driving his men into the Mule Shoe, Lee had received a telegram bearing news every bit as bad: Jeb Stuart had been wounded in a fight the afternoon before, and the wound was clearly mortal.
* When Phil Sheridan had led his column of 10,000 cavalry, supported by 32 light guns, away from the Army of the Potomac and on the road to Richmond on the early morning of 9 May, he was not only expecting that Jeb Stuart and his troopers would respond, he was counting on it.
The huge Federal column was 13 miles (21 kilometers) long. The cavalrymen moved at a deliberate pace. They weren't trying to run away from Stuart, they wanted him to attack, and they would keep their mounts fresh while the rebels would come in a hurry, exhausting their horses. The casual movement also kept the column tight, ensuring that Sheridan's command remained together as a single unit that could bring overwhelming force against any opponent. When the column was held up by a Confederate roadblock shortly after their departure, when Sheridan was informed that there were rebel skirmishers to their front in strength, he simply asked: "Cavalry or infantry?" On being told they were cavalry, he replied: "Keep moving, boys. We're going on through. There isn't cavalry enough in all the Southern Confederacy to stop us."
Sheridan treated all further attempts to inference with his movement with equally casual contempt. By nightfall, the column was over the North Anna River, where they fell on the Army of Northern Virginia's supply depot at Beaver Dam. All the supplies went up in smoke, with most of the fires set by Confederate guards skedaddling in front of Sheridan's men. Brigadier General George Armstrong Custer and his brigade of Michiganers arrived first, and added to the fires by burning a hundred railroad cars and two locomotives. They also freed 378 Union soldiers, captured by the rebels in the current fighting to the north. It was the most significant feat that Union cavalry had accomplished in Virginia so far in the war.
Since the rebels did not have the luxuries that made their capture of a Union supply depot such a celebration, Sheridan's men had to satisfy themselves with straightforward destruction. Then they got a few hours' sleep, to rise the next morning, 10 May, turn their destructive attention to the railroad line, and resume their southward march. By the evening, were making camp next to the South Anna River. Richmond was only 20 miles (32 kilometers) away. There was no need to hunt for Stuart and his troopers. With such a huge cavalry column bearing down on Richmond, the Confederates were certain to come to them instead.
* Stuart was indeed hunting for Sheridan. Stuart knew the odds were long against him, all the more so because uncertainty about Federal intentions had forced him to leave behind three of his six brigades, giving him about 4,500 men to face Sheridan's 10,000. The Yankees not only outnumbered Stuart and his force handily, the Federals were also well-armed with repeater rifles and had mounts in much better condition.
Stuart thought it was very unlikely he would win a head-on clash and was trying to find a way to fight on better terms. On 9 May, he had been unable to do more than harass the rear of Sheridan's column. The rebels could not move to strike the front of the column until they were sure that the Yankees were not about to double back and hit the Army of Northern Virginia from the rear.
On 10 May, Sheridan's troopers had gone far enough south to make it clear that Richmond was their real objective. Stuart left one brigade to keep on harassing the rear of the Federal column, and took his two other brigades south along a parallel route to find a good spot where they could block the Yankee line of march, using the opportunities provided by terrain and hopefully such reinforcements as might be had from Richmond to help level the odds. He sent a rider to Richmond to report to Braxton Bragg on the situation.
Stuart also managed to squeeze in a visit to his wife and two children, who had been staying at a plantation near Beaver Dam. He didn't have time to even dismount, able only to speak a few words to them and then kiss the woman goodbye. As he rode on, he seemed unusually somber to the staff officer accompanying him. Stuart finally spoke up, saying that he did not expect to survive the war, and did not want to live if the South were defeated.
Stuart still remained as aggressive as always, pushing his men well into the dark on the evening of 10 May. At about 8:00 AM on the morning of 11 May 1864, the rebels set out again, and was able to get ahead of Sheridan and his cavalry, setting up a roadblock at Yellow Tavern, about six miles (10 kilometers) from Richmond, where he felt the terrain favored making a stand. Reinforcements from Richmond were not available on such short notice, and indeed Braxton Bragg was scrambling to find more troops to man the city's defenses.
Sheridan came up with his column to Yellow Tavern at about 11:00 AM. Once again, he was in no hurry. He scouted out the rebel position until about 2:00 PM, and then sent his troopers forward. There was hot fighting for about two hours, and finally the Yankees seemed to be getting the upper hand. Stuart, who had been in the thick of the battle, went forward to brace up his troopers, calling out: "Steady, men, steady! Give it to them!"
At that moment, as the story has it, 48-year-old Private John A. Huff, one of Custer's cavalrymen, was loping on foot across the battlefield with a revolver in his hand. Huff was a crack shot, and Stuart made a highly visible target in his flashy cape and plumed hat. Huff put a ball into Stuart's side and moved on. One of Stuart's men cried out: "General, are you hit?" Stuart replied: "I am afraid I am." Fitz Lee arrived quickly, and Stuart told him to take charge of the fight. An ambulance arrived and took the wounded general off the battlefield. Once at a safe distance, the ambulance stopped to allow a doctor to inspect the wound. The doctor believed the wound was likely mortal, but wanted to get Stuart to Richmond where he could get more adequate attention on the chance that he would pull through.
* Despite the loss of their leader, the rebel cavalry fought hard and stabilized their lines. At about 5:00 PM, Sheridan decided that he'd had enough of butting his head against the Confederate position. His troopers had captured a rebel courier with a message from Braxton Bragg that reinforcements were on the way. Sheridan ordered his men to move on.
The Federals rode to the outskirts of Richmond. Sheridan was tempted to make a dash into the city, but he knew that with no backup his cavalrymen would not be able to stay there. The only thing it would have gained him was glory, and he was too practical a soldier to risk his men for no gain of substance. He had enough to do just to get his men to safety; the Confederates were now thoroughly aroused, and Sheridan felt that he would soon have more than just rebel cavalry to deal with. He headed east, intending to cross the Chickahominy at Meadow Bridge and find sanctuary in the Union lines down the James River Peninsula, as had been the plan all along.
The night was very dark and the weather was beginning to become extremely foul, making life as miserable for Sheridan and his troopers as it was for the Union soldiers at Spotsylvania to the north, preparing that night for the second assault on the Mule Shoe. To complicate matters for Sheridan, the Confederates had laid torpedoes in his path, land mines consisting of buried shells triggered by trip wires. One blew up, killing a number of horses and wounding Yankee troopers. Sheridan ordered rebel prisoners brought up. They were ordered to get down on their hands and knees, search for the trip wires in the dark, and then dig up the shells.
They did a good enough job to get the column to Meadow Bridge by daybreak on 12 May, only to find that the bridge had been burned. Sheridan had two of his divisions turn around to hold off angry rebel cavalry and infantry while the third division repaired the bridge. The fighting was nasty for a while but the bridge was fixed, and the Yankees then withdrew over the Chickahominy without having suffered serious injury.
Sheridan finally made Union lines on 14 May. The men rested and refitted for three days, then set off to return to Grant, returning on 24 May. Although the raid had not been a decisive blow against the Confederacy, Sheridan was very pleased with it anyway. His casualties had been relatively light; he had destroyed the Beaver Dam supply depot; he had freed hundreds of Union prisoners and taken hundreds of rebel prisoners; and most encouraging of all, he had finally taken down that god-dammed Jeb Stuart. Stuart had mocked the Yankees again and again -- but now the Federals had the last laugh.
* Stuart had been brought into Richmond the night of 11 May and was put to bed in his sister-in-law's house. The wound was inspected and judged mortal given the medical technology of the time. Stuart hoped that he would live long enough to see his wife and children, but he finally died at about 7:30 PM on 12 May, a few hours before they arrived. He was 31 years old.
Lee was told of Stuart's death late that night. It was discouraging news, after having spent the entire day holding off catastrophe only by the hardest. Lee hid his face in his hands, and later went to his tent to suffer his grief in private. When one of Stuart's staff officers arrived to give the details of the general's last hours, Lee replied: "I can scarcely think of him without weeping." Even Stuart's old enemy Grumble Jones was upset when he heard the news, telling his adjutant: "You know I had little love for Stuart and he had just as little for me. But that is the greatest loss this Army has ever sustained since the death of Jackson!"
Stuart was buried the next day. Senior Confederate officials, including Jefferson Davis, were in attendance, but there was no honor guard, since every able-bodied Confederate soldier was out fighting the Yankees at the moment. Stuart probably would have preferred it that way.
* On 13 May, there was no fighting on the Spotsylvania battlefield. Rain began to fall again on the 14th and continued into the 16th, ensuring that combat was kept to a minimum. Grant had wanted to launch a flanking attack on the western end of the Confederate line on the morning of 14 May. Warren's V Corps would transfer down the line and spearhead the assault, to be followed up by Wright's VI Corps. However, the whole thing bogged down in mud and confusion, and was blessedly called off.
After another day of rest, Wright suggested that as the rebels had thinned out the eastern part of their line to meet Warren's attack, troops should be shifted back for an assault by VI Corps and II Corps, with Burnside's IX Corps performing a diversionary attack on the western end of the line. The assault was scheduled for the morning of 18 May. The weather finally went dry and sunny on the afternoon of the 17th, encouraging Grant that the attack might be successful. Unfortunately, it got off very late, and rebel scouts and lookouts were perfectly aware of what was going on anyway. The Federals made one rush over open ground against well-built Confederate defenses, and were badly mangled by rebel artillery, losing about 2,000 men. The Yankees went back to their own lines and didn't try it again.
* Grant pondered this for a while, and then decided that there was nothing to be gained by smashing his head against Lee's defenses. It was time for another move. Bolstered by reinforcements now coming in from Washington DC, Grant would send Hancock and II Corps to the east, to drive down into the rear of Lee's position. When Lee attacked Hancock, Grant would then fall on Lee with the other three Union corps available to him. Hancock was to move out on the evening of 19 May.
Lee was suspicious that the Yankees might make such a move, and so that afternoon he ordered Dick Ewell to take Second Corps and probe the western end of the Federal line. Ewell was feeling unusually energetic after the thrashing he had given the Federals, and decided that he would try to perform a flank attack. He found the outermost Union defenses empty, the troops in them having been withdrawn for the big move. Then, at about 5:30 PM, he ran into a force that Hancock had posted to block Confederates trying to sneak around and perform one of their time-honored bushwhacks.
The main part of the force was a very big division of "heavies", under Brigadier General Robert Tyler, just arrived after the fiasco in the Mule Shoe. They had been derided mercilessly by the veterans and felt they had something to prove. Backed up by a division under Major General David Birney that had been badly cut up in the Wilderness fight, the heavies slugged it out so hard with the rebels that Ewell was glad to get away after a nasty two-hour fight. The Federals did take the worst of the casualties, losing about 1,535 to Ewell's 900 killed, wounded, and taken prisoner. This disparity was apparently mostly due to the inferior combat experience of the heavies, but what they had lacked in skill they had made up for in willingness to fight. The inconclusive and bloody shootout had the positive effect that the jeering of the rest of the Army of the Potomac dropped off drastically.
It also had the effect of showing Grant how aggressive the rebels were. He decided to rearrange his plans, making sure that Hancock's II Corps would not be as isolated as originally planned. The move was rescheduled for the night of 20:21 May. The supply landings on the Potomac at Aquia Creek and Belle Plain were to be shut down, to be replaced by a new supply landing at Port Royal, downstream from Fredericksburg on the Rappahannock. He was moving southward and his supply lines had to move with him.
Lee was not going to be surprised, however. He had suspected the Federals would do something like this, and Ewell's unlucky reconnaissance confirmed that suspicion. Lee ordered the Army of Northern Virginia to prepare for another move once it became obvious that Grant was on the march. Lee called in reinforcements and waited for the Yankees to show their hand.
Lee was confident that he would be able to block their move, since he was moving on interior lines of communication, giving a shorter path to any target they were likely to strike. The war of attrition had favored the rebels so far, and if Lee was able to continue to inflict casualties on the Federals at such a disproportionate rate, they might well have to throw in the towel and give up their bloody, and so far largely futile, campaign.
Hancock led II Corps off the Spotsylvania battlefield at about 10:00 PM on the 20th. Dick Ewell began his move at about 4:00 AM on the 21st. Another race was on.
