Battle of Spotsylvania Court House: An Orgy of Death at the Bloody Angle
The Battle of Spotsylvania Court House (8-21 May 1864) was a pivotal engagement in the Overland Campaign, a major Union offensive during the final year of the American Civil War (1861-1865). The battle saw some of the most intense fighting of the war, particularly at a point called the 'Bloody Angle,' where thousands of soldiers were killed or wounded in a bitter hand-to-hand struggle that lasted over 20 hours. The two-week battle was inconclusive, ending when the Union army disengaged from the Confederates to continue their push toward Richmond.
Background: The Race to Spotsylvania
On 7 May 1864, the first rays of morning sunlight filtered through the canopy of trees to reveal a carpet of charred and mangled dead. For two long, nightmarish days, the Union Army of the Potomac and the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia had slugged it out in a section of dense Virginian woodlands eerily known as the Wilderness. With few roads, low visibility, and little room for units to maneuver, it had been a chaotic, panic-filled battle. Men had fired blindly into the trees ahead, forced to crouch or lie down, the air was so thick with bullets. Regiments had groped forward through the gloom in clumsy, uncoordinated assaults, with some entire companies taken prisoner after blundering straight into enemy lines. The dry underbrush had caught fire, leading to large forest fires that devoured the dead and wounded alike – groups of wounded men, in both blue and gray, had huddled together as the fires drew nearer, gripping loaded weapons so they could take their own lives rather than be burned alive.
The Battle of the Wilderness had been one of the hardest fights of the entire war so far, producing upwards of 25,000 casualties (roughly 17,600 Union and 7,500 Confederate). But even after all this carnage, Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant, general-in-chief of all Union armies, was not finished. In previous campaigns, when a Union army had been similarly thrashed, it most often retreated beyond the nearest river to lick its wounds, a course of action that many expected Grant to take now. Grant, however, was a fighter and was loath to give up the offensive with the Confederate capital of Richmond so close. On the afternoon of 7 May, he ordered his dejected army to begin moving down the Orange Plank Road. But when it came to the crossroads, the army did not turn north – as most expected it would – but instead marched south, continuing its incursion into Virginia. This instantly raised the morale of the veteran soldiers of the Army of the Potomac, who had become so used to beating northerly retreats and were relieved to be continuing their offensive. "Our spirits rose," one man recalled, "We marched free. The men began to sing…That night we were happy" (quoted in Foote, 191).
Grant's destination was Spotsylvania Court House, a sleepy, insignificant village that offered little more than a few stores and houses clustered around a small park. But this little town had great strategic significance – if Grant could entrench his army here, he would be interposing himself between the Army of Northern Virginia and Richmond. The rebel army, tasked with defending its capital, would have no choice but to attack and would break upon Grant's fortifications like waves upon rock. Unfortunately for Grant, his movements did not go unnoticed by his opponent, General Robert E. Lee. Gray-bearded and wily as a fox, Lee quickly guessed Grant's intentions and rushed to get his own troops to Spotsylvania first. He dispatched his cavalry corps under Major General J. E. B. Stuart to race down Brock Road and begin setting up fortifications in front of the town. Meanwhile, the Confederate First Corps under Major General Richard Anderson would beat a forced march to hopefully get to Spotsylvania by the next morning (Anderson was only temporarily in command of the First Corps after its usual commander, James Longstreet, had been seriously wounded at the Wilderness). And so, as Stuart's cavalrymen sped down Brock Road, the race to Spotsylvania had begun.
⇒ Battle of Spotsylvania Court House: An Orgy of Death at the Bloody Angle
