May 12, 1864---The Death of Jeb Stuart; The Battle of The Bloody Angle

MAY 12, 1864:            

The Battle of Spotsylvania Court House   (Day Five):   

Jeb Stuart dies of the wounds he received at Yellow Tavern.

With Stuart’s death, two thirds of the great and inspiring military triumvirate that has sustained the Confederacy is gone --- Stonewall Jackson just a year before, and now the dashing cavalier, Stuart. Robert E. Lee is left alone as the last of the Rebellion’s great military leaders. 

The Battle of The Bloody Angle:      

General Grant remains convinced that a human battering ram can take the Confederate position at Laurel Hill near Spotsylvania Court House. He orders General Winfield Scott Hancock to rush the defenses at The Muleshoe. The attack commences at dawn What develops is the worst close-quarter battle of the Civil War, remembered as The Bloody Angle. Hancock, like Upton before him, manages to breach the Confederate line, taking 3,000 prisoners, but as Confederate reinforcements pour into The Muleshoe, the dead begin to pile up five deep. 

The Bloody Angle is so clogged with the dead that Union and Confederate soldiers assist each other in moving corpses so that they have enough room to kill each other.  Gunfire becomes inefficient; instead men fix bayonets and begin to stab, slash and hack each other to death. 

By 4:00 PM, 9,000 of 15,000 Union men making the attack are wounded, missing or killed. Confederate losses are 8,000 total.  The Union takes The Muleshoe, but Lee simply pulls back his lines, erasing the salient. Laurel Hill is still a Confederate mountain. 

May 11, 1864---"If it takes all summer."

MAY 11, 1864: 

The Battle of Spotsylvania Court House (Day Four): 

General Grant sends a famous dispatch to the War Department in Washington, D.C.:

"We have now ended the sixth day of very heavy fighting. The result to this time is much in our favor. Our losses have been heavy as well as those of the enemy. I think the loss of the enemy must be greater. We have taken over 5,000 prisoners in battle, whilst he has taken from us but few, except stragglers. I propose to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer." 

 

The Battle of Yellow Tavern: 

While attempting to stop Philip Sheridan’s cavalry advance on Richmond, Jeb Stuart moves his 5,000 man force into a blocking position near Yellow Tavern. During the battle, Stuart is shot from his horse and is mortally wounded. 

May 10, 1864---The Battle of The Muleshoe

MAY 10, 1864:     

       

The Battle of Spotsylvania Court House (Day Three) (The Battle of The Muleshoe): 

Near dusk, Colonel Emory Upton, U.S.A. leads 5,000 men against the Confederate redoubt atop Laurel Hill. 

The weak spot of Laurel Hill is a bulge in the line called “The Muleshoe,” and the 24-year old veteran commander is convinced he can hammer The Muleshoe flat. 

History has been kind to Upton. He has commanded men at Antietam, at Fredericksburg, at the Seven Days Battles, and at Rappahannock Station, where he led a mass of men as a human battering ram, a kind of 19th Century blitzkrieg, against Rebel positions --- and overwhelmed the enemy. 

Upton believes he can do it again. General Grant needs him to do it. After the wearing Battle of The Wilderness and three days into the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House, Grant is becoming increasingly aware of just how tenacious Robert E. Lee’s soldiery is. A lightning blow may be just the thing to throw them into confusion. 

Historians are still uncertain as to the wisdom of Upton’s attack. His men are disorganized and tired, and many of them have not even reloaded their weapons since their last assault. 

But more profound are the technological shortcomings of the day. For the massed attack to succeed on a very large scale, as it must at The Muleshoe, each unit must advance in sequence and at top speed. 

Upton realized that the Confederates were well dug in with bristling obstacles and earthworks, but he was certain that his infantry could make the charge --- a 200 yard run across open ground and up the flank of the hill, not much different, but reassuringly much shorter, than Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg. 

The results of Upton’s Charge are little better. As soon as the Federal line begins to move it becomes enmeshed in the obstacles, and Confederate men rise out of the earthworks to blast them at short range. 

It was not long before the Union troops were spent. Although all 12 attacking Union regiments managed to penetrate the line of The Muleshoe, the close-quarter combat they faced shattered the line. 

Unfortunately, the reserves that were to have supported Upton’s breach of the Confederate line did so half-heartedly, and Upton was forced to withdraw. 

General Grant later recalled, “Upton had gained an important advantage, but a lack in others of the spirit and dash possessed by him lost it to us . . . I conferred the rank of Brig. Gen. upon Upton on the spot, and this act was confirmed by the President.”

May 9, 1864---Not an elephant

MAY 9, 1864:    

The Battle of Spotsylvania Court House   (Day Two) (The Battle of Laurel Hill): 

Both sides begin furiously entrenching in and around Spotsylvania Court House. Battle is ongoing throughout the day.

General Philip Sheridan U.S.A, and his cavalry begin moving toward Richmond. Jeb Stuart’s cavalry is forced to pursue, leaving Robert E. Lee without a reconnaissance force. 

While on an inspection tour of Union artillery positions primed to fire on beleaguered Confederate positions atop Laurel Hill, Major General John H. Sedgwick is killed by a Confederate sniper moments after he scoffs at danger: “They couldn’t hit an elephant at this distance.”  

May 8, 1864---The Battle of Spotsylvania Court House begins

MAY 8, 1864:     

The Battle of Spotsylvania Court House   (Day One): 

In what became a two week-long running series of bloody battles between Federal and Confederate troops, elements of General Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia manage to occupy the crossroads of Spotsylvania Court House scant minutes before The Army of The Potomac arrives. Although both sides are beaten and bloody after the The Battle of The Wilderness, Grant engages Lee ferociously. For the next fourteen days or so, excepting in the hours of darkness and merciful bad weather, men will die or descend into madness amidst the slaughter in their thousands in ceaseless and brutal engagements all around the region of central Virginia.

May 7, 1864---The Battle of The Wilderness (Day Three)

MAY 7, 1864:    

The Battle of The Wilderness   (Day Three):  

  

Faced with immobility and increasing casualties in the charnel house of The Wilderness, General Grant decides to break off the engagement as the day wanes. Instead of continuing to beat futilely at Lee’s army in such an inhospitable place, Grant gives orders to disengage in The Wilderness and move The Army of The Potomac toward Spotsylvania Courthouse on the road to Richmond.

Grant surprises everyone, including Lee. Disengagement in Civil War battles has always been the mark of a defeated enemy. With 17,666 Union casualties (2,246 killed, 12,037 wounded, and 3,383 captured or missing, as opposed to 11,033 Confederate casualties (1,477 killed, 7,866 wounded, and 1,690 captured or missing) Grant should be the defeated one; according to common logic, he should retire his troops north of the Rapidan River, resupply, and wait for another opportunity to mount a large-scale attack.

Grant even surprises his own men, who trudge out of The Wilderness and down the road toward the junction that leads north to the Rapidan or south toward Richmond. His men are so conditioned to withdrawing after a battle that the lead elements of The Army of The Potomac swing onto the northbound road without thinking. Grant, who has been hovering near the front of the line waiting to see what will happen, rides to the vanguard and calls a halt.     

It’s said he spoke in a deceptively gentle voice:  “Which way do you men think you are going?”

An excited whisper broke out as the men in the first ranks repeated to the men behind them what the General had said. The whisper becomes a murmur and then a gust as 100,000 men begin to realize what is happening. One man is claimed to have yelled something about “Going after those sons-a-bitches!” and other shouted “On to Richmond!” A massive cheer broke out across Union ranks. It’s not known whether Lee could hear the cheering, or heard of it, or what it meant at the time or what it portended. But a new phase --- the final phase --- of the Civil War had begun.