Reference Entry
BLOODY ANGLE AT SPOTSYLVANIA
In the gray dawn of May 12th, 1864, Union soldiers surge through fog and rain toward a bulging section of Confederate works near Spotsylvania Court House known as the Mule Shoe. What follows is one of the most brutal episodes of the Civil War, later remembered as the Bloody Angle. For nearly twenty hours, men on both sides fire from opposite sides of the same log parapets, stab with bayonets, and club with musket stocks as trees are splintered by constant musketry and artillery.
Dated Historical Context
A RECORDED MOMENT IN HISTORY
Bloody Angle at Spotsylvania
In the gray dawn of May 12th, 1864, Union soldiers surge through fog and rain toward a bulging section of Confederate works near Spotsylvania Court House known as the Mule Shoe. What follows is one of the most brutal episodes of the Civil War, later remembered as the Bloody Angle. For nearly twenty hours, men on both sides fire from opposite sides of the same log parapets, stab with bayonets, and club with musket stocks as trees are splintered by constant musketry and artillery. The struggle is part of Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant’s Overland Campaign, in which he refuses to disengage after earlier costly fighting in the Wilderness. Tactically, the Union break-in eventually forces Confederate commanders to pull back to a shorter line. Strategically, the fighting on May 12th shows that Grant will keep pressing despite horrific losses, shifting the war in Virginia toward a grind that the Confederacy can ill afford.
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