Battle at Spotsylvania Court House

Battle at Spotsylvania Court House

Part of: American Civil War

date	8-21 May 1864
place	Spotsylvania County , Virginia , USA
output	draw

Parties to the conflict
United States	Confederate States of America
Commander
Ulysses S. Grant George G. Meade	Robert E. Lee
Troop strength
100,000	52,000
losses
18,399 killed : 2,725 wounded: 13,416 missing: 2,258	12,000

The Battle of Spotsylvania Court House , also known simply as the Battle of Spotsylvania, was fought during the American Civil War and was the second battle in Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant's overland campaign in 1864. It took place near the Rapidan and Rappahannock Rivers in central Virginia , an area in which more than 100,000 soldiers on both sides lost their lives between 1862 and 1864. The battle and the movements connected with it lasted from May 8th to May 21st, 1864. The 52,000 soldiers of General Robert E. Lee's Confederate Northern Virginia Army awaited the onslaught in a heavily developed, nearly four miles long defensive position Major General George Gordon Meade's 100,000-strong Potomac Army . Spotsylvania was Lee's second attempt in the overland campaign to thwart the Potomac Army's advance into the Confederate capital of Richmond , Virginia.

Strength and organization of armies

At the beginning of the overland campaign, the Potomac Army consisted of approximately 118,000 soldiers and 316 artillery pieces. After the bloody battle in the Wilderness, Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant and Major General George G. Meade were still about 78,850 infantry , 11,625 cavalry , 9,900 artillery and 314 pieces of artillery available for the battle at Spotsylvania Court House . The army was divided into five corps :

• The II Corps under Major General Winfield Scott Hancock , consisting of 81 infantry regiments and ten batteries of light artillery.
• The V Corps under Major General Governor Kemble Warren , consisting of 67 infantry regiments and nine batteries of light artillery.
• The VI. Corps under Major General John Sedgwick , consisting of 50 infantry regiments and eight batteries of light artillery.
• The IX. Corps under Major General Ambrose Everett Burnside , consisting of 42 infantry regiments, four cavalry regiments and 14 batteries of light artillery (the IX Corps was a formal part of the James Army until May 24, 1864 and was not under Meade, but directly under Grant)
• The Cavalry Corps under Major General Philip Henry Sheridan , consisting of 32 cavalry regiments.

General Robert E. Lee's Northern Virginia Army opposed the advancing Potomac Army in early May 1864 with almost 63,000 soldiers and 224 artillery pieces. After deducting the losses suffered in the Wilderness, Lee remained near Spotsylvania about 38,250 infantrymen, 8,300 cavalrymen, 4,750 artillerymen and 226 guns. The army was divided into four corps:

• The I. Corps under Lieutenant General Richard Heron Anderson , consisting of 43 infantry regiments and 14 batteries of light artillery (one of which is not equipped).
• The II. Corps under Lieutenant General Richard Stoddert Ewell , consisting of 58 infantry regiments and 18 batteries of light artillery.
• The III. Corps under Major General Jubal Anderson Early , consisting of 61 infantry regiments and 20 batteries of light artillery.
• The cavalry corps under Major General James EB "Jeb" Stuart , consisting of 25 cavalry regiments and five batteries of light artillery.

From the wilderness to Spotsylvania

The Army's Way to Spotsylvania

Despite heavy casualties in the Wilderness , Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant and Maj. Gen. George G. Meade continued to push the Northern Virginia Confederate Army back to Richmond. At around 8:30 p.m. on May 7, the Potomac Army began its march southeast towards Spotsylvania Court House. Behind Maj. Gen. Winfield Scott Hancocks II Union Corps, which remained in its fortifications for the time being to cover the departure of the army, Maj. Gen. Kemble Warren's V Corps marched south on Brock Road . Major General John Sedgwick VI. Corps marched east and then swung south. He was followed by Major General Ambrose Everett Burnside with his IX. Corps. In the end, Hancock followed the same route that Warren had taken.

Ulysses S. Grant

General Robert E. Lee, who had in the meantime become aware of Grant's intentions, had the 1st Corps under Major General Richard Heron Anderson (the original Commanding General Lieutenant General James Longstreet had been badly wounded in the Wilderness) withdraw from his position in the Wilderness and sent it arrived in a hasty night march southeast to Spotsylvania Court House, where it arrived just in time to block Warren's further advance: On May 8, at around 8:00 a.m., two divisions of V Corps, exhausted from their nightly march, unexpectedly encountered Anderson's vanguard and After a brief skirmish, had to evade in great confusion in order to regroup at a safe distance. Thus the direct route to Spotsylvania Court House was blocked for the Union Army. Anderson owed its narrow lead to Confederate cavalry under the command of Maj. General Fitzhugh Lee (a nephew of Robert E. Lee), who had blocked the road at Todd's Tavern and resisted several attacks by Union cavalry and infantry.

Lieutenant General Richard Stoddert Ewells II Corps and Lieutenant General Ambrose Powell Hills III. Corps (now commanded by Major General Jubal Anderson Early, since Hill was absent due to illness) followed Anderson at a short distance. The Confederates spent the morning of May 9th building field fortifications in anticipation of an imminent attack.

Course of the battle

Obtaining the positions

Robert E. Lee

In the course of May 9, further troops from both sides reached the positions. The IX. Union Corps under Burnside marched from the northeast on Fredericksburg Road towards the village of Spotsylvania Court House. To prevent Burnside from falling into the rear of Ewell's II Corps from there, Lee sent the incoming Confederate III. Corps across Shady Grove Church Road to the village and had it take up position east of it. This gave the Confederate Front the rough shape of an upside-down "V", with the north-facing tip, known as the Mule Shoe , representing the most vulnerable point.

Union Corps II, under the command of Hancock, approached on Brock Road and exited the street to position themselves to the right of Union V Corps. The Potomac Army was hit hard when Uncle John Sedgwick, popular with his men, was killed by a Confederate sniper while he was overseeing the deployment of an artillery unit (Grant declared: "His death outweighs the loss of an entire division") . Brigadier General Horatio G. Wright took over command of the VI in Sedgwick's place. Corps (he was then appointed major general on May 12, 1864).

General John Sedgwick

The groundwork for another momentous event was laid when Grant gave Major General Sheridan and his cavalry corps permission to advance toward Richmond (in a skirmish with Sheridan's forces, the well-respected Confederate Cavalry General James Ewell Brown Stuart was supposed to be at Yellow Tavern two days later , not far from Richmond, to death).

Given the strong front that Lee's soldiers had built in a short time and steadily fortified, Grant saw only two ways to overwhelm the defenders: embracing a flank or a massive assault. His choice first fell on the probably bloodless of the two variants, and in the late afternoon of May 9, troops of the II Union Corps crossed the River Po and advanced east along Shady Grove Church Road to flank Anderson's I Corps fall. However, the falling darkness stopped their advance. During the night, the Commander-in-Chief of the Northern Virginia Army, General Lee, sent a brigade under the command of Brigadier General William Mahone to block the advancing Union forces, while a division under Maj. Gen. Henry Heth was to attack them the following day.

First attacks on General Lee's lines

The lines of the two armies on May 10th

This unexpected obstacle in the form of opposing troops made Grant doubt the feasibility of a rapid break-in into Anderson's flank, and so on the morning of May 10th those three Union divisions of II Corps south of the Po River were given the order to avoid the north side of the river. Two divisions were able to march back undisturbed, but the third had to cross the river under Confederate fire.

Now the Commander in Chief of the US Army saw only one way of overcoming the Northern Virginia Army: the inevitable bloody storming of the enemy fortifications. His plan was to take down Lee's defenses with coordinated attacks along the entire line. In search of a weak point where the attack should be started, scouting teams from Major General Wrights VI. Corps placed the center of the Confederate fortification line and came to the conclusion that the exposed Mule Shoe was the weakest point in Lee's defense. Wright then ordered the brigade commander Col. Emory Upton , a West Point graduate who had repeatedly promoted his tactics based on concentrated strength, with his brigade consisting of twelve regiments specially selected for this enterprise (around 5,000 soldiers in total) to break into the Hit the left flank of the mule shoe . Immediately after a successful penetration into the enemy trenches, Upton's regiments were to be supported by a division under Brigadier General Gershom Mott, while Warren's V Corps and Burnside's IX. Corps should break through attacks on the two outer flanks if possible, or at least prevent the Confederates from bringing reinforcements to the center. However, poor coordination and the inability to effectively harass the well-entrenched defenders in order to bind larger troops should undermine any success of the flanking attacks. Already at 4:00 p.m. Warren threw the divisions of his V Corps against a supposed weak point in Anderson's section of the front. 3,000 Union soldiers collapsed in the defensive fire of the Confederate defenders; the attackers evaded defeat and had not gained the slightest advantage.

Emory Upton

At around 6:00 p.m., Upton finally led his men in a south-easterly direction on the left flank of the Mule Shoe. The attacking regiments marched in a dense formation three regiments wide and four regiments deep. A grove hid them from the Confederates and they got within 180 meters of the enemy trench system before Upton gave the order to plant their bayonets and charge forward. In order to further increase the shock effect of the attack, soldiers were not allowed to fire their weapons before they reached the enemy fortifications. The surprised defenders were driven by the force of the attack after dogged resistance from the foremost row of trenches. Many of them were unable to switch to the second row of trenches and they had to surrender. As soon as a Union regiment succeeded in breaking into the trenches, the soldiers fanned out to the left and right to widen the breach through which the following regiments then advanced. With this tactic, Upton and his soldiers had managed to take the front positions and some fortifications behind, but now the attack lost its momentum due to high losses and the collapse of the command structure.

At the same time, the Confederate defenders received much-needed reinforcements and were ready to attack. They pushed the Union soldiers back into the outer trenches of the Mule Shoe. Mott's division, which was to support Upton, got stuck in the defensive fire of 22 artillery pieces from Ewell's corps and had to evade without having reached the enemy lines. Since further support was not to be expected, Upton felt compelled to return to his own lines with his exhausted troops.

Ultimately, Upton's attack was a bloody failure: Upton, who was wounded in the attack, lost about 20% of the troops deployed (the 49th Pennsylvania Infantry Regiment lost almost half of its members). The defense attorneys suffered roughly the same number of casualties (including around 1,000 prisoners). Although the attack on the Mule Shoe had been repulsed, Grant recognized the potential of the tactics used. Upton was promoted to Brigadier General while still on the battlefield and Grant was determined to reapply the same principle of attack in the same place with more soldiers ("A brigade today - tomorrow we will try a corps").

Prepare for the attack

On the morning of May 11, a wind was blowing from the northeast, bringing rain and hail with it and driving thick ground fog across the battlefield. The humidity made ammunition unusable for many soldiers on both sides (this should affect the nature of the fighting the following day).

In preparation for the planned major attack, Grant had the II Corps under Hancock withdraw from its position on the right flank of the Union in order to relocate it to a new position opposite the Mule Shoe.

Soon afterwards reports of the same movement reached General Lee. He interpreted this as the beginning of the withdrawal of the Union Army. He was reinforced in this view by separately arriving reports of alleged disengagement movements on other parts of the front (which actually only represented mounted exploratory missions, as well as regrouping of the supply train). Lee, who had previously seen himself deprived of the initiative, tried to stay one step ahead of Grant's movements in order to possibly have an opportunity to counterattack. In order to be ready for an immediate departure, Lee had some of his artillery pieces, which were in impassable places, withdrawn from the front and brought to marching-friendly terrain. Among those guns were 22 of the 30 cannons that had been massaged just where Hancock's attack would hit the Mule Shoe. Around midnight, the unmistakable noise of a large gathering of troops from the direction of the Union lines worried the defenders of the Mule Shoe. At 2:00 a.m. the order was given to have the guns brought back, but they were not supposed to arrive in time.

Slaughter at the Mule Shoe

Confederate rift system at bloody angle

On the morning of May 12th, a total of 19,000 Union soldiers with mounted bayonets stood in rows 50 men deep and waited for the signal to attack. At 4:30 a.m., the 11,000 front row soldiers finally stepped out of the woods and advanced across the misty fields (visibility was barely 46 meters), capturing or driving them ahead of the completely surprised Confederate guards. In less than an hour, thousands of Hancock's soldiers had overrun the Mule Shoe. The heaviest fighting raged at a point just east of the apex, which was then given the name Bloody Angle (Bloody Angle). There the attackers captured more than 30 enemy flags. The main reasons for the rapid success of the attack lay in the failure of most of the ammunition and the lack of withdrawn Confederate artillery, which enabled Hancock's soldiers to advance to bayonet range with relatively little loss. Those guns arrived just at the moment when the defenders were overwhelmed and fell into the hands of the Union soldiers without much resistance. Overcome by the force of the attack, around 3,000 Confederates, including Major General Edward Johnson , were taken prisoner.

By the time Confederate Brigadier General John Brown Gordon dispatched three brigades to the Mule Shoe at 5:30 a.m. to plug the gaping hole in Lee's front, the attackers had already gained around 800 meters of ground. Gordon's reinforcements succeeded in pushing the Union soldiers back into the foremost row of trenches within the Mule Shoe, as due to the unexpectedly rapid success of Hancock's men, the planned reinforcements were not yet ready to intervene in the fighting. In the bitter struggle for the outer row of trenches, all order and command structure fell apart. Gordon's soldiers were able to drive their opponents completely out of the trenches in places, but those of the II Union Corps established themselves immediately in front of the trenches. In some places the distance between enemy lines was only 18 meters. Both sides now hastily brought in further reinforcements, and the fighting over the trench system of the Mule Shoe was to last 23 hours.

By 12:00 noon, the entire VI. Union Corps reached its new position at the Mule Shoe and went on to attack. As the number of reinforcements grew, so did the carnage. In places the dead and wounded were piled so high in and in front of the trenches that the soldiers had to stop firing to drag the bodies away before they could continue fighting. At times the enemy lines were so close together that the soldiers had to fire their rifles from the waist because they did not have enough space to rest on their shoulders.

Thure De Thulstrup (1848–1930): Battle of Spottsylvania [sic]

Louis Grant, a brigade commander in the Potomac Army (not related to Ulysses S. Grant), later recalled the horror of the Mule Shoe: “Many were shot and stabbed through crevices and holes between the parapets. Men climbed the earthworks, and with rifles held in rapid succession they kept a steady fire until they were gunned down, at which point others took their places to continue the deadly work. "

While the soldiers were tearing each other up at the Mule Shoe, a division of the IX advanced in the afternoon. Union Corps against Lee's right flank. In a dense forest less than a mile north of Spotsylvania Court House, she encountered two Confederate brigades and a chaotic battle ensued, in which both sides struggled to find their way back to their respective lines.

While the bloody fighting raged in front of them, some soldiers from Ewell's corps hurriedly dug new trenches farther back, which would connect the two endpoints of the Mule Shoe and make the vulnerable bulge in Lee's front unnecessary. Their work, like the fighting, was made more difficult by the fact that a heavy rain shower set in that afternoon.

Desperate to end the massacre, which was dragging on and on, smaller groups of a few hundred Union soldiers rushed towards the Confederate positions, but were always repulsed with heavy losses. Even the nightfall did not put an end to the fighting. Around midnight, near the center of the Bloody Angle, a two-inch thick oak crashed to the ground; its trunk had been severed by flying bullets (the torn stump is on display at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC ).

At around 4:00 a.m. on May 13, work on the containment positions was finally completed, and the Confederate defenders were able to evade the mule shoe in an orderly fashion after 23 hours of uninterrupted fighting. Lee's line had wavered, but it wasn't broken. The Potomac Army lost 10,800 men in front of the Mule Shoe, but failed to make a major breakthrough. Lee suffered 10,200 losses.

The fighting subsided

During the following week, the battle at Spotsylvania Court House gradually came to an end.

In the night of May 13th to May 14th, the V. and VI. Union Corps moved to Fredericksburg Road and went there to the left of the IX. Corps in position. This general shift of the front joined the II Union Corps on May 15, so that the front of the Potomac Army was now aligned with Lee's right flank and had a general north-south course. Two days later, on May 17th, two Union corps returned to the now straightened section of the former Mule Shoe position and were thrown again against the Confederate trenches in the hope of a successful surprise attack. The attack was repulsed.

On May 19, Ewell's II Confederate Corps undertook a forced march towards Fredericksburg Road to locate the right flank of the Union line and avoid it if possible. Here the Confederates unexpectedly encountered Union troops who had recently arrived at the front (regiments of heavy artillery that had been withdrawn from the fortifications off Washington, DC and were now serving as infantry). Fierce fighting broke out between the two sides near a farmhouse belonging to a certain Harris, which halted the Confederate advance. Ewell's corps lost around 900 soldiers, while the inexperienced Union troops lost around 1,500 soldiers. The battle at Harris' Farm was the last major battle in the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House.

On the following day, May 20, Grant sent the II Union Corps under Hancock to Milford Station (about eight miles southeast of Spotsylvania Court House) to proceed from there against the right flank of the Northern Virginia Army. At the same time he had more than 100 of his artillery pieces brought back to Washington, since the previous course of the campaign with hasty marches on narrow streets had led him to the conviction that his artillery in their current number was more of an obstacle than a help. Lee learned of the plan and then gave up his threatened position, as an enemy attack from the south would make further maneuvers to protect the capital Richmond very difficult. Now Lee turned quickly south to meet Grant's further advance on Richmond with another strong defensive position.

The two armies met again just two days later on the banks of the North Anna River.

Conclusion

The Potomac Army lost almost 18,000 soldiers at Spotsylvania Court House (60% of them in the fighting over the Mule Shoe).

The Northern Virginia Army lost about 12,000 soldiers (85% of them in the Mule Shoe), but unlike the Potomac Army, Lee could no longer easily make up for his losses with new recruits. The loss of a few capable generals was no less serious. On May 12th alone, Lee lost a major general and seven brigadier generals to death, wounding and capture.

Given that Lee's main objective during the campaign was to keep Union forces out of central Virginia and the capital, Richmond, by establishing a solid line of defense along the Rapidan, Spotsylvania was a strategic defeat for the south. In both the Wilderness and Spotsylvania, Lee was unable to stop the enemy advance south; he could only delay it. However, the Potomac Army was bound near Spotsylvania for two weeks and prevented from sending reinforcements to the Shenandoah Valley and other theaters of war.

Grant was able to cope with the immense toll of the large, short-lived battles with comparatively no problems. Although he had not yet achieved a tactical victory in his overland campaign, he was able to continue advancing towards Richmond after the Battle of Spotsylvania, knowing that with every bloody battle Lee's possibilities for effective resistance would diminish. The battle itself was of little strategic importance, and the immense slaughter, which in earlier years would have led to an outcry of horror, was lined up alongside battles no less bloody such as the Wilderness and the subsequent Battle of Cold Harbor .

Even if Spotsylvania was the first battle of the American Civil War, in which the entire front consisted of developed trench systems and parapets, many coincidental incidents (thick fog, element of surprise, unusable ammunition, absence of artillery) obscured the fact that this new species During warfare, infantry assaults on fortified and well thought-out defenses were pure suicide. This would not become apparent until later, at the Battle of Cold Harbor. Finally, the nine-month siege of Petersburg anticipated the terrible trench warfare of the First World War.

List of the generals killed in Spotsylvania

Potomac Army:

• Major General John Sedgwick (VI Corps, † May 9, 1864)
• Brigadier General Thomas Greely Stevenson (1st Division / IX Corps, † May 10, 1864)
• Brigadier General James Clay Rice (2nd Brigade / 4th Division / V. Corps, † May 10, 1864)

Northern Virginia Army:

• Brigadier General Abner Monroe Perrin (1st Brigade / 1st Division / III Corps, † May 12, 1864)
• Brigadier General Junius Daniel (1st Brigade / 3rd Division / II Corps, † May 13, 1864)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c} The American Battlefield Protection Program (ABPP). National Park Service, accessed April 10, 2018 (English, troops and casualties). 
2. ^ Fox's Regimental Losses. Perseus Digital Library Tufts University, accessed March 29, 2016 . 
3. ↑ sedgwick.org : Grant on Sedgwick's death (page 31)
4. ↑ Encyclopedia of the Civil War, page 1840, line 34 (see also under literature)
5. ^ Encyclopedia of the Civil War, page 1841, lines 39-44
6. ↑ A picture of the stump can be found on the Smithsonian Institution home page: Spotsylvania Stump

literature

• Encyclopedia of the Civil War. A political, social, and military history. Ed. V. David S. Heidler et al. Jeanne T. Heidler. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2000.
• The Confederacy. New York: Simon & Schuster Macmillan, 1998.
• Freeman, Douglas Southall: Lee. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997.
• Swinton, William: Army of the Potomac. New York: Smithmark, 1995.
• Echoes of glory. Illustrated atlas of the Civil War. Ed. V. Henry Woodhead. Alexandria: Time-Life Books, 1991.
• William F. Fox: Regimental Losses in the American Civil War: A Treatise on the Extent and Nature of the Mortuary Losses in the Union Regiments , et al. a. Ebooksondisk.com, 2002, ISBN 1932157077
• William D. Matter: If It Takes All Summer: The Battle of Spotsylvania . Chapel Hill, NC 1988 (not viewed)

Web links

Commons : Battle at Spotsylvania Court House  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files