The Battle of Spotsylvania

Following the inconclusive battle of the Wilderness, Ulysses S. Grant decided to advantage of the position he held. On May 7 th , one day after the battle of the Wilderness, His Army of the Potomac would slip around Lee's right flank and move south towards Richmond. . Grant issued a directive to the Army of the Potomac commander, Maj. Gen. George Gordon Meade. The order, one of the most important of Grant's military career, began, " General: Make all preparations during the day for a night march to take position at Spotsylvania Courthouse”. That evening moving independent of and unknown to each other the Union V Corps and the Confederate I Corps both made hast e to be the first to reach the courthouse.

On May 12 th about 11 pm the Battery was pulled from behind the breastworks along the Po River. After being pulled off the front lines, they made there way south towards the corps headquarters south of the brown house. It was there the battery halted at about 3:00 AM and awaited orders. It wasn't until sunrise did the battery take up a position behind Brooke's Brigade of the Second Corps. To there front a clearing three to four hundred yards, which extended from the Landrum house on the left, and curved to the right toward the earthworks now occupied by the Confederate forces. The rest of the field thickly wooded, and that morning it lay shrouded in fog.

At about sunrise, union forces began their charge, first and Third corps supported by second corps moved forward pat the Landrum House. After pushing past the enemy pickets the troop came into the clearing and upon seeing the enemy works let out a cheer and charged forward. They crashed through the abattis and stormed into the first line of works shooting bayoneting, and beating down those who tries to oppose them. Crazed with excitement by the success of the charge the Union troops chased the fleeing Confederates to the second line of entrenchments. It was here that the charge stalled.

As soon as the first line of entrenchments was carried, Hancock ordered up the artillery. Battery B on a double quick came up trotting as fast as the terrain would allow. Moving to within three hundred yards of the enemies works, opened fire with shot and shell over the heads of the pursuing infantry exploding in the space traversed by the enemy. Rain was falling in torrents, and the smoke hung over the battlefield obscuring the gunner's view of the enemy.

So far the assault had been successful, but the heavy rain, slogging mud, and smoke, compounded by a breakdown in communication began to have an adverse effect. Union troops after being stalled at the second line of defenses, had fallen back to the line of earthwork entrenchments. Troops worked to improve the recently captured works knowing it would not be long before the enemy would make bid to get them back. The works were a wall of earth, toped with a fallen log called a header, just high enough above it, to allow the protected infantryman to fire under the log on the attacking enemy.

Soon enough the enemy set out to regain the works, and was determined to do so regardless of the cost. For about a mile along the breastworks, in a cold and torrential rain, combatants fired muskets literally into each other's faces, while bayoneting one another across the entrenchments. The dead and wounded where packed together so tightly that they could not fall to the earth, and those who did were trampled into the mud and drowned. The battle had deteriorated to a struggle to control the apex of the salient were the fighting had near the Western angle of the works had become the most severe. Following the battle this site of some of the deadliest and most savage hand to hand fighting would be known as` the “Bloody Angle”. At one point as Grant was preparing for assaults on some of point along the front, Meade sent an order “Tell Hancock to hold on”. Putting his infantry four ranks deep, he was able to hold back the enemy advance keeping them from retaking the works.

It was during these assaults that Hancock ordered the artillery forward, and to move up into, entrenchments. Two sections (a section is two field pieces) one from Battery C Fifth United States, and one from Battery B First Rhode Island Light Artillery, was to move forward to the entrenchments at the west angle. Battery B was a distance north of the works, shelling the enemy with its view of the works blocked by trees. Upon receiving orders Captain T. Fred Brown, nodded and the Battery ceased fire. He then ordered Lieut. Charles A. Brown forward with his section. “Drivers mount” and “Forward trot” were the commands as the section moved forward to the earthworks. Opening on the enemy as they rose from their behind the works to advance, with case shot and canister, until the ammunition chests were emptied. The cannoneers went down in quick succession, yet still kept their fire with telling effect.

The battle at this point was at its most intense, with the deafening roar of musketry, the Battery's center section made its withdrawal from the breastworks. It was then that some of the horses where wounded and became unmanageable, cannoneers of the Battery's right section came to the rescue drawing the pieces back to the hollow by hand. Leaving their caissons there, the Battery moved to the left and front toward the breastwork, from there they resumed shelling the Confederates in the woods to the front. As night fell the men of the Battery made pine bough roof shelters for the night in the trenches. A cold steady rain continued, as the battle had lasted all day long finally ended, the rebels had finally decided to give up attempts to recapture he works.

The Battery remained in the works at Spotsylvania until May 14; still cold and rainy they finally moved to the rear. Horses were fed and groomed, and the men had the first hot food they had seen for days, consisting of Hot coffee, fried salt pork, and hardtack. The action of the Battery at Spotsylvania is believed to be the only recorded instance during the Civil War, of field artillery charging an attacking enemy.

On May 15 , the II Corps joined the other Union corps so that the Union lines, east of the village, now faced west and ran north and south. Three days later, two Union corps returned to the salient and attacked the Confederates' final line but where unsuccessful. Grant again sent two of his corps to attack the new line on the 18 th of May, but they were met with a bloody repulse. That convinced Grant, who had vowed to " fight it out on this line if it takes all summer ," that Lee's men could not be dislodged from their Spotsylvania line. Checked by Lee for a second time, responded as he had 2 weeks earlier. Shifting the weight of his army to the right flank and again moved to the southeast along roads Lee was unable to block.

The Battle of Spotsylvania Court House was over. If Grant's intention had been to defeat or even destroy the Army of Northern Virginia, he was unsuccessful at Spotsylvania. Assuming that Lee's primary objective was to hold the line of the Rapidan River and keep the enemy out of central Virginia, the battles of the Wilderness and Spotsylvania can be considered strategic defeats. However, by delaying Grant for 2 weeks at Spotsylvania, Lee permitted other Confederate forces to resist Union efforts in the vicinity of Richmond and in the Shenandoah Valley, unmolested by the Army of the Potomac.
On May 20-21 , both armies departed Spotsylvania. Lee rode south, aware that he had to avoid a siege of Richmond or the Confederacy would be doomed. This two-week battle was a series of combats along the Spotsylvania front. Once again, Lee's tactics had inflicted severe casualties on Grant's army. Lee's army was taking heavy losses among its veteran units and its best officers. Losses however, Grants army could tolerate, but that Lee's army could ill afford . The Confederate army would never regain the initiative it lost in those two weeks.