Battle of Spotsylvania Court House

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Battle of Spotsylvania Court House

The Battle of Spotsylvania Court House, sometimes simply referred to as the Battle of Spotsylvania, was the second major battle in Lt. Gen.

Lieutenant General (United States)

In the United States Army, the United States Marine Corps and the United States Air Force, lieutenant general is a 3 star rank general officer rank, with the U.S....
Ulysses S. Grant

Ulysses S. Grant

Ulysses S. Grant, born Hiram Ulysses Grant , was an United States general and the List of Presidents of the United States President of the United States ....
's 1864 Overland Campaign

Overland Campaign

The Overland Campaign, also known as Grant's Overland Campaign and the Wilderness Campaign, was a series of battles fought in Virginia during May and June 1864, in the American Civil War....
of the American Civil War

American Civil War

The American Civil War , also known as the War Between the States and several Naming the American Civil War, was a civil war in the United States....
. It was fought in the Rapidan

Rapidan River

The Rapidan River is the largest tributary of the Rappahannock River in North-central Virginia. The two rivers converge just west of the city of Fredericksburg, Virginia....
-Rappahannock

Rappahannock River

The Rappahannock River is a river in eastern Virginia in the United States, approximately 184 mi in length. It traverses the entire northern part of the state, from the Blue Ridge Mountains in the west across the Piedmont to Chesapeake Bay south of the Potomac River....
river area of central Virginia

Virginia

The Commonwealth of Virginia is an United States U.S. state on the East Coast of the United States of the Southern United States. The state is known as the "Old Dominion" and sometimes as "Mother of Presidents", because it is the birthplace of Lists of United States Presidents by place of birth#By state....
, a region where more than 100,000 men on both sides fell between 1862 and 1864.

The battle was fought May 8–21, 1864, along a trench line some four miles (6.5 km) long, with the Army of Northern Virginia

Army of Northern Virginia

The Army of Northern Virginia was the primary military force of the Confederate States of America in the Eastern Theater of the American Civil War of the American Civil War....
under Gen.

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Encyclopedia

The Battle of Spotsylvania Court House, sometimes simply referred to as the Battle of Spotsylvania, was the second major battle in Lt. Gen.

Lieutenant General (United States)

In the United States Army, the United States Marine Corps and the United States Air Force, lieutenant general is a 3 star rank general officer rank, with the U.S....
Ulysses S. Grant

Ulysses S. Grant

Ulysses S. Grant, born Hiram Ulysses Grant , was an United States general and the List of Presidents of the United States President of the United States ....
's 1864 Overland Campaign

Overland Campaign

American Civil War

The American Civil War , also known as the War Between the States and several Naming the American Civil War, was a civil war in the United States....
. It was fought in the Rapidan

Rapidan River

The Rapidan River is the largest tributary of the Rappahannock River in North-central Virginia. The two rivers converge just west of the city of Fredericksburg, Virginia....
-Rappahannock

Rappahannock River

Virginia

Army of Northern Virginia

The Army of Northern Virginia was the primary military force of the Confederate States of America in the Eastern Theater of the American Civil War of the American Civil War....
under Gen. Robert E. Lee

Robert E. Lee

Robert Edward Lee , was a career United States United States Army officer , an engineer, and among the most celebrated generals in American history....
making its second attempt to halt the spring offensive of the Union

Union Army

The Union Army was the army that fought for the Union during the American Civil War. It was also known as the Federal Army, the U.S....
Army of the Potomac

Army of the Potomac

The Army of the Potomac was the major Union Army in the Eastern Theater of the American Civil War of the American Civil War....
under the command of Lt. Gen. Grant and Maj. Gen.

Major general (United States)

In the United States Army, United States Marine Corps, and United States Air Force, major general is a 2 star rank general officer rank, with the U.S....
George G. Meade

George Meade

George Gordon Meade was a career United States Army officer and civil engineer involved in coastal construction, including several lighthouses....
. Taking place less than a week after the bloody, inconclusive Battle of the Wilderness

Battle of the Wilderness

The Battle of the Wilderness, fought May 5–7, 1864, was the first battle of Lieutenant general Ulysses S. Grant's 1864 Virginia Overland Campaign against General Robert E....
, it pitted 52,000 Confederate

Confederate States Army

The Confederate States Army was a military organization whose primary mission was to provide the necessary forces and capabilities to support the National Security and defense of the Confederate States of America during its brief existence from 1861 to 1865....
soldiers against a Union army numbering 100,000.

Background

After the Battle of the Wilderness, in which Lee delayed the Union advance, Grant decided to take advantage of the position he held, which allowed him to slip his army around Lee's right flank and continue to move south toward the Confederate

Confederate States of America

The Confederate States of America formed as the government set up from 1861 to 1865 by eleven Southern United States U.S. state of the United States of America that had declared their secession from the U.S....
capital of Richmond, Virginia

Richmond, Virginia

Richmond is the Capital of the Commonwealth of Virginia, in the United States. Like all Virginia municipalities incorporated as cities, it is an independent city and not part of any county....
. He already had troops on the move by the night of May 7, just one day after the Wilderness fighting ended, and on May 8, he sent Maj. Gen. Gouverneur K. Warren

Gouverneur K. Warren

Gouverneur Kemble Warren was a civil engineer and prominent General officer in the Union Army during the American Civil War. He is best remembered for arranging the last-minute defense of Little Round Top during the Battle of Gettysburg and is often referred to as the "Hero of Little Round Top." His subsequent service as a corps commander an...
and his V Corps

V Corps (ACW)

The V Corps was a unit of the Union Army Army of the Potomac during the American Civil War....
to take Spotsylvania, 10 miles (16 km) to the southeast. Lee anticipated Grant's move and sent forces to intercept him: cavalry under Maj. Gen. J.E.B. Stuart

J.E.B. Stuart

James Ewell Brown "Jeb" Stuart was an American soldier from Virginia and a Confederate States Army general during the American Civil War. He was known to his friends as "Jeb", from the initials of his given names....
and the First Corps, commanded by Maj. Gen. Richard H. Anderson

Richard H. Anderson

Richard Heron Anderson was a career United States Army officer, fighting with distinction in the Mexican-American War. He also served as a Confederate States Army General officer during the American Civil War....
(its usual leader, Lt. Gen. James Longstreet

James Longstreet

James Longstreet was one of the foremost Confederate States Army General officers of the American Civil War and the principal subordinate to General Robert E....
, had been wounded in the Wilderness).

Battle

The Confederates won the race to Spotsylvania, and on May 9, each army began to take up new positions north of the small town. As Union forces probed Confederate skirmish lines on May 9 to determine the placement of defending forces, Union VI Corps

VI Corps (ACW)

The VI Corps was a corps of the Union Army during the American Civil War....
commander Maj. Gen. John Sedgwick

John Sedgwick

John Sedgwick was a teacher, a career military officer, and a Union Army general in the American Civil War. His death at the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House is often considered a well known tale of irony....
was killed by a sharpshooter

Sniper

A sniper is usually a highly trained marksman that shoots targets from Concealment positions or distances exceeding the capabilities of regular personnel....
; he was succeeded by Maj. Gen. Horatio G. Wright. Lee deployed his men in a trench line stretching more than four miles (6.5 km), with artillery placed that would allow enfilade fire on any attacking force. There was only one major weakness in Lee's line—an exposed salient

Salients, re-entrants and pockets

In military terms, a salient is a battlefield feature that projects into enemy territory. Therefore, the salient is surrounded by the enemy on three sides, making the troops occupying the salient vulnerable....
known as the "Mule Shoe" extending more than a mile (1.6 km) in front of the main trench line. Lee recognized this weakness during the fighting of May 10, when twelve Union regiments under the command of Col. Emory Upton

Emory Upton

Emory Upton was a United States Army General officer and military strategist, prominent for his role in leading infantry to attack entrenched positions successfully at the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House during the American Civil War, but he also excelled at artillery and cavalry assignments....
followed up a concentrated, intense artillery attack by slamming into the toe of the Mule Shoe along a narrow front. They actually broke the Confederate line, and the Second Corps had a hard time driving them out. Upton's attack won him a promotion on the spot to brigadier general

Brigadier general (United States)

A brigadier general in the United States Army, United States Air Force, and United States Marine Corps, is a 1 star rank general officer, with the U.S....
, and it became a staple of military textbooks on how to break an enemy trench line. Similar tactics were used by Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; to the east by Poland and the Czech Republic; to the south by Austria and Switzerland; and to the west by France, Luxembourg, Belgium, and the Netherlands....
in Operation Michael

Operation Michael

Operation Michael was a First World War German army military operation that began the Spring Offensive on 21 March 1918. It was launched from the Hindenburg Line, in the vicinity of Saint-Quentin, Aisne, France....
, its successful March 1918 offensive during World War I

World War I

World War I, or the First World War , was a global military conflict which involved the Great powers, organized into two opposing military alliances: the Allies of World War I and the Central Powers....
. Other Federal assaults on May 10 were less successful, and the day was generally characterized by uncoordinated frontal assaults that Grant ordered impulsively. Repeated attacks were particularly futile along the Confederate left, where Union General Warren failed many times to storm a position called Laurel Hill.

On May 11, Grant began the planning for a new major assault aimed at the Mule Shoe salient, with the intent of employing Upton's tactics on the level of an entire corps. Lee took Grant's inactivity as a sign that the Federal Army was getting ready to pull back, either for a retreat, or for another sidle to the East, and as a result, he weakened the critical sector of the Mule Shoe by withdrawing its artillery support. Grant's pre-dawn assault on the Mule Shoe on May 12 was initially a complete success. The well-fought II Corps

II Corps (ACW)

There were five corps in the Union Army designated as II Corps during the American Civil War.* Army of the Cumberland, II Corps commanded by Thomas L....
of 20,000 men, commanded by Maj. Gen. Winfield S. Hancock, led the attack against the Mule Shoe in the same manner that Upton had attacked on May 10. This time, the breach in the Confederate line was complete, thanks in part to the absence of Confederate artillery support, but also because many of the Confederates suffered from wet powder in their rifled muskets due to rainfall the night before, and thus found that their guns would not fire. Hancock's II Corps took close to 4,000 prisoners, destroying Edward "Allegheny" Johnson's

Edward Johnson (general)

Edward Johnson , also known as Allegheny Johnson , was a United States Army officer and a Confederate States of America General officer in the American Civil War....
division of the Confederate Second Corps. Both the divisional commander and one of his brigadier generals were captured. Then the fighting bogged down, in part because Grant had not properly prepared a second wave to take advantage of the success. Anxious to sustain momentum, Grant ordered supporting attacks from Wright's VI Corps, and from the IX Corps

IX Corps (ACW)

IX Corps was a corps of the Union Army during the American Civil War that distinguished itself in combat in multiple theaters: the Carolinas, Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Mississippi....
of (Maj. Gen. Ambrose E. Burnside), but the attacks were not well coordinated, and failed to recapture the momentum of the attack. Lee was also able to shift thousands of his men to seal the breach, most notably launching a counterattack with Brig. Gen. John Brown Gordon

John Brown Gordon

John Brown Gordon was one of Robert E. Lee's most trusted Confederate States Army General Officers during the American Civil War. After the war, he was a strong opponent of Reconstruction era of the United States and was generally acknowledged to be the titular leader of the Ku Klux Klan in Georgia during the late 1860s....
's division, and also securing much help from the able leadership of Brig. Gen. Stephen D. Ramseur.

Because of the severity of the crisis, Lee felt compelled to personally lead soldiers in the counterattack. His men realized the danger this would pose to him, however, and refused to advance until Lee removed himself to a safer position in the rear. The several "Lee to the rear" episodes later became famous, and were a intense example of the personal bond that Lee's soldiers felt for him. The battle in the Mule Shoe lasted for an entire day and night, as the Confederates slowly won back most of the ground they had lost, inflicting heavy losses on the II Corps and on the reinforcing VI Corps in the process. The fighting was characterized by an intensity of firepower never previously seen in Civil War battles, as the entire landscape was flattened, all the foliage destroyed. Both sides, fighting from back and forth over the same corpse-strewn trenches, engaged in hand-to-hand fighting, and there were many descriptions of the field as a morass of corpses, piled so high that wounded men buried underneath them were pressed down into the mud, where they drowned. The angle between the Union II and VI Corps became known as the "Bloody Angle of Spotsylvania", where perhaps some of the most savage fighting of the whole Civil War took place.

By 3 a.m. on May 13, the ruined remnants of Lee's Second Corps had finished construction on a fallback line at the base of the Mule Shoe salient, and Lee had his battered men retire behind it. More than 10,000 men fell in the Mule Shoe, which passed to the Union forces without a fight. On May 18, Grant sent two of his corps to attack the new line, 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.

Grant, checked by Lee for a second time, responded as he had two weeks earlier. He shifted the weight of his army to his left flank and again moved to the southeast along roads Lee was unable to block. By May 20–21, the two armies were on their way to take positions along the North Anna River

Battle of North Anna

The Battle of North Anna was fought from May 23 to May 26, 1864, as part of Union Army Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant's Overland Campaign against Confederate States Army Gen....
, another dozen miles closer to Richmond.

The pattern for the Overland Campaign was set by its first two weeks, and the battles of the Wilderness, Todd's Tavern and Spotsylvania Courthouse. This was a slow but steady series of arcing shifts to the left by Grant, progressing to the southeast and ever closer to Richmond, with the mortal bleeding of the Army of Northern Virginia in the process. While Grant could not move decisively upon Richmond due to Lee's possession of the advantage of interior lines, it was the irrecoverable losses suffered by the Confederate forces that would prove decisive.

Aftermath

Once again, Lee's tactics had inflicted severe casualties on Grant's army. This time, the toll was over 18,000 men, of which close to 3,000 were killed. In two weeks of fighting, Grant had lost 35,000 men, and another 20,000 went home when their enlistments ended. In fact, Grant at one point on the North Anna had fewer than 65,000 effectives. But Lee did not come out of these battles unscathed, either. At Spotsylvania, he lost another 10–13,000 men, and the Confederates had to pull men away from other fronts to reinforce him. Making matters worse, the army was taking heavy losses among its veteran units and its best officers. This may have saved Grant from a disaster on the North Anna, when his decimated army was positioned badly and was ripe to be attacked. Lee never did, because the Army of Northern Virginia was unable to do so. In fact, Lee's army would never regain the initiative it lost in those two weeks of May 1864.

Estimates vary as to the casualties at Spotsylvania Court House. The following table summarizes estimates from a variety of popular sources:

**Casualty Estimates for the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House**
Source	Union				Confederate
Source	Killed	Wounded	Captured/ Missing	Total	Killed	Wounded	Captured/ Missing	Total
National Park Service				18,000				12,000
Bonekemper, Victor, Not a Butcher	2,725	13,416	2,258	18,399	1,467	6,235	5,719	13,421
Eicher, Longest Night				17,500				10,000
Esposito, West Point Atlas				17–18,000				9–10,000
Fox, Regimental Losses	2,725	13,416	2,258	18,399
Smith, Grant	2,271	9,360	1,970	13,601

Portions of the Spotsylvania Court House battlefield are now preserved as part of Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park

Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park

Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park is a unit of the National Park Service in Fredericksburg, Virginia, and elsewhere in Spotsylvania County, Virginia, commemorating four major battles in the American Civil War....
.

Battle of Spotsylvania Court House

Background

Battle

Aftermath

See also

External links