The fierce struggle over the Confederate fortifications during the Battle of Spotsylvania known as the “Mule Shoe” was without parallel during the American Civil War. The massive Union assault that began at 4:30 A.M. on May 12, 1864, sparked brutal combat that lasted nearly 24 hours. By the time Federal forces withdrew, some 55,000 men from the Union and Confederate armies had been drawn into the fury, battling in torrential rain along fieldworks at point blank range in a “seething, bubbling, soaring hell of hate and murder.” Some 17,500 officers and men from both sides had been killed, wounded, or captured by the time the fighting ceased in the dense Virginia woods. The site of the most intense clashes became forever known as the “Bloody Angle,” a notorious part of the famous Overland Campaign that pitted Grant versus Lee.

 

Learn more from renowned Civil War military historian Jeffry D. Wert as he draws on the personal narratives of Union and Confederate troops who survived the fight to offer a gripping story of Civil War combat at its most difficult.

 

Jeffry D. Wert is author of many previous books, including “Gettysburg, Day Three,” “From Winchester to Cedar Creek: The Shenandoah Campaign of 1864,” and “The Sword of Lincoln: The Army of the Potomac.”

 

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