"Bloody Angle" Topic

"Having targeted the Muleshoe Salient on May 10 with 5,000 soldiers and some success Ulysses S. Grant and George G. Meade decided to attack it again on May 12 with almost 20,000 troops. Those Federal soldiers spent May 11 marching into position. A steady rain fell, blanketing the area in a heavy fog. Around 4:30 am on May 12, the 20,000 U.S. soldiers moved forward. They quickly captured the Confederate pickets and continued their attack into the main Confederate line, screaming and hollering.

The initial Confederate defenses shattered almost immediately, and the Federals captured thousands of prisoners. Realizing that with the Mule Shoe taken, his lines were dangerously split, Robert E. Lee ordered counterattacks to stabilize the position. Thus began nearly 24-hours of constant combat, some of the most infamous fighting of the entire war that left both armies stunned. Sometimes separated by just a few feet of dirt, the two sides battled through the day and into the night around a bend in the works that became known as the Bloody Angle. One Union soldier said the Mule Shoe was "a seething, bubbling, roaring hell of hate and murder." Another soldier wrote, "I never expect to be fully believed when I tell what I saw of the horrors of Spotsylvania, because I should be loath to believe it myself, were the case reversed."…"

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