Battle of Spotsylvania • Tour the Battlefield • Monuments & Markers • The Armies
This marker is just north of the intersection of Brock Road and Grant Drive at the entrance to the Spotsylvania Court House Battlefield. (38°13’04.4″N 77°36’52.5″W; map) It is next to the The Race for Spotsylvania Court House marker
Laurel Hill
[The] Federal assaults were not only easily repulsed, but the forces making them were simply slaughtered.
Private John Coxe,
2nd South Carolina Infantry
Before you lies Laurel Hill, one of the most important but least understood areas of the Spotsylvania Court House battlefield. On three separate days—May 8, 10, and 12—Union troops charged across these fields, from right to left, in an effort to break the Confederate army’s hold on the wooded ridge to your left. Each attack ended in bloody failure.
With each repulse, the Union soldiers’ enthusiasm for attacking the ridge diminished. “Every man in the ranks saw the folly of the attempt,” wrote a soldier in the 83rd Pennsylvania Volunteers, “and judging from the undercurrent of their conversation, it is not probable that they would have made a very determined effort, or gone far.”
In all, some 5,000 Union soldiers fell here—all to no purpose. On May 13, the Union army abandoned Laurel Hill and headed east. The Confederates followed.
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