Battle of Spotsylvania • Tour the Battlefield • Monuments & Markers • The Armies
The Fredericksburg Road wayside marker is on the north side of Burnside Drive just west of its intersection with Courthouse Road. (38°12’40.6″N 77°34’38.6″W; map) It is next to the ‘If It Takes All Summer‘ wayside marker.
The Fredericksburg Road
The Fredericksburg Road, on your left, was the Army of the Potomac’s main line of supply during the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House. Each day hundreds of wagons lumbered down the road, bringing tons of food, arms, and ammunition to the insatiable Union army. On their return journey, the wagons carried an even more precious load: wounded soldiers bound for temporary hospitals in Fredericksburg.
Spotsylvania Court House is just one mile ahead of you. In 1864, the village encompassed fewer than a dozen buildings, including a courthouse, jail, hotel, and three churches. Most of those structures still stand. Just outside the hamlet is the Spotsylvania Confederate Cemetery, where 600 Confederate soldiers who died in the battle are now buried. Union soldiers killed at Spotsylvania are buried in the Fredericksburg National Cemetery.
All empty wagons were positively jammed with men variously wounded. Single horses and mules bore the burden of two and three men upon their backs, and many lame soldiers limped along in pitiful fashion, offering to each other such assistance as was possible; so that between the battlefield and town a procession of misery, unequaled by any similar event of the war, passed slowly by.
Edwin Forbes, Northern sketch artist
From the caption to the background photo:
The Fredericksburg Road ended at Spotsylvania Court House. Most of Spotsylvania’s original buldings, including the courthouse (left) and Sanford’s Hotel (right center) still stand.
(go to the Tour Stop 8 page)
(go to the main Battle of Spotsylvania Auto Tour page)