Battle of Spotsylvania • Tour the Battlefield • Monuments & Markers • The Armies
The “Attack on the Muleshoe” and “Bloody Angle, Crowded Ravine” wayside markers are at Stop 3 on the Spotsylvania Battlefield Auto Tour (see map below)
The markers look out over the ground over which Union troops attacked. The top of the monument to the 126th Ohio Infantry Regiment is at the far left in the middle distance.
Attack on the Muleshoe wayside marker
Text from the marker:
Attack on the Muleshoe
Like Lee, General Ulysses S. Grant recognized the Muleshoe’s weakness and made plans to exploit it. On May 12, just after dawn, 20,000 men of General Winfield S. Hancock’s Second Corps stormed across the field in front of you—from left to right—and swept over the Confederate works, capturing 3,000 men and 20 cannons. It was one of the most successful Union attacks of the Civil War.
Capture of the Muleshoe nearly cut the Army of Northern Virginia in two, threatening its very existence. Lee counterattacked in a desperate attempt to regain the lost ground, or at least to buy time to build a new line, close to 1,000 yards behind the outer line. For the rest of day, both generals funneled every available man into the Salient. Grant fought to win; Lee to survive. The result was the most violent sustained combat in American history.
Every Confederate realized the desperate situation and every Union soldier knew what was involved. For a time, every soldier was a fiend. The attack was fierce—the resistance fanatical.
Corporal John Haley, 17th Maine Volunteers
Caption to the background photo:
The fighting on May 12 took place in a driving rain. This image shows reinforcements from the Union Sixth Corps fighting from the ravine in front of you.
Bloody Angle, Crowded Ravine wayside marker
Text from the marker:
Bloody Angle, Crowded Ravine
Fighting at the Muleshoe Salient focused on a slight turn in the Confederate earthworks, to your right-front, known as the “Bloody Angle.” The Angle occupied a small knoll that commanded adjacent parts of the Confederate line. Whoever controlled the knoll controlled the Salient. For 22 hours Union and Confederate soldiers vied for possession of the Angle, firing across the works or engaging one another in grim, hand-to-hand combat.
During the battle Union soldiers took cover in the ravine in front of you. Time and again they rushed forward to attack the Angle, only to be beaten back. With each repulse they left the ground between the ravine and the Angle strewn with hundreds of wounded and dying men. Bodies piled up three, four, even five deep, forming what one man described as “a perfect rampart of [the] dead….” By day’s end, up to 17,000 men were killed, wounded, or captured, most within sight of where you are now standing.
The hill dropped abruptly to a branch a short ways in front of the breastworks. The Yanks could come up behind the hill and have a short distance to charge in the open. They massed under the protection of the hill and made a rush at us over their own dead and wounded.
Private David Holt, 16th Mississippi Infantry
Caption to the background drawing:
Thousands of troops covered the ground in front and behind you. The Union battle lines extended for nearly a half a mile.
Location of the markers
The markers are about 80 yards northeast of the parking area at Stop Three along the hiking trail.
(go to the main Tour Stop 3 page)
(go to the main Battle of Spotsylvania Auto Tour page)