Battle of Spotsylvania • Tour the Battlefield • Monuments & Markers • The Armies
The “Struggle for the Bloody Angle” and “Confederate Earthworks” wayside markers are along the walking trail at the Bloody Angle, Stop 3 on the Auto Tour.
Struggle for the Bloody Angle wayside marker
Struggle for the Bloody Angle
For 22 hours combat raged on the landscape in front of you. Although the fighting extended for half a mile, the battle focused on (and became identified with) a slight bend in the Confederate lines known thereafter as the Bloody Angle. The fighting here consisted of sustained, close-range rifle fire punctuated by Union attempts to storm the Confederate works.
So heavy was the rifle fire that a 22-inch oak tree was felled by the impact of bullets alone. Bodies piled up in the rain-filled trenches, the living sometimes buried beneath the dead. After the battle, men were found torn by dozens of bullets. One man had 11 bullets though the soles of his feet alone. Another was so mutilated that friends could identify him only by the unusual color of his beard. It was carnage on an unimaginable scale.
The question became, pretty plainly, whether one was willing to meet death, not merely to run the chances of it.
Lieutenant James F. J. Caldwell
1st South Carolina Infantry
Caption to the photo at lower left:
Called by one modem observer the “signature artifact of America’s military experience,” the stump of the Bloody Angle oak is on display at the Smithsonian Institution.
Caption to the background painting:
“Strike for God and Country,” by Don Stivers. Used with permission.
The Confederate Earthworks wayside marker
Text from the marker:
The Confederate Earthworks
These modest mounds are all that remain of the Muleshoe Salient’s once-formidable earthworks. Begun by the Confederates on the night of May 8, the works were four feet high, with a two-foot-deep trench. Dirt from the trench was thrown against the outer face of the logs to create a bulletproof barrier. As an added measure of safety, the defenders left a small gap beneath the top log through which they could fire without exposing their heads.
Because of the Salient’s curved shape, Confederates here were exposed not only to bullets coming from the front but also from the sides. To protect themselves from enemy crossfire, they constructed a series of shorter barriers, called traverses, at right angles to the main line. Although the traverses have largely disappeared, evidence of them can still be seen in the rumpled contour of the ground.
They had felled timber and constructed excellent earthworks, somewhat after the style of building a log house with earth well thrown up in front. This line of fortifications was divided off, therefore, like stalls in a stable, the compartments being formed by the timbers which supported the other timbers, which with the earth constituted a splendid protection for the men behind them.
Lieutenant Harvey S. Wells,
84th Pennsylvania Volunteers
Caption to the photograph:
Walking on earthworks destroys them. Please help the National Park Service preserve these and other earthworks by remaining on the trail.
Location of the markers
The markers are about 200 yards east of the parking area at Stop Three along the walking trail that parallels the Confederat Earthworks on their south side. (38°13’24.7″N 77°35’57.9″W)
(go to the main Tour Stop 3 page)
(go to the main Battle of Spotsylvania Auto Tour page)