Battle of Spotsylvania • Tour the Battlefield • Monuments & Markers • The Armies
The Toughest Fight Yet wayside marker is on the walking trail at the Bloody Angle, Stop 3 on the Auto Tour. It is about 300 yards from the parking area along the outside of the Confederate earthworks, and a short distance from the monument to the 15th New Jersey, seen in the photo below.
From the marker:
“The Toughest Fight Yet”
Artist Alfred R. Waud sketched these Union soldiers under fire here on May 12, 1864. Lee’s counterattacks had driven the Union troops out of the Muleshoe, and here they are shown under cover on the outside of the Confederate trenches. Waud’s perspective was just a few feet from where you are now standing. It is the most immediate depiction of the fighting near the Bloody Angle that day. Waud labeled his sketch, “The toughest fight yet.”
In the image, the fighting rages most intensely to the right, the white smoke marks what would become known as the Bloody Angle. Amid the smoke stands a baffle-scarred oak, 22 inches in diameter, which would fall later in the day, cut down by small- arms fire. In the foreground, Union troops huddle up against the Confederate works amidst the carnage of earlier fighting.
(go to the main Tour Stop 3 page)
(go to the main Battle of Spotsylvania Auto Tour page)