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Battle of Spotsylvania • Tour the Battlefield • Monuments & Markers • The Armies

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The Mayhem in the Muleshoe wayside marker is at Stop 5 on the Auto Tour at the end of McCoull Road. (38°13’12.0″N 77°36’00.6″W; map) It is next to the McCoull House wayside marker.

From the marker:

Mayhem in the Muleshoe

Surrounded on all sides by low ridge lines, Neil MccCoull’s house sat in the center of the famous Muleshoe Salient. On the night of May 8, 1864, Confederate engineers built the bulging line of earthworks that wrapped around McCoull’s farm to the west, north and east. When Union troops broke through the Muleshoe on May 12, Confederates swarmed over McCoull’s farm, desperate to reclaim their lines.

Thousands of troops passed by this house en route to some of the most desperate fighting the world had ever seen – at the Bloody Angle, only a few hundred yards in front of you. Hundreds of thousands of bullets pelted the earth around the house; artillery shells by the hundreds screeched overhead. When the Confederates fell back to a new line early on the morning of May 13, they left behind McCoull’s bullet-riddled house and a field strewn with corpses.

(go to the Tour Stop 5 page)
(go to the main Battle of Spotsylvania Auto Tour page)