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

The last stop on the Spotsylvania Battlefield Auto Tour is just before Burnside Drive leaves the park and ends at Courthouse Road, which was known as Fredericksburg Road at the time of the battle. The Fredericksburg Road became the Union supply route during the Battle of the Wilderness, bringing in food and ammunition and carrying away the thousands of wounded.

There are two wayside markers at the stop:

The “If it Takes All Summer” and Fredericksburg Road” wayside markers at Stop Eight

The Fredericksburg Road wayside marker

Text from the 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

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.

If It Takes All Summer wayside marker

Text from the marker:

If It Takes All Summer

 While the May 12 combat at the Bloody Angle marked the height of the Spotsylvania fighting, it was not the end of it. For nine more days, the Army of the Potomac hovered around the village, looking for opportunities to strike. Finding Lee heavily entrenched at Laurel Hill and the Muleshoe Salient, Grant began shifting his army across the Fredericksburg Road, to your left. Lee responded by moving elements of his army across the road as well.

The two sides clashed three more times at Spotsylvania—at Myers Hill on May 14, at the Harrison house on May 18, and at Harris farm on May 19—each time without decisive result. On May 21, Grant abandoned his efforts to drive Lee from Spotsylvania Court House and started for the North Anna River, 20 miles south. It was there, along the North Anna’s muddy banks, that the next act of the bloody drama would unfold.

I… propose to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer.
General Ulysses Grant, USA

Caption:

In an effort to locate Grant’s right flank, Lee on May 19 sent his Second Corps on a reconnaissance toward the Fredericksburg Road, sparking a battle on the Harris farm.

Tour Stop 8 is on the south side of Burnside Drive, just northwest of the Courthouse Road intersection. (38°12’40.6″N 77°34’38.6″W) Although Burnside drive is two way trafic at this point it is only for a short distance. It is not possible to return to the park by car on Burnside Drive; you must head west on Courthouse Road and north on Brock Road to the Grant Avenue entrance (2.5 miles).

Where to next?
This is the last stop on the auto tour.

Turn right on Courthouse Road to visit the Spotsylvania Court House Historical District and the Confederate Cemetery. You can also return this way to the entrance to the Spotsylvania battlefield – or –  head eight miles north to the Wilderness and Chancellorsville battlefields.

Turn left on Courthouse Road to go to the little-visited monument at Harris Farm, or to return to Fredericksburg.

(go to the main Spotsylvania Battlefield Auto Tour page)