On this day 160 years ago, the most savage battle of the Civil War was waged in Virginia

The Battle of the Mule Shoe - May 12, 1864.

Part of the overarching Battle of Spotsylvania Court House (May 8-21, 1864), the so-called Battle of the Mule Shoe was the Union army's attempt to crack a massive salient at the center of Robert E. Lee's Confederate lines wide open. This massive assault, ordered by Ulysses S. Grant and organized by George G. Meade, would be among the largest Union attacks of the entire war. The main assault would be made at dawn and involve three whole army corps, with Winfield S. Hancock's 15,000 men leading the way. The famed Stonewall Brigade - heroes of many a battle - held the very section of line targeted by the Union onslaught. By the end of the day they would cease to exist as a fighting force.

The Union army broke through in multiple places and Lee's army was now in great danger of being split in two. However, disorganization quickly overtook the Union columns and Lee as well as his immediate subordinates were able to react quickly and competently to the attack, sending in wave after wave of reinforcements to stem the tide. All the while Confederate engineers worked feverishly behind the lines to establish a new and stronger defense line further back.

Among the Confederate reinforcements sent in to plug the gaps was a brigade of Alabama infantry under the command of Abner Perrin. My great-great-great-great uncle, serving in Perrin's brigade as part of the 14th Alabama Volunteer Infantry Regiment, was killed in action while fighting to repel the Yankee invaders from the Mule Shoe. His efforts, along with the efforts of thousands of other Confederate soldiers, were enough to push the Union army out of the Mule Shoe and to a point along the ruined Confederate breastworks that would soon become known as "Bloody Angle."

Here at this spot, for the next 18 hours, Union and Confederate soldiers would be involved in a bloody free-for-all of vicious hand-to-hand combat the likes of which had never been seen before on the American continent. Men shot each other at point blank range, stabbed each other, gouged each others eyes out, and beat one another to a pulp as the heavens opened up and sent down a steady downpour of rain. Men drowned in the mud or were crushed by the bodies piling one on top of the other. Neither side would yield to the other, retreat was not an option.

Finally, after nearly 24 hours of continuous combat, the new Confederate earthworks further behind the line had been completed and Confederate forces at Bloody Angle and other points within the Mule Shoe began to pull back to the new line. Only the Union soldiers remained. These survivors were surrounded by the dead and wounded bodies of some 17,000 Union and Confederate soldiers. In some places bodies were stacked as many as 400 deep.

As Wikipedia concludes about the fighting on 12 May 1864:

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The combat they had endured for almost 24 hours was characterized by an intensity of firepower never previously seen in Civil War battles, as the entire landscape was flattened, all the foliage destroyed. An example of this can be found in the Smithsonian Museum of American History: a 22-inch stump of an oak tree at the Bloody Angle that was completely severed by rifle fire. There was a frenzy to the carnage on both sides. Fighting back and forth over the same corpse-strewn trenches for hours on end, using single shot muskets, the contending troops were periodically reduced to hand-to-hand combat reminiscent of battles fought during ancient times. Bodies piled up four and five high, and soldiers were forced to pause from time to time and throw corpses over the parapet since they formed an obstacle in the way of the fighting. Dead and wounded men were shot so many times that many of them simply fell apart into unrecognizable heaps of flesh.

Surviving participants attempted to describe in letters, diaries, and memoirs the hellish intensity of that day, many noting that it was beyond words. Or, as one put it: "Nothing can describe the confusion, the savage, blood-curdling yells, the murderous faces, the awful curses, and the grisly horror of the melee." Some men claimed to have fired as many as 400 rounds that day.

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Grant's Grand Assault - May 12, 1864


"Bloody Angle" in the present day