“I found the woods on fire and burning furiously in every direction,” Anderson subsequently recorded, “and there was no suitable place for a rest.” The new road, moreover, was narrow. Stumps remained, and some of the trunks of trees had not been removed. Progress over it would be slow. Upon ascertaining this, Anderson promptly decided that he would forgo the hours of rest authorized by headquarters. He would push on until he was close to his objective. It was a soldierly resolution that made history and it was put into execution while the air was vibrant with sound. Someone cried, “Three cheers for General Lee!” Instead of cheers there was the weird rebel yell, rendered all the more weird by the night and the burning forest. Down the line it swept from brigade to brigade. Again it was raised; again it was carried to the river and, at the last, thrown across the Rapidan to die in its echoes over the fields of Culpeper and Stafford. It was, said one chronicler, “The grandest rebel yell of the war.”22
Through the darkness of the forest, along the wretched road, the men of Kershaw and Field had to feel their way. To them it was a long, long night broken only by the brief halt at the end of fifty minutes and by the usual vexatious starts and stops of the march. About dawn Anderson had the column turn out of the road to rest and eat breakfast. Spotsylvania Court House was then distant about three miles. The sound of firing drifted down from the north, perhaps two miles away. Jeb Stuart’s men were in that vicinity. Much might depend on whether their foe was infantry or cavalry.
Haskell’s battalion of artillery, which had halted in advance of the infantry, was the first to receive any information of what was occurring. Down the road there rode rapidly a courier who drew rein and called for the commanding officer. Major John Haskell stepped forward. As good luck would have it, the courier knew Haskell and in the belief that the paper called for action, gave him an unsealed dispatch addressed to “General Lee or General Longstreet.” Because it was unsealed and urgent, Haskell opened and read the message. In it, Stuart asked for artillery support and said that he was hard-pressed by the enemy. Haskell returned the dispatch to the courier and immediately started his battalion on the road to Spotsylvania.
When Stuart’s dispatch reached Anderson, he advanced his leading division, Kershaw’s, toward the sound of the firing. Soon word came from Fitz Lee that he was fighting on the Brock Road, which ran through the Wilderness and past Todd’s Tavern to Spotsylvania, and most urgently needed assistance. The call was not one that a soldier of Anderson’s character would disregard or even debate. He immediately ordered his old brigade and Humphreys’s to go to Fitz Lee’s relief. They came in sight of piles of fence rails, thrown together to provide insecure but useful field defenses. A cavalryman rushed up to the lead regiment and shouted for it to run for the rail piles. “The Federal infantry will reach them first, if you don’t run!” Kershaw’s veterans sprang forward without waiting for a command. The bluecoats were only sixty yards away when the South Carolinians crouched behind the rails and opened fire.23
By a narrow margin, then, had Anderson won the race, if, indeed, he had won more than the first heat! The Federals pressed straight to the weak line of rails, and there for once they crossed bayonets. The repulse, which was costly to the Unionists, might not have been possible had Haskell’s batteries not been at hand. At the same time, word came to Anderson that Rosser’s brigade was at Spotsylvania Court House and facing an impossibly superior force of cavalry. Rosser, too, must have help! Stuart sent what he could, withdrawing some of Fitz Lee’s men after the arrival of the infantry. Further assistance must come from Anderson. Again Longstreet’s temporary successor acted with vigor and decision. The remaining brigades of Kershaw’s division, Wofford’s and Bryan’s, were designated to reinforce Rosser.
Two battles, then, were to be Dick Anderson’s. The Federal infantry in front of Kershaw’s and Humphreys’s brigades showed no inclination to break off the fight after a single repulse. They were in great strength. Prisoners said they belonged to the V Corps. The two Confederate brigades would need stout reinforcement. Field’s division was coming up: Let part of it move toward Spotsylvania Court House; the remainder must extend Kershaw’s line to the left and westward. Almost before Anderson’s left could be strengthened, the whole line was assailed. Once again the enemy was beaten off easily. After that, as the minutes passed, it was manifest that the Federals were entrenching and steadily extending their lines opposite the Confederate left. At touch and go the situation remained—two divisions against four. A bold front, stern resistance by the infantry, stubborn artillery fire, and about the hardest fighting ever done by the cavalry kept the enemy at a distance. He must be held there till the remainder of Lee’s army arrived.24
During early afternoon there were indications that the other Federal flank was being prolonged. This time, if the Unionists struck heavily on the Confederate right before the arrival of reinforcements, surely Grant could turn that flank. Only if the veterans of Lee’s Second or Third Corps arrived in time could the army block the road to Richmond. Manifestly the outcome might hang on a few hours, on minutes even. As the hot afternoon passed slowly, the heat seemed to be a third belligerent. Ewell’s men were marching to Anderson’s assistance under the eyes of the commanding general himself, but they had “a very distressing march through intense heat and thick dust and smoke from burning woods.”
About 5 o’clock the fire quickened. Scattered cheers were audible. The bluecoats were coming! This advance would decide the day, one way or the other. On the center the attack was half-hearted; on the right the enemy threatened to turn the flank and get in rear of Kershaw. The prospect was ominous when the Confederates had, once more, their old-time battlefield luck. Ewell arrived! Rodes was thrown forward at once to the right of Kershaw. That was enough. As soon as the Federals realized that the Southern front was stronger, they withdrew. Rodes’s advance had decided the doubtful action. The enemy attacked no more that evening. Ewell put Johnson’s division on obscure, night-covered ground to Rodes’s right. Early’s old division was held in reserve.25
Anderson had won his battle. It was because he had started early.
3
FROM MULE SHOE TO BLOODY ANGLE
Through the morning of the hot ninth of May, the Confederate soldiers around Spotsylvania kept one eye on the enemy, who seemed to be taking a day of rest, and the other eye on their earthworks, which were being strengthened hourly. Examination of prisoners had shown the Southerners where the various Federal corps had advanced and where they had fought. Grant started on May 3-4 from his camps north of the Rapidan and had moved with three corps of infantry, the II, V, and VI, and a cavalry corps of three divisions. The IX Corps was to follow the main force. Once across the Rapidan, Grant’s plan was to hold the Army of Northern Virginia while General Butler’s army from the lower Peninsula moved up the James River in an effort to capture Richmond. If Butler failed, Grant purposed to hammer Lee so hard and so steadily that the Confederate commander would have to retreat or, at the least, would have to keep the Southern forces together without detaching any of them for another invasion of the North.
After the failure of the attacks in the Wilderness, the movement of the Army of the Potomac toward Spotsylvania was prompted by what Grant had seen of the strength of the Confederate fieldworks on the morning of May 7. He had concluded then that Lee’s army no longer would face him in the open field but would await attack. “I therefore determined,” the Union chief explained later, “to push on and put my whole force between [Lee] and Richmond.”26 While few details of Grant’s plan were known to the Confederates, no thoughtful officer in gray could overlook the fact that on the fifth, on the sixth, and again on the eighth, when contact had been established, the aggressor had been the Federals. This new commander, Grant, manifestly believed in the offensive:
This was by no means the full measure of Grant’s aggressiveness. Although Butler’s operation against Richmond was not being conducted skillfully, it involved gravest danger to the capital
. Beauregard and Robert Ransom had been summoned to cope with it, but there was divided command and all the resultant confusion. From Winchester, on May 9, Franz Sigel was starting in the hope of forming a junction high up the Shenandoah Valley with troops of George Crook, who was in command of the raid against the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad. More menacing than this was a cavalry raid launched that day by Sheridan but, at the moment, unknown to the Confederates around Spotsylvania.
In the Southern infantry two men were in new positions. The circumstances of their advancement were unhappy. Powell Hill’s malady had grown worse rather than better, and by the eighth he was so ill that he could not sit up. On the march that day Jubal Early was notified that he was assigned, during Hill’s disability, to the command of the Third Corps. Anderson’s appointment in Longstreet’s place had left only Heth and Wilcox as divisional leaders of Hill’s corps. Neither was sufficiently seasoned for the handling of a corps. Early appeared to be, and had done well with Ewell’s command during the Mine Run operations.
Transfer of Early meant, of course, that his division had to pass to other hands. He had three brigades only, because Hoke’s had not yet rejoined. Of the three commanders of brigades, John Pegram was wounded. That left Harry Hays and John B. Gordon. The commission of Hays antedated that of Gordon by more than eleven months, but Lee believed Gordon better qualified for higher command. In order that Gordon might assume command of Early’s division, Hays was transferred from Early’s division to Johnsons and was entrusted with Stafford’s Louisiana brigade in addition to his own. This increased Hays’s prestige at the same time that it assured competent leadership for the soldiers of the fallen Stafford. To take the place of Hays’s brigade in Early’s division, Ewell was directed to transfer to Early’s division the brigade of Robert D. Johnston or some other of the five brigades of Rodes’s division. Old soldiers might have asked themselves whether so many changes ever had been made by army headquarters to give a brigadier general a division.
This was a notable compliment for Gordon, but when it was taken with the other changes necessitated by four days’ fighting, it disclosed a startling shift of command. The record of five days now stood: One lieutenant general wounded and another incapacitated by sickness; two divisional commanders elevated, at least temporarily, to corps command; two brigadiers entrusted with divisions; three brigadiers killed or mortally wounded; two others seriously wounded; six brigades passed into the hands of senior colonels.
So stood the command on May 9. The Third Corps arrived and took position on the right of the Second, in the immediate vicinity of Spotsylvania Court House. At the moment there were no Unionists in front of this corps, but the extension of the front opposite the Confederate right was expected. Chief engineer Martin Smith was laying out a line which, when completed, would anchor the flanks on the steep banks of the little river Po and make the most of such natural advantages as the ground offered.
On the tenth a venture of the Federal II Corps across the Po failed of surprise and was brought to a standstill by two of Early’s divisions and consequently recalled. All that was accomplished by the action was the maiming and killing of good soldiers. On the Confederate side the most serious individual losses were those of Harry Hays and H. H. Walker, who had succeeded to the command of the Field-Brockenbrough-Mayo brigade. Hays would recover easily, but Walker was so badly wounded in one foot that amputation was necessary—another casualty that would require a new appointment or the consolidation of two brigades.27
In the Second Corps there was no sense of complacency regarding its position. When Ewell’s men formed on the right of Anderson, on the afternoon and evening of May 8, they began to fortify an awkward and irregular salient to the northward. Its apex was almost a mile from the point of divergence of an east-and-west line. The extreme width was about 1,200 yards. This manifestly was a difficult position, but evacuation of it would have left to the Federals two stretches of open ground from which Ewell thought the enemy could command the Southern line. Further, if the salient were abandoned, a stretch of road much needed for the movement of men and supplies would be exposed. The decision consequently was to hold the salient with ample artillery and infantry, but to construct a second line across the base. For reasons never satisfactorily explained, work on his line was deferred. In the salient from left to right was part of Rodes’s division and the whole of Johnson’s. To the right of Johnson, beyond the salient, was Wilcox’s division.28
On the western face of the salient, George Doles’s Georgia brigade of Rodes’s command held an incomplete work and, 150 to 200 yards in front of it, a main line in the form of a lesser salient that looked out on 200 yards of open ground. Beyond this field was woodland. In support was the Third Company of the Richmond Howitzer battalion. On the afternoon of the tenth, when artillery fire was directed against him, Doles placed most of his men behind the front line of works. Precisely at 6 o’clock the bombardment ceased. To Doles and his men the end of the day’s combat seemed at hand.
At 6:10 a wild cheer rose from the edge of the woods 200 yards away. Out from among the green trees swept one line. Close behind it was a second. A third emerged almost immediately. There scarcely was time for a volley before the Federals were at the parapet. Hundreds of bluecoats poured into the trench. A furious hand-to-hand clash followed, but not for long. The outnumbered Georgians ran back toward the second line; scores of them, surrounded, had to throw down their guns. The Howitzer battery poured in canister until the guns were overrun. Heroic Captain B. H. Smith and twenty-four of his men were captured at their pieces.
Quick action was taken by the Confederates to mend the break. Battle’s Alabama brigade was put in line directly ahead of the attacking Federals. Gordon and Johnson closed on their flanks. As soon as the countercharge reached the captured battery, artillerists from Cutshaw’s battalion rushed forward, manned the guns, and used them against the enemy. Other batteries opened on lines deploying farther up the salient, which withdrew out of range. This discouraged the column that had broken into Doles’s lines. For a few minutes it fought to retain its ground. Then the Unionists ducked over the parapet and ran for their own lines. With them went perhaps a thousand prisoners.
This affair created much talk in both armies. Confederate commanders had praise for the valor of the defense, but some became more concerned than ever for the safety of the salient which the soldiers by this time had dubbed the “Mule Shoe.” Federals commended the fine planning and vigorous assault. Colonel Emory Upton, who directed the operation, was recommended immediately by General Grant for promotion to brigadier general. There seemed a new and more stubborn spirit in the Union army. The resolution of Grant showed itself in a dispatch written the morning after Upton attacked: “I am now sending back to Belle Plain all my wagons for a fresh supply of provisions and ammunition, and propose to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer.” The Confederates had seen enough by the eleventh of May to make them certain they faced the hardest campaign in their military experience.29
No fighting interrupted the labor on the works during the eleventh. Intelligence on Federal activities and movements was conflicting, but its substance was that the enemy seemed to be moving away from the line. In the evening Harry Heth welcomed to his headquarters near the Court House the sick Powell Hill and, a little later, the commanding general. In a free conversation some of the officers declared that Grant was slaughtering his troops by throwing them against earthworks. Lee was not of that mind. “Gentlemen,” he said, “I think General Grant has managed his affairs remarkably well up to the present time.” He turned to Heth: “My opinion is the enemy are preparing to retreat tonight to Fredericksburg. I wish you to have everything in readiness to pull out at a moment’s notice, but do not disturb your artillery till you commence moving. We must attack these people if they retreat.”
Hill spoke up: “General Lee, let them continue to attack our breastworks; we can stand that very well.” Then the conversation became more
general, but Lee wished to emphasize one truth: “This army cannot stand a siege. We must end this business on the battlefield, not in a fortified place.”30
Lee rode to Ewell’s headquarters in the Mule Shoe sector. It would be necessary, Ewell was told, to withdraw the advanced guns before nightfall and place them where they could be started when the direction of the enemy could be determined. As soon as Lee left, Armistead Long, Second Corps chief of artillery, began to send to the rear the exposed artillery. Of this movement Allegheny Johnson was not informed, and the first he knew of it was when he saw guns going to the rear. Only eight fieldpieces, in two of Cutshaw’s batteries, remained in the Mule Shoe. Twenty-two were halted near the Court House a mile and a half in rear of the salient. Guns of the First Corps were handled differently. Porter Alexander did not relish the idea of withdrawing all artillery support from positions close to the enemy. Instead of moving the pieces back that night, he visited each of his batteries and had them place all their equipment where it could be pulled quickly to the rear with minimum noise over roads he took pains to clear.31
With nightfall the weather had grown worse. A cold rain fell steadily and the night air was raw and penetrating. Long before midnight, the pickets outside the right face of the salient heard sounds from the Federal front. A steady rumble was audible, though its nature could not be determined. Two of Maryland Steuart’s staff at once went out toward the skirmish line. Reports were correct. The enemy must be moving. Only that could account for the slow, steady rumble. It sounded like a waterfall or the grinding of some powerful machine. Thousands of men evidently were in motion. There was no way of ascertaining, as yet, whether they were proceeding to the right or were massing for an attack on the Mule Shoe.
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