Mayhem in the Muleshoe

Surrounded on all sides by low ridge lines, Neil McCoull's house stood at 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 the house en route to some of the most desperate fighting the world had ever seen at the Bloody Angle, only a few hundred yards away. Hundreds of thousands of bullets pelted the earth around the house, and 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.

Spotsylvania Courthouse, Virginia · United States