Testing the Line: May 8-10

Grant's failure to win the race to Spotsylvania led to two weeks of brutal combat as the aggressive Union commander repeatedly struck the entrenched Confederate line in search of weakness. At Laurel Hill, fighting less well known than the combat at the Bloody Angle but no less costly produced upwards of 5,000 casualties. On May 8, 10, and 12, Union troops charged across the fields around Sarah Spindle's farmhouse in repeated attempts to break Lee's entrenched lines, and each time they were defeated. The terrain worked against them, forcing Union soldiers to cross several hundred yards of open ground under bursting shells and whizzing bullets from the enemy. Unable to break the Confederate line at Laurel Hill, Grant shifted his attention to the left, toward the Muleshoe. Facing six miles of strong Confederate earthworks, he had first tried to turn Lee's flanks, but when those efforts met resistance on May 10, he wrongly concluded that Lee had weakened the center. That evening, at 6 p.m., 5,000 men under Colonel Emory Upton rushed across 200 yards of open ground and broke through the center of Lee's line. Although Confederate counterattacks later retook the works, Upton's success gave Grant the idea that a much larger assault might break the Confederate line.

Spotsylvania Courthouse, Virginia · United States