Military
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On May 12, 1864, about 6 a.m., Wright's VI Corps advanced to support Hancock's attack and occupied the area in front of the Confederate works on the west face of the Salient. Here, at a slight bend in the line that became known as the Bloody Angle, the most savage, long-sustained hand-to-hand combat of the War occurred. Opposing troops fired muzzle-to-muzzle and bayoneted and clubbed one another across the logs of the parapet. Musket fire slashed the springtime greenery and toppled trees, including an oak almost two feet in diameter. Rain poured down and the dead piled up in the mud. Before daylight on the 13th, the exhausted Confederates withdrew to a better line.
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Spotsylvania Courthouse, Virginia · United States
