Struggle for the Bloody Angle

For 22 hours, combat raged across the landscape, extending for half a mile but centering on a slight bend in the Confederate lines that became known as the Bloody Angle. The fighting consisted of sustained, close-range rifle fire punctuated by Union attempts to storm the Confederate works. The rifle fire was so heavy that bullets alone felled a 22-inch oak tree. Bodies piled up in rain-filled trenches, and the living were sometimes buried beneath the dead. After the battle, men were found torn by dozens of bullets; one man had 11 bullets through the soles of his feet alone, and another was so mutilated that friends could identify him only by the unusual color of his beard. It was carnage on an unimaginable scale, raising, in the words of Lieutenant James F. J. Caldwell of the 1st South Carolina Infantry, the plain question of whether one was willing to meet death, not merely to run the chances of it.

Spotsylvania Courthouse, Virginia · United States