Laurel Hill

At Laurel Hill, one of the most important but least understood areas of the Spotsylvania Court House battlefield, Union troops charged across these fields on May 8, 10, and 12 in an effort to break the Confederate army’s hold on the wooded ridge, but each attack ended in bloody failure. The assaults were easily repulsed, and with each repulse the Union soldiers’ enthusiasm for attacking the ridge diminished; as a soldier in the 83rd Pennsylvania Volunteers wrote, every man saw the folly of the attempt and it was not probable they would have made a very determined effort or gone far. In all, some 5,000 Union soldiers fell here to no purpose. On May 13, the Union army abandoned Laurel Hill and headed east, and the Confederates followed.

Spotsylvania Courthouse, Virginia · United States