Military
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The night before the battle, Union soldiers wrote their names on scraps of paper fastened to their clothing in hopes of being identified afterward. At 4:30 a.m., they were ordered to attack Confederate earthworks clearly visible across an open field. Most of the dying was over in thirty minutes. Unable to advance or retreat, the surviving Federals used spoons, forks, or bayonets to dig in where they lay beneath a waist-high ceiling of fire. Afterward, the Union Army built more elaborate entrenchments behind this position. Ten days later, in secrecy, Grant abandoned the position to march on Petersburg.
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Mechanicsville, Virginia · United States
