The Fredericksburg Road

The Fredericksburg Road served as the Army of the Potomac’s main supply line during the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House, with hundreds of wagons each day bringing food, arms, and ammunition to the Union army and returning with wounded soldiers bound for temporary hospitals in Fredericksburg. Spotsylvania Court House lay one mile ahead, and in 1864 the village had fewer than a dozen buildings, including a courthouse, jail, hotel, and three churches, many of which still stand. Just outside the hamlet is the Spotsylvania Confederate Cemetery, where 600 Confederate soldiers who died in the battle are buried, while Union soldiers killed at Spotsylvania are buried in Fredericksburg National Cemetery. Edwin Forbes, a Northern sketch artist, recalled the road crowded with empty wagons jammed with wounded men, single horses and mules carrying two and three men on their backs, and lame soldiers limping along and helping one another in a slow-moving procession of misery between the battlefield and town.

Spotsylvania Courthouse, Virginia · United States