Fighting for Time

Throughout May 12, Confederates fought here for critical minutes and hours after Union troops swarmed over the east face of the Muleshoe Salient before dawn. Robert E. Lee immediately understood that the position, even if temporarily regained, could not be held permanently, but he needed time to build a new line farther to the rear. Though driven away in the first hour of the battle, the Confederates fought their way back into these works by 7 a.m. For the rest of the day they endured repeated attacks while Union troops built ragged, impromptu works to their front in an effort to close on the Confederate position. The fighting transformed the landscape, and the scars remain. In the end, the Confederates held this line long enough for Lee to establish a new line a mile behind them, at the cost of hundreds killed and wounded for nothing more substantial than ticks on the clock and a few inches of ravaged landscape.

Spotsylvania Courthouse, Virginia · United States