The Battle of Spotsylvania Courthouse

For 22 hours combat raged on the landscape in front of you. Although the fighting extended for half a mile, the battle focused on (and became identified with) a slight bend in the Confederate lines known thereafter as the Bloody Angle. The fighting here consisted of sustained, close-range rifle fire punctuated by Union attempts to storm the Confederate works.

So heavy was the rifle fire that a 22-inch oak tree was felled by the impact of bullets alone. Bodies piled up in the rain-filled trenches, the living sometimes buried beneath the dead. After the battle, men were found torn by dozens of bullets. One man had 11 bullets though the soles of his feet alone. Another was so mutilated that friends could identify him only by the unusual color of his beard. It was carnage on an unimaginable scale.

The question became, pretty plainly, whether one was willing to meet death, not merely to run the chances of it.
Lieutenant James F. J. Caldwell
1st South Carolina Infantry

(captions)
Called by one modem observer the "signature artifact of America's military experience," the stump of the Bloody Angle oak is on display at the Smithsonian Institution.

"Strike for God and Country," by Don Stivers. Used with permission.

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Show me all markers in:  Spotsylvania, VA  |  Spotsylvania County  |  22553  |  Virginia  |  United States of America

The Confederate Earthworks
15th Regiment New Jersey Volunteers
"The Toughest Fight Yet"
49th New York Infantry
Spotsylvania Campaign
Spotsylvania Campaign
McGowan's Brigade
126th Ohio Volunteer Infantry
Aftermath
Bloody Angle, Crowded Ravine

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