The History of the Confederate War, Its Causes and Its Conduct. Volume 2 of 2

CHAPTER XLVI

Spottsylvania and the Bloody Angle

All day during the seventh of May the two armies lay still. There was a little cavalry fighting at Todd's Tavern, but the two great armies did not again engage each other in conflict. They had tried conclusions here, and each was measurably satisfied with the result.

The question now was where next they should meet each other in arms. Lee had chosen the field of the first onset. It was for Grant to choose the next. And in pursuance of his strategy Grant determined to move by his left flank to Spottsylvania Court House, hoping to reach that position before his adversary could get there, and to seize upon its best strategic points. In that position he would still have the great waterways at his back as a support, and a trustworthy source of supply. His desire was throughout the campaign to thrust his army in between the Army of Northern Virginia and Richmond, and this seemed to be his best opportunity to do so. He had somewhat a shorter line of march, and moreover by taking the initiative he was able to start first. If he was baffled in the attempt it was only by reason of the alertness of Lee's genius which penetrated his purpose, grasped his thought, and promptly acted in contravention of it.

Spottsylvania Court House lay fifteen or sixteen miles southeast of the Wilderness battlefield, and nearly that far southwest of Fredericksburg. In order that the movement might be made without danger of his army being attacked while in motion, Grant adopted the plan of using the troops on his right as the advance force of his movement towards the left. He did this throughout that campaign by the left flank, always withdrawing the forces on his right, passing them in rear of his main army, and thus making of the movement what is technically known as a countermarch. In this way the advancing troops had always the main army between them and the enemy until they cleared the position occupied, and were well on march toward the new one aimed at. After that, of course, they must take care of themselves, but in the meanwhile the march was begun without discovery on the part of the enemy.

The movement on this occasion was begun at nine o'clock in the evening, on the night of Saturday, May 7. With his extraordinary alertness and penetration Lee anticipated it and obstructed it. He threw a force of cavalry across the roads that Grant's head of column must traverse, and directed it to oppose and delay the movement so far as it was possible to do so. He also sent sappers and miners ahead to fell trees across the road over which Grant must march, then with caution, but with boldness, he set his own columns in motion, sending the head of them to seize upon and hold the strongly strategic positions at Spottsylvania until such time as Grant's movement should so far develop itself as to justify him in moving his whole army into that position. The Federal cavalry had occupied these strategic positions before the Confederates got there, but they were quickly brushed away, and by the time that the head of Grant's column of infantry and artillery reached Spottsylvania, Lee's advance was in full possession and everywhere throwing up earthworks. The remainder of Lee's forces were quickly brought up, as were those of Grant, and the two great armies again confronted each other, each with set lips, determined to get the better of the other if human resolution could accomplish that purpose.

In the meanwhile Grant had sent Sheridan with a strong force of cavalry to ride around the Confederates as Stewart had thrice done around the Federal army, to disturb their communications, and obstruct their avenues of retreat in case of disaster. His movement was promptly met by the Confederate cavalry under their great leader J. E. B. Stuart, and the two forces fell a-fighting at a point known as the Yellow Tavern, seven or eight miles north of the city of Richmond. There in fierce conflict Stuart met the death which he had always declared that he longed for. He was mortally wounded at the head of his men while making one of those tremendous onsets which it was the pride of his soul to conduct. With Stuart disabled, the Confederate cavalry was left without a leader capable of making the most of its dash and prowess, and Sheridan succeeded in breaking through the outer lines around Richmond, but not in going farther. He retreated and rejoined the army under Grant on the twenty-fifth of May, seventeen days after the time of his setting out.

The first casualty of importance at Spottsylvania was the killing of General Sedgwick by a Confederate sharpshooter. This one sharpshooter had already sent his bullets through twenty men as the Federals were trying to establish themselves in position. So deadly was his aim that in spite of the distance he seemed to be able to hit anybody that he shot at. After a little experience with him the men who were engaged in erecting fortifications shrank from their work, and General Sedgwick rebuked them, saying that at such a distance the best sharpshooter couldn't hit an elephant. A moment later he fell dead pierced through by a bullet from the sharpshooter's rifle.

By the evening of the ninth of May the two armies confronted each other, each behind its breastworks. A little fighting of a severe character occurred that evening on the Confederate left, both sides losing heavily, and neither gaining any advantage of moment. On the next day the fighting was renewed with desperation upon both sides. Several times the Federalists reached the Confederate breastworks, and held them for a few moments, but upon every occasion they were driven back. In their retreat they carried away some prisoners, some battle flags, and other trophies, but none of the guns that they had temporarily captured.

Thus the fighting on the tenth of May resulted in no advantage to either side. Grant had failed completely in his effort to place himself at Spottsylvania in advance of Lee, and thus to thrust his army in between Lee and Richmond, compelling the Confederate general to make a race for it under disadvantageous circumstances, and by a longer line than that which Grant must follow. Thus when the fight began at Spottsylvania Lee was still between Grant and Richmond, and the fighting itself was an attempt to dislodge him by assault, by an army outnumbering his by two to one or more.

On the eleventh of May throughout the day and night it rained incessantly, and enormously. The whole earth in that region was converted into a quagmire impracticable for the movement of artillery, and almost impassable even by infantry. Lee's men in the trenches were forced to stand upon fence rails and sticks and whatever else they could get to keep themselves from sinking to their knees in the glutinous red clay, softened as it was by the rain. It was impossible even to send couriers with orders in the rear of either line in the rain, and so the orders were passed, particularly during the night, by word of mouth, from one man to another up and down the lines. The conditions were of a kind to try the courage and endurance of soldiers far more severely than either battle or hard marching could. Yet through it all these veterans on either side maintained their courage and resolutely refused to let even the rains of that Virginia springtime wash the starch out of their stamina.

The two lines were so near together at many points that pickets could not be thrown out even into the rifle pits which are customarily placed between works thus closely confronting each other. It was impossible to see for any distance in any direction, and at all hours of that terrible night there was a constant threat of sudden advance and surprise upon one point or another of the Confederate line. These threats were reported by word of mouth, as has been explained, from one soldier to another along the line. A message would come "Look out on the left," or "Look out on the right; enemy advancing." About two o'clock in the morning, after there had been a lull of half an hour in the tremendous downpour, the rain began again in bucketsfull and some wag in the Confederate lines started a message, "Get out of the wet." In spite of their discomforts, of their fatigue, of their exhaustion from sleeplessness, and of their momentary danger, the gallant fellows took it up and passed it from one to another, as they might have passed any order of General Lee's. This incident is related here merely by way of showing into what condition of cheerful endurance the men had been wrought by their soldierly experience. It is of value as showing what stuff these contesting armies were made of in the spring of 1864, when the issues of the war lay in their hands.

The Confederate line at one point presented what is known in military parlance as a salient angle, – that is to say, a bend, the point of which projects toward the enemy, so that the enemy advancing toward it, and upon either side of it, has the advantage of shooting down along the lines of the men defending it on either side. This is called enfilading, and it especially endangers a position of the kind. Grant decided to begin the fighting on the twelfth by an early assault upon this Confederate salient. During the night he carefully disposed his forces with a view to this operation, hoping thus early in the morning to break through the Confederate line, cut it in two and assail each of its divisions in rear and at disadvantage.

In this operation he was greatly favored by a dense fog, which rendered it impossible for his enemy to discover his movements, or even the presence of his moving columns at a greater distance than a few yards. Hancock had charge of this particular movement, and he succeeded before his movement was discovered in gaining a position very near to the exposed salient angle, and from that position his men rushed with a wild hurrah upon the works. The Confederates stood their ground as such veterans were at that time always expected to do.

Hancock's men climbed over the breastworks, and the fighting that ensued was that of desperadoes in mortal conflict. They were foes of a sort that knew no flinching and no fear. They fought hand to hand. They thrust each other through with bayonets. They brained each other with clubbed muskets. Cannoneers on the Confederate side finding the infantry support inadequate used their rammerheads, their linstock points, and even the handspikes of their guns with deadly effect. Those of the artillerymen who had none of these instruments to use did that which is not often done in war. They drew their short artillery swords – blades resembling the bowie knife in shortness – and fought with them to the death.

So sudden was the onset and so overwhelming was Hancock's force that in spite of its desperate resistance the small Confederate body holding the salient was overcome, and the greater part of it captured. It consisted of General Edward Johnson's division of about 3,000 men, together with twenty guns, which were immediately turned upon such of the Confederates as had succeeded in avoiding capture.

Flushed by this success, and believing that they had finally broken the Confederate line, Hancock's men pushed on towards Spottsylvania Court House, until they encountered a second line of entrenchments, which, in spite of rain and fog and mud had been thrown up during that night of storm across the rear of that dangerously salient angle. Those entrenchments were manned by the flower of Lee's army, and they quickly brought to nought the triumphant march of an enemy who had supposed that his hard work was, for the time being, done, – that the Army of Northern Virginia was broken in two, and must seek safety in flight.

It was here more conspicuously than anywhere else in all the history of the war that the superb staying power of Lee's veterans was illustrated. At the salient their line of battle had been successfully broken, but at a brief distance in rear of the salient that line of battle stood fast and irresistible to any assault that even Hancock's victorious veterans might make upon it. Here we have a single fact which might be multiplied many times over, which serves to show how and why it was that this contest of 1864 was from beginning to end so bloody and so determined. The time had come when the morale of both armies was perfect, and when each was invincible, except by the pressure of utterly overwhelming force. The time had come when the Americans who were fighting on those Virginia fields were perfect soldiers, immeasurably superior in stamina, in courage, and in devotion to any regulars who were ever drilled into obedience and endurance in any country of the world, before or since. This, the historian believes to be a simple statement of fact which should be recorded in history and not forgotten or overlooked by those persons, who in the twentieth century shall study the story of what Americans did during the first hundred years of the Republic's vigorous life.

But the fighting already described was only a shadowy beginning of that which was presently to follow. The Confederates were not content with having hurled back Hancock's assault at the base of their captured salient, but were determined to retake the salient itself, although the difficulty of doing so was appalling. What had been a salient angle in possession of the Confederates became a reëntering angle as soon as it was held by the Federals. For the Confederates to push their force into it was for them to encounter a destructive fire from either side, not only enfilading their lines, but sweeping them from front and rear at the same moment. Nevertheless, and with a courage too splendid to be fitly characterized by any adjective in the language, they promptly followed Hancock's men as the latter retired under pressure to the entrenchments of the salient angle. At that point the Federal troops leaping over the works to their own side of them, used them as their own in the defensive operation. Time after time – five times in all – the Confederates pressed forward, enduring the bloodiest slaughter in their attempt to retake the angle, amid a fire of hell from the front, both flanks and diagonally from the rear. All day long this struggle was continued. The Confederates in spite of the slaughter, and despite all their disadvantages, forced their way, step by step, back to the captured works, and there fought hand to hand over the small embankment with their enemy on the other side.

The embankment itself was a frail structure of logs, from which the rain had washed away the greater part of the earth that was intended to give it a power of resistance against fire. Huddled on either side of it – the Federals on the one side and the Confederates on the other – they fought over and through it, throughout the hours of that terrible day. Sometimes they thrust their bayonets through the crevices in the log barrier, and thus ran each other through. Sometimes they fired through those crevices upon enemies less than ten feet away. Sometimes the men on one side or the other would suddenly mount upon the small parapet, and with bullet or bayonet, assail their adversaries on the other side.

This spot in the annals of the war is fitly called "The bloody angle at Spottsylvania." The fighting there lasted throughout the day and until after midnight of the twelfth. It was a fighting of blind fury from beginning to end. It was such a struggle as few wars have ever given birth to, and it illustrated in the most conspicuous way imaginable that American heroism which made our war so terrible in its conduct, and so glorious in its memory. At every point in the bloody angle when the fighting was done dead men lay piled, one upon another, sometimes five deep. Wounded men were often imprisoned under the dead, unable to extricate themselves, at a time when there were none to rescue them. Every bush and every sapling that constituted the thicket there was cut away by a stream of bullets, as grass is before a mower's scythe. Even an oak tree nearly two feet thick was worn in two near its base by the continual and incessant stroke of leaden balls until it fell, crushing some of the Confederates who were fighting beneath its branches.

Is not the question a pertinent one – what did the little charge of the six hundred at Balaklava amount to as an exhibition of human heroism in comparison with such a fight as this? Has the age of poetry passed? And have the poets forgotten their cunning that not one of them has ever yet celebrated in song such American deeds as these, or as Pickett's charge at Gettysburg, or as Grant's assault at Cold Harbor, or as the six matchless advances of the Federals upon Marye's Heights at Fredericksburg? Or is it merely that our poets have been embarrassed by the very richness of our Confederate war in deeds of derring-do?

On neither side have the losses in this struggle at the death angle been separately computed with even such tolerable accuracy as might justify the historian in the use of round numbers. But the slaughter, it is certain, was as terrific as at any other point of fighting during the entire war, with the possible exception of Cold Harbor, a little later.

After midnight the Confederates withdrew from the apex of the angle to their second line at its base, and for that day the fighting was over.

Concerning this struggle Dr. Rossiter Johnson in his "History of the War of Secession" has written a sentence so wise and so just that no apology is needed for incorporating it in the text of the present work. He wrote, "If courage were all that a nation required, there was courage enough at Spottsylvania, on either side of the entrenchments, to have made a nation out of every state in the Union."

CHAPTER XLVII

Cold Harbor and on to Petersburg

A week of desperate fighting had convinced Grant that he could not break through or overlap or force back Lee's stubborn line of defense at Spottsylvania. After another week devoted to a study of the problem the Federal commander decided to make another movement by his left flank, similar to that which he had made from the Wilderness. He had in the meantime replenished his supplies of food and ammunition, and in spite of continuous fighting in a small way throughout the week of pause, he had succeeded in reorganizing such of his forces as had been broken, and in resting those of them whose previous exertions had been most exhausting.

On the nineteenth the Confederates under Ewell sharply assailed the Federal right, and a considerable conflict ensued. But in its proportions it was insignificant as compared with the fighting done a week before.

Grant's next objective point was the North Anna river at or near Hanover Court House. He moved one corps at a time, keeping them twelve hours apart, by way of confusing his enemy, and if possible bringing on a fight in the open field before Lee could have time to throw up those hasty entrenchments which had hitherto, slender as they were, given him a great advantage in the struggle. This hope was disappointed. Lee was too wily a strategist not to perceive and avoid his enemy's purpose. Moving hurriedly and upon a somewhat shorter line than Grant's he reached and crossed the North Anna before Grant got there, and so established his line that Grant could not assail it without dividing his own army into three parts, each separated from the others by a bend of the river, and each in danger of being crushed before it could be supported. There was some severe fighting at this point, involving a loss of two or three thousand men on either side, but nothing occurred that could be called a pitched battle, or that deserves more than a mention in comparison with the other splendid contests of that campaign.

Having satisfied himself that there was no thoroughfare here, Grant determined upon a still further movement by his left flank, similar to those already made. He moved on the night of the twenty-sixth, and finding Lee still in his pathway he almost immediately moved again, his destination now being Cold Harbor. The Confederates promptly moved in the same direction, and the two armies met at various points in sharp conflict, but no general action resulted. In the end they came face to face at Cold Harbor with Lee again behind hastily constructed breastworks.

Lee instantly called to his aid all the troops that could be spared from the defenses of Richmond, less than ten miles away, while Grant brought heavy reinforcements for himself from Butler's army, south of the James.

Again Lee had beaten his adversary in a race to secure the commanding ground at the place of meeting. He had placed his army in a position where it could be assailed only in front, and the men, who had learned the use of spade and shovel as expertly as they already knew the use of the bullet and the bayonet, had been favored by the nature of the soil in throwing up a line of breastworks which they felt themselves competent to hold against any assault. Lee's right rested on the Chickahominy river, and his left upon a maze of little streams between which there were impracticable swamps. The river in his rear was at that season very low and easily fordable at almost any point at which a crossing might be attempted, so that it offered no barrier to a retreat of the Confederates, if retreat should be forced upon them. Best of all, as a source of confidence to Lee was the superb morale of his army. It might be possible for an enemy to carry his works and force a way through his lines though that was exceedingly improbable in view of the stubbornness with which his Confederates had learned to fight. But even should that improbable thing be accomplished, Lee perfectly knew that his men would none of them run away, but that they would stand fast by their colors, and fall back fighting to the works before Richmond. The time had completely gone by when panic or demoralization was to be reckoned upon as even a possible factor in either of these two veteran armies. They had both of them thoroughly learned the trade of war. They were both composed of as good human material as was ever employed in the construction of an army. They were both commanded from top to bottom by officers who knew their business, and were disposed to do it at their best.

Here, then, were all the conditions for a great battle and it was for Grant to determine whether or not that battle should be fought. His critics have contended that he should have determined that question in the negative – that the position of Lee was too strong to invite direct assault, or to offer his assailant a tolerable chance of victory. It was at any rate certain, that no assault could be made which would not involve tremendous slaughter among the assailants, while no assault unless successful beyond any promise that the conditions held forth could possibly inflict upon the Confederates any compensating loss, even if reckoned upon the arithmetical hypothesis that Grant could afford to lose two or three men to his adversary's one.

Writing near the end of his life, General Grant said in his "Memoirs":

"I have always regretted that the last assault at Cold Harbor was ever made… At Cold Harbor no advantage whatever was gained to compensate for the heavy loss we sustained. Indeed the advantages other than those of relative losses were on the Confederate side."

But the assault was made. In spite of the adverse conditions, Grant determined to assail Lee there, and if possible to force a passage through his lines. It should be explained that during all these movements the two armies had kept themselves always within striking distance of each other, and that conflicts between them had occurred at every step – conflicts which earlier in the war would have been reckoned as battles of great moment, but which at this stage of the struggle were regarded merely as passing incidents of a campaign marked by tremendous battles. At Cold Harbor there was very heavy fighting on the second of June, when Lee took the offensive and bent back the right of Grant's line, thus greatly strengthening the Confederate position of defense.

The great battle came, however, on the morning of the third of June, just as the darkness of night began to gray into the dawn. There was no strategy employed in this action. There was nothing in it of tactics, grand or petty. As one historian has said, it was a fierce battle depending for its results "upon the brute strength of the forces engaged." Grant simply hurled nearly his whole army against Lee at a single point. The fighting covered scarcely more than a brigade front of Lee's line, and upon that short front Lee promptly concentrated troops until they stood six deep at the breastworks, the men in rear loading rifles, and passing them to those in front to fire. The Federals were advancing against strong earthworks, and through a tangled mass of abattis or trees felled with their branches toward the enemy, and with their limbs sharpened to obstruct a march.

The action lasted scarcely more than twenty minutes. Yet in that brief time Grant lost, according to his own report, 10,500 men, or at the rate of more than five hundred men per minute, or nearly ten men per second. When General Lee sent a messenger to General A. P. Hill, who commanded at that point, to ask for a report of the results Hill pointed to the dead bodies of Federal troops piled high upon each other, and for answer said, "Tell General Lee it is the same all along my front."

The Confederate loss in this action was reported at about 1,000 men.

This was the most staggering blow that Grant had ever received in battle, and the news of it appalled the authorities at Washington, and greatly depressed the people throughout the North. That a little army like Lee's, reduced by this time to less than 50,000 men, should have inflicted such a defeat upon an adversary whose forces were generally estimated at 120,000 men seemed to those persons who do not understand the conditions of battle to indicate a lack either of commanding capacity on the part of General Grant or of fighting capacity on the part of the army under his command.

Both of these judgments were clearly mistaken. It was perhaps an error on General Grant's part to assail Lee in his strong position at Cold Harbor, but it was a mistake prompted by that boldness which so often achieves conspicuous results in war. In criticizing such operations it is always necessary to bear in mind that "war is a hazard of possibilities, probabilities, luck and ill luck." At Cold Harbor there was, to say the least, a possibility that Grant, with his overwhelmingly superior numbers, might break through the Confederate lines, and force his way into Richmond. There was the hazard of such failure as that which the Federal army in fact met with. For the sake of the possibility Grant accepted the hazard. Had he won there would have been nothing but praise throughout the North for a boldness which had achieved so conspicuous a success. As he lost in the hazard instead, there was bitter criticism which has not ceased even unto this day.

Fortunately for the Federal cause, the administration at Washington had at last learned that uniform, continued, and complete success is a thing not to be expected of any commander in the field. The administration, therefore, did not withdraw its confidence from Grant or put some other in his place because Lee had thus far baffled him in his endeavors, or because in this instance he had met with bloody defeat at Lee's hands. As for Grant himself, he was always a man of calm mind in no way given to hysterical exaltations on the one hand, or morbid depressions of spirit on the other. He accepted his defea