Battle of Spotsylvania Court House | Summary (2024)

Battle of Spotsylvania Court House, (8–21 May 1864), Union failure to smash or outflank Confederate forces defending Richmond, Virginia, during the American Civil War (1861–65). A lull might have been expected after the Battle of the Wilderness (5–7 May), with both Union and Confederate armies exhausted and disorganized after having suffered heavy losses. But General Ulysses S. Grant pressed on relentlessly with his offensive. A day later he met General Robert E. Lee’s army again, 10 miles (16 km) to the southeast at Spotsylvania Court House.

Appointed commander of the entire Union army in March and promoted to lieutenant general, Grant was a proponent of total war, and he put that doctrine in full effect at Spotsylvania. On the night of 7 May, only hours after fighting ended at the Wilderness, Grant began moving his army forward to resume its advance. He aimed to take the crossroads at Spotsylvania, cutting between Lee’s army and Richmond. Lee anticipated this move and reacted swiftly. After cavalry charges on 8 May, Lee had his troops the dig a line of field fortifications some 4 miles (6.5 km) long north of Spotsylvania. Its only weakness was an exposed salient known as the Mule Shoe.

After initial probing skirmishes, Union forces attacked the Mule Shoe on 10 May. An assault by resolute troops charging at a run penetrated the Confederate lines, but the Union soldiers were driven back by counterattacks at the end of the day. As Grant shifted his forces in preparation for another assault, Lee misunderstood the Union activity and pulled back his artillery to meet a potential flanking maneuver. As a result, Grant’s attack on 12 May was initially a complete success, breaking through the Confederate lines before Lee rushed in troops to plug the gap. The battle raged into the night, the intense firepower of both sides flattening the landscape as soldiers engaged in hand-to-hand fighting for 18 hours at a position that became infamous as "Bloody Angle."

In the early hours of 13 May, Lee’s men completed a fallback trench and retreated to it, ceding the salient to Grant’s troops. A Union attack on this new line on 18 May was met with heavy artillery fire and made no impact. Maneuvering continued until 21 May, when Grant finally withdrew, the stage now set for the nine-month Siege of Petersburg.

The Battle of Spotsylvania Court House was one of the bloodiest of the entire Civil War, with Union losses at 18,000 casualties out of a force of 100,000 soldiers and Confederate losses of 12,000 casualties out of a force of 62,000. Fought in May and June of 1864, Grant’s “Grand Campaign,” as he called it, saw Union casualties totalling more than 60,000, the greatest losses in any single campaign in American history. Lee’s army lost only 32,600 killed and wounded in the same period, but his much smaller force never completely recovered from that bloodletting.