The Battle of Spotsylvania Court House, VA, in May 1864, was among the bloodiest of the Civil War. Over 152,000 Union and Confederate troops battled each other for almost two weeks, with casualties totaling more than 31,000. During the most intense fighting, men fought so closely they could reach across the earthworks and grab their enemies’ weapons. When ammunition ran out, they used their rifles as clubs.
As the battle roared, the 35th Massachusetts Regiment was several miles away, guarding the supply train of Burnside’s 1st Division. While other regiments in its First Brigade suffered heavy casualties, the 35th continued in this essential but less dangerous duty until the campaign’s final day. The almost unfathomable losses at Spotsylvania led Grant to call for every available regiment to join the final assault on Confederate lines. The 35th and Corporal John Foster Cole, my second great-grand uncle from Boxford, MA, would join the last assault at Spotsylvania Court House.
The two days of intense fighting at the Wilderness ended at sunset on May 6, 1864 with Confederate forces secure behind their defensive fortifications. Yet the deadly battle had resulted in disproportionately higher losses for the Confederacy than the Union.
When Lee showed no signs of leaving his entrenched position, Grant withdrew and moved his troops south towards Richmond. A successful ten-mile advance to the crossroads at Spotsylvania Court House would place his army between Lee’s and Richmond. Lee would be forced to follow.
The high ground surrounding Spotsylvania Court House would allow Grant to fight Lee on favorable defensive terrain.
Directed by Grant, General Meade’s three corps in the Army of the Potomac and General Burnside’s Ninth Corps began their carefully coordinated withdrawal from the Wilderness late on May 7th. The precise route of each corps was detailed in this order by Grant to Meade. Burnside, consistent with his role in supporting Meade, received a copy.
The Union advance to Spotsylvania on the 8th was slower than planned due to the difficulties encountered in implementing Grant’s detailed plan to move over 100,000 troops and miles of trains carrying supplies and wounded over the same routes.
Lee anticipated Grant’s possible southern withdrawal and, late on the 7th, ordered troops south using a road recently cut through the woods that intersected Brock Road, the most direct route some Union troops would take to Spotsylvania Court House. The Confederate troops commenced their march before their orders due to fires in the Wilderness and marched through the night, the newly cut road lacking any clearing for resting.
When the Union forces arrived, confederate troops were already entrenched northwest of Spotsylvania Court House on the high ground at Laurel Hill along Brock Road, Union attacks failed to dislodge the Confederates.
The Battle of Spotsylvania Court House began with Lee occupying the position Grant had intended to possess.
In his 1885 memoirs, Grant reflected on the decisive impact of the Confederate night march from the Wilderness on the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House, remarking simply, “But accident often decides the fate of battle.”
As darkness fell on May 8th, Confederate commanders strengthened and extended their earthwork defenses. The line soon stretched more than four miles northeast from Laurel Hill and formed a semi-circle around Spotsylvania Court House. Following the natural terrain, these defenses included a horseshoe-shaped bulge that reached outward for half a mile before turning south. This area would become famously known as “The Mule Shoe.”
Grant chose to assault Lee’s strong defensive position, which he had intended to occupy. He soon wrote to Washington, “I propose to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer.”
While the fight at Spotsylvania Court House would not last “all summer,” it would produce some of the war’s most savage combat and devastating casualties.
The 35th Regiment had been assigned to guard its First Division’s supply train even before Burnside’s Ninth Corps crossed the Shenandoah and Rapidan Rivers on its march to the Wilderness. While the 35th Regiment’s First Brigade in the First Division had suffered 470 casualties at the Wilderness, the 35th Regiment suffered none.
When the First Division left the Wilderness for Spotsylvania early on May 8th, the 35th continued its supply train duty. The regiment followed the Division as far as Chancellorsville before moving toward Fredericksburg, remaining at least five miles from the fighting at Spotsylvania Court House.
The men of the 35th were not entirely comfortable with their duty. The Regimental History records, “This trifling at the rear had its irksome side. There was a feeling among the officers and men that we were playing truant; the constant music of battle kept calling — calling — and yet we dawdled beside the wagons, a necessary duty, but seeming unsoldierly at the beginning of the campaign; we did not appreciate at the time General Grant’s anxiety about the trains.”
Neither the troops nor the officers of the 35th took consolation in Grant’s view. The History continues, “Captain Blanchard expressed his views to the effect that it was a duty unworthy of our regiment. The reply to him was, not to worry his heroic soul, [this] duty would not be likely to last long!”
Grant determined “The Mule Shoe” to be Lee’s major weakness at Spotsylvania since it could be attacked from three sides. On May 10th, he mounted an assault there while also launching attacks along the entire Confederate line.
At dawn, 4,500 troops formed in tight columns, led by Major Emory Upton, charged across 200 yards of open field, surprising Confederate forces and halting only after reaching the enemy earthworks.
However, Lee quickly regrouped and defeated the initial and subsequent Union attacks. Losses that day were high, especially for Grant. Union forces suffered around 6,800 casualties, while Confederate losses totaled about 3,200.
Despite the failure of the attack of May 10th to dislodge Lee, Grant told Meade, “A brigade today–we’ll try a corps tomorrow.”
Grant spent the next day planning a massive assault. At dawn on May 12th, 20,000 Union troops attacked the eastern tip of the Mule Shoe, catching Southern forces unprepared. While initially successful, Lee’s counterattack soon stabilized the situation.
As the battle for the Mule Shoe continued, the most intense fighting shifted westward to what would become known as the “Bloody Angle,” where soldiers fought hand-to-hand across the Confederate breastworks for nearly twenty continuous hours, well into the night, as driving rain turned the ground to mud.
A Union officer described the scene, “Nothing but the piled up logs separated the combatants. Our men would reach over the logs and fire into the faces of the enemy, would stab over with their bayonets; many were shot and stabbed through the crevices and holes between the logs; men mounted the works, and with muskets rapidly handed them, kept up a continuous fire until they were shot down, when others would take their places and continue the deadly work.”
During the day, Lee dug new defensive trenches across the base of the Mule Shoe, almost a mile to the rear. At 2 AM, he quietly withdrew his exhausted troops to this prepared position, completing the move by 4 AM. When the fighting ended, Lee remained firmly positioned before Spotsylvania Court House.
The fighting at the Mule Shoe on May 12, 1864, which lasted from dawn until well past midnight, was the longest sustained combat of the Civil War. In that single day, 17,000 men fell – 9,000 Union and 8,000 Confederate casualties.
Consistent with his pledge to “fight on this line, even if it takes all summer,” Grant immediately began preparing for a carefully coordinated, all-out predawn attack on May 14, 1864.
Forced to delay the attack due to days of rain and deepening mud, Grant informed Washington on the morning of May 16th: “We have had five days of almost constant rain without any prospect yet of it clearing up. … All offensive operations necessarily cease until we can have twenty-four hours of dry weather.”
However, given his previous losses, Grant knew he needed additional troops for the coming assault. That same day, he sent urgent orders to Fredericksburg: “I want and must have the whole of your command here by tomorrow night at [the latest].”
The weather broke on May 17th, and Grant would have close to his “twenty-four hours of dry weather” by dawn the following day. Grant wrote to Burnside about an “expected” predawn attack the next morning.
After separating from the First Division at Chancellorsville on May 8th, the 35th Regiment stayed “in park” with the supply train along the road from Chancellorsville to Fredericksburg, miles away from the troops of the First Division.
On May 12th, while their fellow soldiers endured the long, hellish fighting of the Mule Shoe, a sergeant with the 35th recorded in his diary, “Our bivouac in the forenoon was where we could see some of the batteries of both armies on the distant top at their deadly work. … It was a sad sight, and we cannot as a regiment be too thankful that God in his providence has thus far given us duties outside the battle field.”
While this supply train duty may have had an “irksome side,” it does not appear to have been entirely unpleasant. On the 13th, members of the 35th Massachusetts Regiment, continuing to guard the supply train, repaired a bridge but also found “a pleasant house nearby, with greenhouses and exotic plants, among which the men wandered … .”
The next several days the 35th spent in Fredericksburg, where members of the brigade who had fought in the Battle of Fredericksburg eighteen months earlier went “searching for old landmarks.”
However, given Grant’s pressing need for additional troops, the History records on May 16th, “[O]rders came from the front for the regiment to join the brigade.” The next day the 35th engaged in an “easy ten mile march” south-westerly from Fredericksburg to rejoin the 1st Brigade.
Rejoining the 1st Brigade, members of the 35th regiment “were shocked at the appearance” of their fellow soldiers, “so thoroughly had the struggles of the past few days worn off their polish and newness; their numbers also were woefully diminished.”
The 35th Massachusetts Volunteer Regiment and Corporal John Cole were “in the rifle pits and breast works” with the other regiments of the 1st Brigade under Gen. James Ledlie in Gen. Thomas Crittenden’s first Division of Burnside’s Ninth Corps.
Acknowledgement
Thanks again to Susan Greendyke Lachevre, Curator, Massachusetts State House, who provided access to the historic images of the 35th Regimental flags. The Curator had always been generous with her expertice, time and assistance.
Sources
Sources are divided into three sections: official records and reports; accounts and histories published in the years following the conflict; and modern scholarly works.
First-Hand Accounts and Official Records
History of the 35th Regiment, Mass Volunteers: 1862 – 1865.
Massachusetts in the War: 1861 – 1865.
Massachusetts in the War of 1861-1865, Vol. 2 (1895)
Grant, U.S, Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Vol. Two. 1886 New York. Charles Webster and Company. Grant Memoirs – Volume Two.
Grant, U.S. (John Y. Simon, Editor). The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, Volume 10: January 1-May 31, 1864. (1982). Papers of U.S. Grant (Vol. 10).
United States. War Records Office, et al.. The War of the Rebellion: a Compilation of the Official Records of the Union And Confederate Armies. 1891. Washington: Government Printing Office, Official Records – Civil War. (See esp. Vol. XXXVI, Parts 1-3.)
Burnside, Gen. Ambrose E., 1864, Official Report of Spotsylvania Court House. Burnside – Operations Report (Ninth Army Corps)
Ledlie, Gen. James H., 1864. Official Report of Spotsylvania Court House. Ledlie – Operations Report (1st Brigade, 1st Division).
Tisdale, Henry W. (35th Regiment, Walpole, MA). Civil War Diary of Sgt. Henry W. Tisdale, Civil War Diary of Sgt. Henry W. Tisdale
Woodbury, Augustus. Major General Ambrose E. Burnside and the Ninth Army Corps. Sidney Rider & Brother, Providence, 1867. Major Gen. Ambrose Burnside & the Ninth Army Corps.
Post War Books and Documents (1865-1900)
Cutshaw, Col. W.E. (1905) The Battle Near Spotsylvania Courthouse, An Address: R.E. Lee Camp No. 1. CV (Richmond). Cutshaw Address before Confederate Veterans
Humphreys, Andrew. The Virginia Campaign of ‘64 and ‘65 – The Army of the Potomac and The Army of the James. Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1883. Humphreys – Virginia Campaign ’64 & ”65.
National Park Service. Spotsylvania Troop Movements. (24 NPS Spotsylvania Troop Movement Maps).
Park, Edward G. (1865) A Memorial for Major Edward Granville Park (35th Massachusetts Volunteers. Boston. Memorial to Major Granville Park (35th MA Regiment)
Woodbury, Augustus. Major General Ambrose E. Burnside and the Ninth Army Corps. Sidney Rider & Brother, Providence, 1867. Major Gen. Ambrose Burnside & the Ninth Army Corps.
Modern Works (1900-present)
U.S. Army Staff Ride Handbook for Overland Campaign. (2009). Overland Campaign – Staff Ride.
Coffery, Walter. Spotsylvania: Terrible Fighting at the Mule Shoe (Blog Post) (May 12, 2024).
Mackowski, Chris (Blog post on May 10, 2014) In Memory of Gen. Stevenson. In Memory of Gen. Stevenson.
Matter, William T. If It Takes All Summer: The Battle of Spotsylvania Court House. 1988, University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill.
Quint, Ryan T. Burnside, Ninth Corps, and the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House. The Gettysburg College Journal of the Civil War Era: Vol. 5 , Article 7. (2015). Burnside, the 9th Corps, and Spot. CH.
Rhea, Gordon C. The Battle of the Wilderness, May 5-6, 1864.1994, Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouge.
Wipperman, Darin. Burnside’s Boys: The Union’s Ninth Corps iin the Civil War in the East. 2023, Stackpole Books, Essex, CT.