Bloody Angle, Crowded Ravine

Bloody Angle, Crowded Ravine. The Battle of Spotsylvania Court House. Fighting at the Muleshoe Salient focused on a slight turn in the Confederate earthworks, to your right-front, known as the “Bloody Angle.” The Angle occupied a small knoll that commanded adjacent parts of the Confederate line. Whoever controlled the knoll controlled the Salient. For 22 hours Union and Confederate soldiers vied for possession of the Angle, firing across the works or engaging one another in grim, hand-to-hand combat., During the battle Union soldiers took cover in the ravine in front of you. Time and again they rushed forward to attack the Angle, only to be beaten back. With each repulse they left the ground between the ravine and the Angle strewn with hundreds of wounded and dying men. Bodies piled up three, four, even five deep, forming what one man described as “a perfect rampart of [the] dead….” By day’s end, up to 17,000 men were killed, wounded, or captured, most within sight of where you are now standing., The hill dropped abruptly to a branch a short ways in front of the breastworks. The Yanks could come up behind the hill and have a short distance to charge in the open. They massed under the protection of the hill and made a rush at us over their own dead and wounded. Private David Holt, 16th Mississippi Infantry, (caption) , Thousands of troops covered the ground in front and behind you. The Union battle lines extended for nearly a half a mile.