Gouverneur K. Warren and John Sedgwick unsuccessfully attempted to dislodge the Confederates under Maj. Gen. Richard H. Anderson from Laurel Hill, a position that was blocking them from Spotsylvania Court House.

Attacks by Maj. Gen. Horatio Wright on the western edge of the Mule Shoe, which became known as the "Bloody Angle", involved almost 24 hours of desperate hand-to-hand fighting, some of the most intense of the Civil War.

On May 21, Grant disengaged from the Confederate Army and started southeast on another maneuver to turn Lee's right flank, as the Overland Campaign continued and led to the Battle of North Anna.

[14] Wesley Merritt's Union division encountered Fitzhugh Lee's cavalry behind barricades on the Brock Road about a mile south of Todd's Tavern.

Sharp fighting resulted in the late afternoon, and by nightfall, Sheridan decided against continuing in the dark and ordered his men to bivouac at Todd's Tavern.

Anderson immediately dispatched two infantry brigades and an artillery battalion, which arrived at Laurel Hill just as Warren's men pulled up within 100 yards to the north.

Multiple attacks by the divisions of the V Corps were repulsed with heavy casualties, and by noon the Union troops began building earthworks on the northern end of the Spindle clearing.

They engaged with (and mortally wounded) Stuart at the Battle of Yellow Tavern on May 11, threatened the outskirts of Richmond, refitted near the James River, and did not return to the army until May 24.

[18] While Warren was unsuccessfully attacking Laurel Hill the morning of May 8, Hancock's II Corps had reached Todd's Tavern and erected defenses to the west on the Catharpin Road, protecting the rear of the army.

Over the night of May 8–9, the Confederates were busy erecting a series of earthworks, more than four miles (6.4 km) long, starting at the Po River, encompassing the Laurel Hill line, crossing the Brock Road, jutting out in a horseshoe shape and then extending south past the courthouse intersection.

Although Lee's engineers were aware of this problem, they extended the line to incorporate some minor high ground to Anderson's right, knowing that they would be at a disadvantage if the Union occupied it.

At about 9 a.m., Maj. Gen. John Sedgwick was inspecting his VI Corps line when he was shot through the head by a Confederate sharpshooter's bullet, dying instantly, having just made the celebrated remark "they couldn't hit an elephant at this distance".

When they reached close enough to observe that the Confederates were at Spotsylvania Court House, Burnside became concerned that he was too far in advance of Meade's force and ordered his men to begin entrenching.

[24] Hancock's II Corps advanced across the Po, but he became nervous that the Confederates had the Block House Bridge heavily defended and decided to delay his attack until the morning.

Hancock left Francis C. Barlow's division behind hasty earthworks along Shady Grove Church Road and withdrew the remainder of his men north of the Po.

At 4:00 PM, elements of the II and V Corps assaulted the Confederate trenches at Laurel Hill, which required them to move through a grove of gnarled, splintered dead pine trees.

Col. Emory Upton led a group of 12 hand-picked regiments, about 5,000 men in four battle lines, against an identified weak point on the west side of the Mule Shoe called Doles's Salient (named after Brig.

They had been badly shot up and routed in the Wilderness, and as they headed towards the Confederate entrenchments, a burst of artillery fire caused the men to panic and flee from the field, never getting closer than a quarter of a mile to the enemy position.

[30] Generals Lee and Ewell were quick to organize a vigorous counterattack with brigades from all sectors of the Mule Shoe, and no Union supporting units arrived.

Grant wrote about this significant lost opportunity in his Personal Memoirs: Burnside on the left had got up to within a few hundred yards of Spottsylvania Court House, completely turning Lee's right.

Grant was then visited by General Wright, the new commander of the VI Corps, who suggested that the May 10 assaults had failed due to poor support, particularly from Mott's division.

Concerned about the mobility of his artillery to support the potential attack, he ordered that the guns be withdrawn from Allegheny Johnson's division in the Mule Shoe to be ready for a movement to the right.

The men and junior officers were poorly prepared for the assault, lacking basic information about the nature of the ground to be covered, the obstacles to expect, or how the Confederate line was configured.

The 15,000 infantrymen of Hancock's II Corps had crowded into a narrow front about a half mile wide and soon lost all unit cohesion, becoming little more than an armed mob.

Grant considered this sector to be lightly defended and hoped for a new breakthrough while Lee wanted to take out an artillery position that the IX Corps was using to harass his line.

Our own killed were scattered over a large space near the "angle," while in front of the captured breastworks the enemy's dead, vastly more numerous than our own, were piled upon each other in some places four layers deep, exhibiting every ghastly phase of mutilation.

Below the mass of fast-decaying corpses, the convulsive twitching of limbs and the writhing of bodies showed that there were wounded men still alive and struggling to extricate themselves from the horrid entombment.

The trees, saplings and shrubs were torn and shattered beyond description; guns, some of them broken, bayonets, canteens and cartridge boxes were scattered about, and the whole scene was such that no pen can, or ever will describe it.

Fighting back and forth over the same corpse-strewn trenches for hours on end, using single shot muskets, the contending troops were periodically reduced to hand-to-hand combat reminiscent of battles fought during ancient times.

Forty-three men received the Medal of Honor during the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House, including Frederick Alber, George W. Harris, John C. Robinson, Archibald Freeman, and Charles H.