— Battle of Spotsylvania Court House —

The landscape in front of you bears vivid testimony to the nature of fighting here in May 1864. At Spotsylvania, not only did soldiers build stout dirt and log works to protect them from fire in front, but they also built shorter trenches called traverses to protect them from enemy cross fire (a circumstance common on this part of the line). These traverses extend back from the main line like teeth on a comb. Soldiers came to call the three-sided enclosures "hog pens."

Remains of those hog pens survive beyond the main earthwork in front of you. After the fighting here on May 12, the Union army incorporated the Confederate-built works into their own line. Today the combined works make up an almost incomprehensible tangle - one that makes little sense to a military scientist, but one that made perfect sense to men struggling for life under fire.

"Keeping around the western end of [the woods], we came to a strange medley of intrenchments, which it would have required an engineer to unravel and understand. Here Grant's works had been pushed up against Lee's, swallowing them as one wave swallows another."
a battlefield visitor, 1866

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Show me all markers in:  Spotsylvania, VA  |  Spotsylvania County  |  22553  |  Virginia  |  United States of America

Spotsylvania Campaign
Spotsylvania Campaign
A Mass Capture
Dawn Assault
Fatal Mistake at the East Angle
Fighting for Time
"The Toughest Fight Yet"
Struggle for the Bloody Angle
The Confederate Earthworks
15th Regiment New Jersey Volunteers

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