On this day 155 years ago, Hancock's massive assault on the Confederate position known as the Mule Shoe was scheduled to commence at 4 AM. Due it still being pitch black, combined with a steady rain that just wouldn't go away, the attack was pushed back to 4:35 AM. The rain had stopped and a thick mist settled over the battlefield, reducing visibility to as little as 40 yards.

The Confederates facing Hancock's men knew an assault was imminent so when thousands of Union soldiers came charging at them through the mist, they were ready. They raised their rifles and pulled their triggers....but nothing happened. The gunpowder had gotten wet during the rainstorm and the vast majority of the thousands of Confederate rifles aimed at Hancock's charging soldiers failed to go off.

The attack crashed through the Confederate works, virtually destroying William Witcher's brigade at the tip of the Mule Shoe. Francis Barlow's Union division swung around and attacked the eastern tip of the Mule Shoe, laying waste to the brigade of Allegheny Johnson and taking the Confederate general prisoner in the process. David Birney's men on Barlow's right flank met stiffer Confederate resistance from James Walker and the legendary Stonewall Brigade. Before the day was out, the Stonewall Brigade, too, would cease to exist as an effective fighting force.

The fighting was hand-to-hand in most places as Confederates were forced into close quarter fighting as the wet gunpowder had made their rifles virtually useless. As the weight in Union numbers began to be felt, the Confederates started to give ground to the south.

Despite the initial success at obliterating much of the Mule Shoe salient, there was a flaw in the Union plan - no one had considered how to capitalize on the breakthrough. What was more, the once disciplined formations of the Union II Corps were now jumbled together in an unorganized mass, thus making communication and coordination between the various brigades all but impossible.

The Battle of Spotsylvania Court House - May 12, 1864 (The Bloody Angle)

Confederate leadership reacted quickly and decisively to the threat in their army's center. John B. Gordon sent a brigade of North Carolinians under the command of Robert Johnston into the Mule Shoe to slow the Union advance. And while Johnston was wounded, his brigade successfully halted Hancock's attack for the time being. Gordon brought up two more brigades to support Johnston's men just as Robert E. Lee arrived on the scene.

Just like what happened in the Wilderness six days earlier, Lee's adrenaline started pumping and he attempted to go forward with these men into the maelstrom of battle. Once again, his men prevented him from going forward, shouting: "General Lee! To the rear!"

Slowly but surely, these Confederate reinforcements began to drive back the confused mass of Hancock's Corps and, after 30 minutes of fierce fighting, were able to regain the majority of the entrenchments lost in the initial attack.

At 6:30 AM, Grant ordered more men to be sent into the Mule Shoe. The division of Thomas Neil, part of Wright's VI Corps, slammed into the western edge of the Mule Shoe to begin what would be the heaviest fighting of the entire battle. As Union brigade after Union brigade slammed into this part of the line, William Mahone ordered two of his brigades to come to Ramseur's aid. One of the brigade commanders - Abner Perrin - was killed in the resulting melee.

By 8 AM, as Neil's men grappled with those of Mahone's, the rains came. First a steady stream, then a deluge. Fighting hand-to-hand along the parapets, men slipped and fell over top of each other due to the water and blood. More Union and Confederate reinforcements joined the action here between 8 AM and 9 AM. A Union artillery battery was brought to within yards of the lines and unloaded on the Confederates, doing heavy damage, until they were swept from the field by newly arrived Confederate artillery. All the while, Union and Confederate men battled atop the earthworks, neither side willing to give up a single inch of ground.

They were on autopilot. The savage nature of man was on display for all the world to see. All sense of chivalry, of honor, of duty, and of country had disappeared from these men. They were stripped down to the most basic instinct of man: survival. Kill the man in front of you before he could kill you. In the pouring rain, North and South went at it with the bayonet, with the knife, with the revolver, and with the club of the musket. They fell by their scores. In some places, the bodies were stacked five and six deep. Men drowned in the mud as the weight of their fallen comrades pressed them deeper and deeper into the ground. Men used corpses as shields and bodies were literally ripped apart by hundreds of musket balls.

The bullets flew so thick that giant oak trees were felled by the lead flying through the air. The ground around this sector of Mule Shoe became unrecognizable, flattened by artillery and thousands upon thousands of desperate men. There were no breaks. There were no respites. For 22 straight hours, North and South would battle hand-to-hand in the Bloody Angle of the Mule Shoe.

"The Bloody Angle"