Battle of Spotsylvania Court House

Grant marches southeast instead of retreating; Anderson’s (South) corps wins the race to the Laurel Hill crossroads by minutes.

The Confederates dig four miles of works Warren (North) can’t crack; Sedgwick (North) is killed by a sniper moments after mocking the danger.

A salient bulges north into a death-trap; Upton (North) cracks it with a fast dense column, and Lee pulls his guns the night before the big assault.

Hancock (North) overruns the apex and captures a division; then twenty hours of the war’s worst hand-to-hand fighting along one log parapet.

Grant slides south again as the arithmetic turns; at the Alrich Farm, formerly enslaved men of the 23rd USCT charge Lee’s army on the soil they’d fled.