The Mule Shoe

May 11- 13, 1864

May 11^th started out with both sides probing each other trying to figure out what the other side was planning. Typically, the Union misread Lee’s intentions giving him an opportunity to pull off some kind of a surprise that would send the Army of the Potomac reeling back to Washington in disarray, but not this time. Lee also misread the Union intentions and thought they were getting ready to retreat: Grant has no such intentions.

A heavy rain storm prevented any serious action for the remained of the eleventh. The Union used the day to reposition for an all out attack on the Mule Shoe, scheduled for 4 am on the twelfth. Interpreting the Union moves as preparations to leave, Lee used the day to pull his artillery out of the Mule Shoe. This was one of those situations where Lee's previous victories worked against him, he was as use to new Union Generals retreating in the face of determined resistance as the Union soldiers were, it was just that no one, on either side, yet knew what to make of Grant.

Grant hit the Mule Shoe at 4:35 am on the twelfth with everything he had. Remember, the Mule Shoe position had been constructed at night by very tired solders. They had followed the contours of the land which was why they were in such an exposed position to begin with, but to make matters worse they had made a very big mistake when they situated their trenches.

The trench line followed along a ridge, but it was dug in on the physical top of the ridge not on the military crest. Confederate engineers seemed to make this mistake a lot; it had played a major role earlier at battle for Missionary Ridge in Tennessee. The physical top of the ridge is the high point; the military crest is the highest point where the defenders fire covers the whole approach or slope. Because the Confederate trenches were on the physical top much of the Unions approach was in defilade or under the Confederates level of fire: That means the advancing Union troops couldn't be fired on. Compounding the mistake, the Confederate forgot that old maxim: Keep your powder dry.

Using the assault tactics pioneered days earlier by Upton the Union forces swept over the field and into the Confederate trenches without any warning, keeping as quiet as they could in their advance, and using the lay of the land and the dark to get right up on the Confederate position without casualties. The Confederates had not been able to fire at attackers for much of thier approach because of wet powder, the poor siting of the trench and the unexpected suddeness of the attack; the lack of artillery hadn't helped either. Lee had goofed. Because of the piched off nature of the position the Confederates didn’t have anywhere to retreat to so they stood and fought a desperate hand to hand battle with the Union attackers. The fight carried on for 24 hours before it finally ground to a halt with the Union in possession of the Mule Shoe.

The crux of the battle for the Mule Shoe was here at the Bloody Angle, the point of the shoe. The mowed path marks the line of the Union advance. The monuments in the distance are on the Confederate position.

The initial Union assault drove through and over the position and threatened to cut the Army of Virginia in half, but the cut was very narrow. Lee mounted a series of counter attacks to give his engineers time to construct a new line across base of the Mule Shoe. The fighting settled down into a brutal slug fest as both sides continued to feed more and more troops into the position. You can think of the Mule Shoe as a large sack with a drawstring pulled almost but not quite shut, and both sides pouring men into the sack, bodies began to pile up, a tree was cut down by the continuous fire, and both sides brought up artillery to blast away at each other from close range.

The stump of the tree cut down by continuous fire.

The fight continued on throughout the night unabated there was nowhere anyone could go to escape, no way for either side to pull back and rest. Men fought on a deep carpet of bodies. The ground was muddy from the heavy rain on the eleventh and the trampling of the struggling solders drove the fallen dead and wounded down into the mud. Caissons bringing up ammunition mutilated the bodies further and still the fighting drug on without let up. Finally on the thirteenth the Confederates fell back to the new trench line and fighting sputtered to a close. Their sacrifice had bought Lee the time he needed to make a new line stronger that the first.

Nobody had ever seen anything like the kind of combat that had happened at the Mule Shoe. The Union suffered about 9,000 casualties over the course of the day while the Confederates suffered around 8,000; all in a very small space. The Union prevailed in that they had captured to Mule Shoe but the Confederates had held on long enough to construct a new, shorter and stronger line. So when the fighting was finally over, nothing much had changed except that both sides were exaushted and in a state of shock. They were also discovering the catch to trench warfare, there is always another trench, new ones can be dug faster than an attacker can advance.

Philip Pringle

May 14, 1864

Dear Wife,

I take my pencil to drop you a few lines to inform you that I am well and in good spirits. Hope these few lines will find you in good health. There was some of the hardest of fighting done that ever was fought and our army is victorious. So far they took 18,000 prisoners and have Lee surrounded and will no doubt capture him and his army. We are only 7 miles from where they are fighting and will be there this evening or tomorrow. We lost a great many men. The 12th regulars are all cutto pieces. But I do no know if Martin is living or not. I will write as soon as I can get the chance. The news is that the Buttles has Richmond.

Yours truly,

P. W. Pringle

I am sending this by a wounded soldier

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