1/4 · May 8 — The Race Won by Minutes · ← → keys to step · space to play
May 8–21, 1864 · Eastern Theater
Phases
May 8, 1864
Anderson’s corps — Longstreet’s, under a new commander — marches all night and reaches the Spotsylvania crossroads minutes ahead of Warren’s V Corps, which attacks up Laurel Hill straight off a twenty-mile march and is repulsed. Both armies dig in on a scale never seen before; Lee’s engineers trace a line whose center bulges into a mile-wide salient the men christen the Mule Shoe.
The numbers
Union
Engaged
100,000
Casualties
2,500
The head-on collision resumes within a day of the Wilderness
Confederacy
Engaged
52,000
Casualties
1,500
Field fortifications now go up in hours, not days
Casualties are cumulative from the start of the battle.
Commanders