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Book Cover for: The Heart of Hell: The Soldiers' Struggle for Spotsylvania's Bloody Angle, Jeffry D. Wert

The Heart of Hell: The Soldiers' Struggle for Spotsylvania's Bloody Angle

Jeffry D. Wert

The struggle over the fortified Confederate position known as Spotsylvania's Mule Shoe was without parallel during the Civil War. A Union assault that began at 4:30 A.M. on May 12, 1864, sparked brutal combat that lasted nearly twenty-four hours. By the time Grant's forces withdrew, some 55,000 men from Union and Confederate armies had been drawn into the fury, battling in torrential rain along the fieldworks at distances often less than the length of a rifle barrel. One Union private recalled the fighting as a "seething, bubbling, soaring hell of hate and murder." By the time Lee's troops established a new fortified line in the predawn hours of May 13, some 17,500  officers and men from both sides had been killed, wounded, or captured when the fighting  ceased. The site of the most intense clashes became forever known as the Bloody Angle.

Here, renowned military historian Jeffry D. Wert draws on the personal narratives of Union and Confederate troops who survived the fight  to offer a gripping story of Civil War combat at its most difficult. Wert's  harrowing tale reminds us that the war's story, often told through its commanders and campaigns, truly belonged to the common soldier.

Book Details

  • Publisher: University of North Carolina Press
  • Publish Date: Jul 12nd, 2022
  • Pages: 320
  • Language: English
  • Edition: undefined - undefined
  • Dimensions: 9.50in - 6.30in - 0.95in - 1.20lb
  • EAN: 9781469668420
  • Categories: United States - Civil War Period (1850-1877)Military - United States

About the Author

Wert, Jeffry D.: - Jeffry D. Wert is author of many previous books, including most recently Civil War Barons: The Tycoons, Entrepreneurs, Inventors, and Visionaries Who Forged Victory and Shaped a Nation.

Praise for this book

This is micro-battlefield history at its best."--Virginia Magazine of History & Biography

This is a rich work, vivid, and quite often simultaneously tinged with humor and horror, reflecting the complexities of such a bloody, awful, and awe-inspiring event. The Heart of Hell is a readable, balanced, and information look at Spotsylvania, with excellent maps, and is highly recommended.--NYMAS Review