A 22-inch oak stump in the Smithsonian was cut down by rifle fire at Spotsylvania Court House in May 1864. After the Wilderness, Ulysses S. Grant, traveling with George Meade’s Army of the Potomac, turned south instead of retreating, and his men cheered. The race to the Spotsylvania crossroads stalled in a night traffic jam behind sleeping Union cavalry, which led to a shouting match between Meade and Philip Sheridan; Grant let Sheridan ride off after J.E.B. Stuart with 10,000 troopers, and Richard Anderson’s Confederates won the race and dug a four-mile line with a salient called the Mule Shoe.

Colonel Emory Upton led 12 regiments in a dense column that charged without firing and broke into the works, but Gershom Mott’s support fled and Upton withdrew. Grant promoted him and scaled the idea up to Winfield Scott Hancock’s 15,000-man corps, which struck at dawn after Lee had pulled artillery from the salient and captured thousands. The attack dissolved into a crush at the Bloody Angle, where men fought for nearly a day in rain and mud until Confederates finished a new line at the base of the salient.

• John Sedgwick said enemy marksmen could not hit an elephant at that distance and was killed moments later.
• Confederate soldiers refused to let Lee lead the counterattack, shouting Lee to the rear.
• Some soldiers at the Bloody Angle claimed to have fired up to 400 rounds, with bodies piled four and five deep.
• At Harris Farm, heavy artillerymen from the Washington forts fought as infantry, and the Confederates lost about 900 men.
• Grant lost over 18,000 men and Lee between 10,000 and 13,000, nearly a quarter of his army.