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11. June 9, 1864 The Charleston Mercury 
ITEM #9655
June 9, 1864
The Charleston Mercury

Great Battle of May Twelfth at Spottsylvania Court House. The
Conflict, as Described by an English Correspondent.

Mr. HEWSON, the correspondent of the London Herald, is writing a 
series of very interesting letters for that journal, descriptive 
of the operations of the spring campaign in Virginia. We regret 
that the pressure upon our columns will not allow us to publish 
these letters in full. We must content ourselves with reproducing 
the most interesting portion of his last, giving a minute and 
graphic account of the great conflict of the 12th of May:

RICHMOND, May 25, 1864.

On the 12th of May the battlefield lay, before dawn, enveloped in 
a heavy fog. At 4 o'clock in the morning of that day the hostile lines 
burst, as under the sudden bidding of an electric wire, into a 
fierce connonade. An explosion in its suddenness, it raged from 
the first moment of its opening in the full depth of its fury. 
The metalic peal of the solid shot, the sharp clap and the flat 
crash of the shell rose from side to side with rapidity. They 
seemed to shake the very earth with their thunders. That terrific 
storm, while undiminished in depth, underwent immediately after 
its first outburst a change in character, for the sharper peals 
of shot and shell were succeeded in a moment by the duller thurls 
that hurlling forward grape and canister, told of a struggle
deepened into the sternness of close quarters.

The suddenness of the thunders with which the artillery rent the 
air was not greater than that with which the deafening storm 
burst from the infantry. The musketry that followed immediately 
after the very first gun, was so great in volume from its opening 
that it bespoke clearly the presence of large masses of men. 
Rising in a deep roll one and unbroken, its blended ringing 
clared that the hostile thousands from whom it swelled up must 
have met in conflict, hand to hand. The peals in quick succession 
of the artillery, did not drown its voice; but on it went 
distinctly, a flowing roar that rose to Heaven, like the constant 
outcry of a rushing river. Divination was not necessary with all 
those evidences to tell me, as I rose from my blanket in the 
rear, that, as in the case of our own conflict at Inkerman, an 
attack, prepared with deliberation, in close proximity to the 
Confederate lines, had moved suddenly from the cover of the 
morning fog. 

The field works that protected Ewell fight on the morning of the 
12th extended through a wood. They occupied the line of a low 
ridge, and, by what appears to me to be a grave error, lay 
somewhat down its reverse slops. An enemy approaching them could 
not be seen from some part of the works until he had appeared 
over the rise in their immediate front. Retreating from them, he 
received, once behind that swell of the ground, protection from 
the fire of part of those defences. The course of the breastworks 
followed that of the ridge, and accordingly formed, at one place, 
a salient with an angle so small as to be almost acute. They 
consisted of two lines which ran one parallel with the other; and 
containing between both, a space sufficiently wide for a line of 
battle, would be described by military engineers as a sap. 
'Epaniments were placed in support of the whole at several points 
of the line; and at the salient, sufficient for so many as twenty 
guns. A general understanding of the position may be obtained 
from this description, after, it has been stated that the sides 
of the salient, subject, as they were, in the event of an attack, 
to enfilade from its apex, were protected for some distance down
the line, with a series of short traverses.

General J. M. Jones' brigade occupied the salient. On the left of 
Jones' men were formed the Stonewall, under Walker; and next in 
order of the line of battle, the Louisianians under Hays. The 
right of Jones - who, be it recollected, held the salient - 
rested on the brigade of Stuart. Such was the distribution on the 
morning of the 12th, behind the breastworks of Ewell right wing, 
of the men constituting the division of General Edward Johnston. 
On the right of this division was an unoccupied part of the works 
about two hundred yards in length, and further on that staunch 
brigade of Wilcox division - Lane, Jones' brigade had sent one of 
its best regiments, the 21st Virginia from the salient, to cover 
the gap between Stuart and Lane as skirmishers. Two others were 
also sent out of the works in the same capacity, with the view of 
protecting the angle of the position from sudden attack. But 
three regiments of the brigade remained to defend a weak point 
that had been held previously by six. Of twenty guns that had 
been planted in the salient, sixteen had, under an expectation 
entertained during the night of an attack upon the extreme right, 
been withdrawn. Such was the array and strength of Ewellright on
the morning of the 12th.

Johnston, informed at three o'closk a. m., that the enemy was massing in
his front, sent off in hot haste for guns to replace those that 
had been removed from his works during the night.

In the meantime the signs in the front began rapidly to take the 
definite form of attack. His skirmishers came in short notice; 
and the forest behind them impressed the senses with the feeling 
that, wrapped as it was in fog, it was swarming with masses of 
human life. Pagebattalion of artillery had, in response to the 
demand of General Johnston, come up to the salient in a trot; but 
a tremendous column of the enemy having at that moment emerged 
from the [ ], it had arrived only to have its horses shot dead in 
their traces, and its men mowed down in the act of unlimbering. 
So terrible was the fire of the enemy that but one of the guns 
was brought into action. Captain W. Carter had, with great 
devotion, succeeded, unassisted, in making that ready for work; 
and, standing at it, heroically alone, continued, until his 
capture, to fire it, charged with grape and canister, into the 
Federal ranks.

General Johnston had no sooner become aware of the exact point of 
the attack than he rushed towards the salient. He was too late. 
The column that had burst from the fog upon that weak point, held 
it already in possession. The three regiments which had been left 
in line for its defence, had fled before the storming mass, 
without firing a shot, Johnston, caught in the rush of friend and 
foe, was made a prisoner; and was thus left, by the bad conduct 
of some of his own men, to waste his brave spirit ingloriously in 
prison. His bravery is of the []. His conduct as a general 
officer was marked by constancy and address. A great favorite 
with Lieutenant General Ewell, he was known amongst the rank and 
file, in affectionate recognition of his courage and obstinacy, 
as 'Old Blucher.' 

The salient carried, and one-half of Jones' men killed, wounded or 
captured, the enemy poured through the Confederate line in 
immense force. The Stonewall Brigade, on the immediate left of 
the gap thus opened in the confederate ranks became exposed on 
the right flank. Gen. Walker, its chief, attempted immediately to 
swing that wing around; but, while in the act, was disabled by a 
very severe wound in the side. Pressed hotly by the Federal 
advance, that movement became then, after even the brief delay 
consequent on that accident, impossible. The pressure upon its 
flank having commenced, many of the men forced into disorder were 
killed, wounded or captured; but several of the regiments 
wheeling into position behind the short traverses running back 
from their breastworks, disputed every foot of the ground they 
held with a steadiness worthy of their traditions. Colonel Terry, 
while holding, with unflinching firmness, one of those short 
fronts, received a severe wound. The Stonewall Brigade, however, 
overborne by the movement upon its flank, was finally forced 
back; and what of it was neither captured, wounded nor killed, 
found protection behind the battle array of the brigade that had 
been in line on its left - Hays' Louisianians.

Stuart brigade on the right of the regiments that had occupied the 
salient, was taken by the surging masses of the Federalists in 
flank. Those of them who were neither captured, killed nor 
wounded, found shelter behind the brigade that had been in line 
upon their right - Lane of Wilcox division. Engaged in front with a 
heavy column of the enemy, Lane, on learning of the miscarriage 
at the salient, became alarmed for his left flank; and having 
immediately swung his line around almost squarely with it 
original position, encountered the enemytriumphant advance. 
Charging in fine style, he drove it back after a contest that 
must have cost it dearly. His North Carolinians thus won the 
glory of being the first to stem the tide of Federal victory on 
the right.

While the Stonewall Brigade fought and fell back, the next on its 
left - Hays'- had time to swing round. Colonel Mouagan, its 
senior Col. being in command, it confronted the rushing advance 
to the left. Standing behind a traverse that extended 
perpendicularly from the original position of the brigade, it 
presented a front as firm as a ledge of rock. The wave of the 
enemy triumph surged up to that barrier; but, having broken upon 
it in mere spray, left the honor of the arrest of its overflow on 
that side of the field to those houseless, landless warriors of 
Louisiana.

Between Hays' men on the one side and Lane on the other, the 
Federalists had driven all opposition from their path. For a 
width of a mile they had swept the works of their defenders; but 
though complete masters within that limit, were confronted by an 
impassable barrier on the one hand and on the other. Pouring 
through the gap they had made, their masses formed rapidly from 
the right and from the left, with the view of turning the line of 
Hays on that side, and of Lane on this, by pressure on those 
officers'exposed ranks.

Apprehension of attack during the night on the front of Hays, had 
led to the transfer to its support of the fine brigade of Pegram. 
The other brigades of the division under the command of Gordon - 
two - were, at the time of the assault upon the salient, half a 
mile to the left. Springing forward without orders, Gordon moved 
at quick'in the direction of the fire that had burst upon the 
dawn in sudden thunders. Rushing into the fog, he could see 
neither friend nor foe; but guided by the instincts of a soldier, 
still sped forward rapidly under the bidding of the battle- 
hoarsest roar. The thick haze into whose unknown depths he drove 
on, soon lit its murderous terrors, as he closed into the 
conflict, with lurid flashes; and, in the next moment, flung out 
a sheet of lightning that hurled about the ears of his advancing 
ranks a very tempest of bullets.

Gordon had come up in column. General R. D. Johnston Brigade 
first upon the field, he threw rapidly into line; and launching 
it against the enemy through the fog, checked the advance. Having 
arrested, thus, at one point, the surging ranks of the foe, he 
sought to stop him as they swept around his right. The torrent 
streaming rapidly in that direction, he was about to be borne 
back by the flank, when, bringing up his own brigade, its firm 
line presented to the riverlike rush an additional width of 
barrier. The living flood of Federal triumph dashing against it 
in vain, swept still farther around, again threatening the 
Confederate right with destruction under a rapid movement upon 
its flank. Gordon having by that time brought up his third 
brigade - Pegram- formed it under the command of Colonel 
Huffman, somewhat detached from the 
others, across the new front of the enemyadvance.
 
The whole line then delivered a murderous volley into the dim 
masses of human life that stood before its shrouded - and very, 
very many of them winding sheeted - in that morning fog. 
Instantly seizing the colors of the centre regiment of his own
brigade, Gordon spurred forward under a storm of bullets, 
ordering a charge. His men rushed upon the misty ranks that they 
had just cut gashes through with their deadly fire. Their fury 
bore down all resistance. The charge had become a chase. 
Huddling the Federalists in headlong flight over the breastworks 
that had been held during the night by Stuart, that murderous 
race was continued for half a mile beyond. Opposition had 
disappeared before the pursuits still, however, it held its way 
in unabated fury. Starting out suddenly from the fog upon a 
hostile force in line, Gordondemand for a surrender having, in 
the confusion of his sudden appearance, obtained no reply, the 
Federalists fell where they had but a moment before stood in 
lusty life, a battle array of dead and dying!

The enemy still held the ground he had won on Stuart left. Gordon 
falling therefore back, occupied the works he had carried so 
gloriously. His charge had cost the Confederates the services for 
a time, of Brigadier General R. D. Johnston. That gallant officer 
was disabled by a wound, that is, however, not very severe. Col. 
Jones, a soldier of high promise, lay upon the field mortally 
wounded. Lieutenant Colonel McArthur, and Colonel Garrett, both 
officers of ability, gave up upon that field their life blood in 
manly assertion of the liberties that have been handed down to 
them from our common ancestors of the days of Runneymeade. 
Terribly, however, were the Confederate lives, lost in that 
movement, avenged. For a width of three hundred yards the Federal 
slain were scattered over a length of three-quarters of a mile; 
and, in all the open fields included in that space, lay in a 
sickening slaughter. Four guns that had been taken at the time of 
the enemy advance were, during the charge, recaptured; and in the 
absence of horses, sent by manual labor for some distance to the 
rear.

The Federalists continued to hold their ground in the salient, 
and along the line of works to the left of that angle, within a 
short distance of the position of Monaghan (Hays') Louisianians, 
Ramseur North Carolinians, of Rodes' division, formed, covering 
Monaghan right, and ordered to charge, were received by the enemy 
with a stubborn resistance. The desperate character of the 
struggle along that brigade front was told terribly in the 
horseness and rapidity of musketry. So close was the fighting 
there for a time that the fire of friend and foe rose up rattling 
in one common road. Ramseur North Carolinians dropped from the 
ranks thick and fast, but still he continued with glorious 
constancy to gain ground foot by foot. Pressing under a fierce 
fire, resolutely on, on, on, the struggle was about to become one 
of hand to hand, when the Federalists shrunk from that bloody 
trial. Driven back, they were not defeated. The earthworks being 
at the moment in their immediate rear, they bounded to the 
opposite side, and having thus placed them in their front, 
renewed the conflict. A rush of an instant brought Ramseur 
fellows to this side of the defences, and, though they crouched 
close to the slopes, under enfilade from the guns of the salient, 
their musketry rattled in deep and deadly fire on the enemy that 
stood in overwhelming numbers but a few yards from their front. 
Those brave North Carolinians had thus, in one of the very 
hottest conflicts of the day, succeeded in driving the enemy from 
the works that had been occupied during the previous night by a 
brigade which, until the 12th of May, had never yet yielded to a 
foe - the Stonewall.

The Confederate line had been reestablished by Ramseur to the 
position held during the night by Gen. J. M. Jones' left, it had 
been restored by Gordon to the point occupied during the same 
time by Jones' right. The gap originally made remained however, 
still in the possession of the enemy, and with it all the guns - 
with the exception of the four retaken by Gordon - that had been 
captured at the time of the rush into the salient. Through that 
the Federal masses swept out between the flank of Gordon - of 
Pegrambrigade - on the one hand, and of Ramseur on the other, 
endeavoring, by movements to the right and to the left in 
conjunction with heavy attacks in front, to give the unrecovered 
space greater width. They still protruded from the open interval 
between the flanks of those officers and continued to press still 
forward with the view of preventing their connection by an 
intervening array of battle. Moving out in tremendous force with 
the ultimate purpose of driving them still farther apart and of 
turning their lines, they were encountered by the stern front of 
Battle Albamians of Rhodes' Division.

Battle met the crushing weight of the advance unaided. He sought 
to insert his line between Gordon left - Pegram men - and the right 
of the brave fellows under Ramseur. Receiving the shock of the 
forward movement as a rock hurls back a wave of the sea, he 
pressed after the recoil, foot by foot. Closing in on it slowly, 
he succeeded, after a severe struggle, in pressing it back into 
the breastworks of the salient - for a part, be it recollected, a 
sap'- under a fire of musketry that exceeded anything I ever 
heard in its rapidity and volume. It roared unceasingly, a very 
river of death. Forcing his way on with heroic resolution; now 
straining forward; the standing in obstinate resistance; and 
next, for a moment, yielding stubbornly, as the mortal struggle 
swayed from side to side, Battle kept, with indomitable courage, 
laboring onward, inch by inch. Aided by the fire of Ramseurmen on
the left flank of the Federalists, he succeeded, finally in 
driving them from a part of the works on that officer right.

The gap in the Confederate array had been reduced to a small 
extent by Battle left. The other part of his line continued to 
swing heavily backwards and forwards as the tide of the battle 
rolled from side to side. Shattered terribly by the severity of 
the contest, he was reinforced by Harris' Mississippians, of 
Anderson division, and McGowan South Carolinians, of Wilcox 
division. The heaviness of the fire at the point where these 
brigades went into action was terrible. Two young oaks, each 
upwards of twelve inches in diameter, pierced so often across 
their trunks, were thus actually cut down, to the serious injury 
of some of McGowan men, by minnie bullets.

Fresh troops being put in continually, in front of Harris and 
McGowan, the contest grew in fierceness. Reeling to and fro, for 
the width of a brigade front, it surged now to this side, then to 
that, over a bloody space of over two hundred and fifty yards. 
The guns that had been captured in the salient by the rush of the 
first attack, lay, during the fierce struggle in their original 
position - at one time within the onward roll of the Federal 
lines, and at another closed within the surging ranks of the 
Confederates. Major Cutshaw, a gallant officer of the battalion 
of artillery, whose pieces lay thus between the ebb and flow of 
battle, hung devotedly in their immediate rear, and watching the 
moment that saw them included in the advancing array of the 
Confederate infantry, sprang forward from his lair in the thicket 
to load them with canister and grape - Bang! bang! bang! he plied 
them in hot haste; and thus tearing the ranks of the enemy at 
close quarters into shreds, he continued, with rare steadfastness, 
hurlling his thunders until the line of his supports had begun once
more to yield. - Retiring again and again as the tide of strife
rolled back upon him, he continued, on each occasion, to watch his
opportunity in patient resolution, and whenever the battle surged 
onward, bounded to his guns to work them with the same ardor and 
with the same havoc.

McGowan behaved, in the struggle for the works at the salient, 
gloriously. He fell, in its progress, painfully, but I hope not 
dangerously wounded. Several of his best officers yielded up 
their lives on that field of blood. General Harris set a 
brilliant example in the stern strife, to his brigade, but though 
he escaped accident in the tempest of bullets which swept on the 
wings of death around him, he lost heavily. His losses in 
officers includes some men of high promise. Colonel Baker and 
Lieutenant Colonel Feltus, of the 16th Mississippians, and 
Colonel Hardin, of the 19th, are not amongst the least of the 
gallant soldiers who fell dead from the Confederate lines in that 
murderous salient. South Carolinians and Mississippians 
continued, however, to rival each other in their persistent 
striving to recover the captured works; and finally obtained firm 
possession of them still further in advance of the foothold that 
had been secured in them previously by Battle. Consolidating 
within the defences thus far recovered on the left of the 
salient, the strife was renewed in their front - and very often 
so close to the muzzles of their rifles as the opposite slopes of 
the breastworks behind which they crouched under enfilade from 
the apex of the salient.

Perrin brigade of Anderson division, sent up to reinforce Battle, 
formed behind some light works in the rear. Ordered to charge 
into the salient, its chief, as he rode at the head of its left 
wing, received a Minnie bullet in the thigh. - The femoral artery 
cut, he had hardly time to say me back, boys,'when the poor 
fellow had bled to death. Two of his regiments had been, at the 
time, rushing at the works on the right under the direction of a 
gallant and promising young officer, now commanding the brigade, 
Colonel J. C. Saunders. They succeeded in making a lodgment in 
the defences on the left of Gordon. The other three regiments,
bounding on to the left as Perrin fell, swept also without 
opposition into the breastworks on the right of the men of Harris 
and McGowan. The width held by the enemy at the salient had thus 
been reduced to about one hundred yards; but, included within it, 
at the appex, a battery of artillery that, captured in the 
morning, swept both sides by enfilade.

Captain Wynne, the Adjutant General of Perrinbrigade, attempted 
to communicate with the Colonel commanding; but, venturing 
recklessly with that view across the immediate rear of the 
salient - where nothing human could apparently survive - returned 
to the left, after having run the gauntlet of the enemy 
skirmishers, with a painful wound in his arm. Saunders, in the 
meantime, threw out some of his Alabamians as sharpshooters; and 
by the accuracy of their aim, succeeded in silencing the guns 
that had been hurling shell into his ranks in deadly enfilade. 
Opening again from time to time, they burst upon him repeatedly; 
but in a moment afterwards the hands by which they had been 
worked fell under his unerring rifles, stiff in death. The 
enemygrasp upon the sap' at the angle of the salient, still 
undisturbed, Col. Saunders maintained his ground in this way on 
both sides of it, with admirable resolution.

From four oin the morning until half-past one, the struggle 
within the salient had raged in terrible fierceness. At the 
expiration of that time it sank into a comparative lull. The roll 
of the heavy skirmish shooting went on without intermission, 
however, around that angle of blood, and awaited, after a brief 
break in the main contest, into the furious roar of a renewed 
attack. The restored front on each side of the salient burst into 
thread like flashes; and from two on, throughout the evening until 
nightfall, and from nightfall until midnight, and from midnight 
until the approach of dawn of the 13th, a close and rapid 
fusilade rushed up in commingled road from the contending ranks. 
At one time bursting through the gap on Gordonright, and 
endangering his flank; at others raging up to the face of the 
very works held by that officer, by Saunders, by McGowan, by 
Harris, by Battle, by Ramseur, the conflict raged furiously until 
the enemy repelled firmly at all points of his attack, it settle, 
long after midnight, into the sharp and venomous whizzings of the 
skirmishers.

The four guns that Gordon had recaptured still remained two
hundred yards in his rear. They could not be removed under the 
terrible fire that swept over the ground they occupied. 
Fourteen guns remained in possession of the enemy, and, with 
those four, constituted substantially the only object of 
continuing the murderous struggle for the salient. The conditions 
of that contest had changed Lee policy of defence for that of 
attack, and had thus made a further maintenance of it highly 
inexpedient. A material advantage, of some importance to the 
enemy, lay in the possession of the height on which the salient 
stood, but even this did not, in the opinion of the Commander in 
Chief justify an avoidable waste of the lives of his men.

Before dawn, on the morning of the 13th, a line of works had been 
thrown up by the pioneers of the 2d corps, under Major Green, 
half a mile in rear of the point to which the contest of the day 
had been narrowed, and, connecting the original defences on the 
right with those on the left, by a route considerably shorter, 
presented a favorable position for return to the policy of 
defence. Covered by skirmishing, the gallant fellows who had 
fought their way so stubbornly over the bloody ground within the 
salient, into the works that had been captured by the enemy in 
his rush of the morning of the 12th, retired before day on the 
13th to that new line.

In the battle of the Ny, no officer earned such glory as General 
Gordon. His admirable flank movement at the Wilderness, his 
repulse of the enemyrush through the position of Dole, and his 
dash and skill in stemming the Federal torrent from the salient 
on the 12th, won the admiration of the army. General Lee 
acknowledge, on the field, publicly, the great services of that 
officer, and informing him at the time that he should ask for his 
promotion, has had him rewarded with the rank of Major General.

The battles, ending with the morning of the 13th, had closed. A 
more stubborn contest than that of the 12th has not been 
witnessed during the war. The losses of the Confederates, during 
these struggles, include between two and three thousand 
prisoners, eighteen guns, and from six to seven thousand killed 
and wounded. Those of the enemy in the conflicts of the 10th and 
of the 12th, including as they do the disaster at the hands of 
Early flanking force, of the murderous repulses from the front of 
Field, and from that of Dole, and the terrible havoc of Gordon 
charge on the right of the salient, cannot have been less, in 
killed and wounded, than from twenty to thirty thousand. The 
rotting dead found unburied on the ground the Federalists 
occupied during those contests presented a spectacle utterly 
horrible in the immensity of their number. During the campaign 
the losses in Ewell corps, according to an official statement of 
the chief of its medical staff - Dr. Hunter Maguire - does not 
exceed in killed and wounded, after summing the losses of each of 
its brigades up to the 13th of this month, 3,500.