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The Heart of Hell

The Soldiers' Struggle for Spotsylvania's Bloody Angle
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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.
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.
The prolific independent Civil War historian Jeffry D. Wert does justice to [the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House] in The Heart of Hell. . . . [A] thoroughly researched monograph."--North Carolina Historical Review The Heart of Hell offers a superb and at times graphic account of the events of May 12. . . . Wert's study elevates the fighting at the Mule Shoe beyond merely one of the many brutal engagements of the Overland campaign and succeeds in capturing Civil War combat at its very worst."-Journal of Southern History 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 This is micro-battlefield history at its best."--Virginia Magazine of History & Biography
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