Talk:Battle of Spotsylvania Court House

Criticism by Matthew White

There's cogent criticism of the neutrality and accuracy of this article by Matthew White at [1]. Gdr 20:03, 2005 Apr 5 (UTC)

Matthew is hereby invited to modify the article in any way he thinks he could improve it. One comment I'll make on his analysis of Grant vs Lee is that the latter had to exert more person control of the battle than he should have, due to failures or inexperience of his subordinates, the result of attrition. So I would expect Lee's name to come up more frequently. Try counting the total number of mentions of Union generals vs Confederate and see how they stack up. Hal Jespersen 21:49, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Did you actually read Matthew White's article?

here it is, so read it again... http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/wikiwoo.html#Spotsylvania

Of course I read it, before I replied the first time. What point in his article interests you enough to post your question? Hal Jespersen 18:22, 18 May 2005 (UTC)

---

Most of the article is my work; it's been tweaked here or there a few times. Hal has pretty much addressed what I would say about Mr. White's comments. Lee was much more hands-on in the 1864 campaign after the Wilderness, having lost his right-hand man (Longstreet) in the Wilderness. He even tried to personally lead the Mule Shoe counterattack and had to be persuaded that the Confederates could ill afford to lose him.

I wonder if he read all three of my articles on the 1864 campaign; Wilderness, Spotsylvania and Cold Harbor. If he did, I think he would see that I give Grant a great deal of credit for battering Lee back into the Richmond and Petersburg forts.

I would say the same thing...if White thinks he can improve on the article in any way, he should do so and help this project instead of criticizing those who do try to help.

Incidentally, I am a Southerner, but I think Lee was a bit of a putz in this battle, and should have gotten his men out of the Mule Shoe mess after Upton's first crack at it. Instead, he dawdled and lost 4,000 of his best troops as prisoners, and was lucky to hold the position at all.user:Jsc1973

inconclusive?

Technically, this seems like a strategic victory for Grant (since he was able to continue the offensive), while a tactical victory for Lee, (who had less casualties), is it not? -- 169.244.143.115 14:46, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

Technically, the tactical victors of Civil War battles are determined by who leaves the battlefield first. So McClellan won at Antietam, Meade at Gettysburg, Lee at his other 62-63 battles. By this measure, SCH was a Confederate tactical victory, regardless of casualty figures. Strategic is another matter and is more debatable (which is why I spend little time worrying about the accuracy of these superficial battle boxes in the articles). Grant continued unabated with one of his strategic goals, wearing down Lee's army. He also got closer to Richmond. While I would call the full Overland Campaign an overall strategic victory (in hindsight), it is more difficult to explain why this bloody battle itself is strategic. I think "inconclusive" is OK. Hal Jespersen 15:13, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

Tactical victory for Lee, yes, but not so much so as the Wilderness because the proportion of casualties was less one-sided. Lee really won all three of the major spring 1864 battles tactically, but he gained nothing from Wilderness or Spotsylvania because he was unable to force Grant to retreat. Inconclusive is fine as the outcome. Jsc1973 (talk) 04:52, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Actually I think it was a tactical and strategic victory for Grant if anything. The Union forces captured an entire Confederate division and twice secured breakthroughs in the Confederate lines the process of repairing them in turn costing the Confederate armies another set of sanguinary losses they could not afford. Lee is accounted tactical and strategic victories for the Seven Days' Battles so by any standard that say, Malvern Hill is a CS victory Spotsylvania's certainly a Union one.

Battrarules (talk) 8:44 20 April 2011 (UCT). —Preceding undated comment added 13:45, 20 April 2011 (UTC).

Infiltration

It is stated that in this battle, Col. Emory Upton made first use of what was to become known as "Infiltration Tactics". Of coarse thats an overstatement since there wasn't really an infiltration, just a mere concentrated attack against a weak point of the enemie's defense system. Wich is not realy a novelty, since it has been done since stone age.

Infiltration is quite a diferent concept actualy. You don't attack in one point, you attack in many points. You don't actualy select flagrant weak points, you will be lucky if your enemy has got any! Instead you just avoid the realy strong points and concentrate on the not so strong. The key element to infiltration is not your enemy weaknesses but the fact that your attacking forces will be concentrated in those attack points so they will enjoy numerical superiority. The main objective is not to "break the line" with a massed conventional force wich was what Upton did, but instead to "infiltrate" the line with elite forces and then creating havok in the rear of the enemy front line. The diference is that you realy don't ave to be strong enough to actualy break the line and push your enemy back, you just have to be strong enough to pass a certain number of your troops over the line. It may seem to be the same thing, but it is not. There is a reason for the attacking troops to be elite. They have to cross the line, fighting all the way trough until reaching the rear of the frontline.

I don't see any discussion of infiltration in the article. It says "... twelve regiments under the command of Col. Emory Upton followed up a concentrated, intense artillery attack by slamming into the toe of the Mule Shoe along a narrow front." If you mean by "It is stated" that you read it somewhere else, I don't know why you mention it here. Hal Jespersen 13:40, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

I know what he means. In the article, I wrote that similar tactics were used by Germany in March of 1918, those tactics are what became known as "Infiltration tactics" or "Hutier tactics" (after Oskar von Hutier, one of their WW1 proponents). What Upton did was similar, but it wasn't everything that Hutier was doing 54 years later. At no point did I credit Upton with actually developing infiltration, just that he used some of those concepts in what was, in 1864, a novel and successful way of breaking an enemy trench line. user:Jsc1973

Assessment

Overall, the article is cogent and well-written, but I would suggest breaking up that first section, providing a brief introduction, context, and then a discussion of the actual battle. Carom 16:45, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Link to Ewell article?

Just a thought: Perhaps the mention of Ewell in the photo's cutline should link to the WP article on him. Chouhouzi (talk) 21:04, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Done. You are welcome to improve articles by doing this sort of edit yourself in the future. Hal Jespersen (talk) 21:58, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Bloody Angle

The Battle for the Bloody Angle, a period of about 23 hours during the Spotsylvania fighting about which books have been written, ought to have its own section broken out, or maybe even its own page, referenced from this one.

It is an event that people may search for, and currently redirects to a subsection of the page on Confederate officer Benjamin T. Brockman (who was mortally wounded there). I may have time to start on this over the next few days. Praghmatic (talk) 17:14, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

If you want to expand the coverage, I would recommend doing it in a named section of this article, rather than a separate article. I have not encountered a book solely about this portion of the battle, but if one exists, it certainly must spend a significant amount of space on the background of the campaign and the rest of the battle beyond those 23 hours, and there is no reason to duplicate that in another article. You are right that the redirect is currently inappropriate. Hal Jespersen (talk) 02:01, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

You're certainly right about context being essential. I took your suggestion and made a start. Feel free to change the section titles; I just put in what occurred to me. I do have the book I mentioned somewhere, but can't put my hands on it at the moment. Thus, much of my sense of the course of the battle comes from Rhea's "The Battles for Spotsylvania...", which I have at hand. Praghmatic (talk) 20:47, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

I've changed the redirect to the subsection on this page.
⋙–Berean–Hunter—► ((⊕)) 21:16, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

Milhist B-Class assessment

I've reassessed this article as broadly meeting the B-Class criteria; congratulations and thank you for your hard work. For future development: if the intention is to take the article to A-Class assessment I'd recommend splitting out the general references at the end of many paragraphs into more specific ones (some of the refs lump a number of sources together; these should probably be split up so each source is cited to the sentence(s) it supports). Additionally the images in the "May 7: The race to Spotsylvania" section would benefit from some rearrangement to prevent crowding the text, and the description "one of the top five battles of the Civil War" (Casualties section) is ambiguous and perhaps inappropriate given the subject of that section. Best, EyeSerene^talk 09:36, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

The context in the Casualties sections is "... the costliest battle of the Overland Campaign and one of the top five battles of the Civil War," which could be reworded as "... the costliest battle of the Overland Campaign and one of the top five costliest of the Civil War" but that seems redundant. Make the change if you think it's useful. Hal Jespersen (talk) 18:32, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

I see your point, it's just that wording like "top five" smacks of Top Trumps to me - it seems out of place when referring to battles :) I've made a small tweak, but please change back if you don't like. Thanks again for your work though, I found the article a fascinating read. EyeSerene^talk 08:37, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Well, thank you, but your change is problematic. I don't think that "ruinous" is an appropriate adjective for a military article, but more significantly, I chose "top five" over "fourth" because, as indicated in List of American Civil War battles, it is arguable whether the Seven Days Battles was a seven-day battle or a campaign of six distinct battles, so the numbering is inexact depending on which view you take. There is no absolute consensus on the ordering of Civil War battles, other than Gettysburg was number one and that Antietam was the highest single day battle. Hal Jespersen (talk) 17:44, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Fair enough. Maybe "one of the five costliest battles of the Civil War" or something then, though I'll happily concede that if no-one else has objected to that particular wording then it's obviously just my perception and not a general one. I'll leave it to you :) Best, EyeSerene^talk 12:22, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

I'm not trying to suppress discussion. That particular language has only been there for a few weeks since I upgraded the article. If others have opinions, I invite them to jump in and edit responsibly. Hal Jespersen (talk) 19:52, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Article: The Union's Bloody Miscue at Spotsylvania's Muleshoe

• The Union's Bloody Miscue at Spotsylvania's Muleshoe – Ling.Nut3 (talk) 05:17, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

Map of Upton's Attack on May 10

I toured the battlefield today (27 October 2013), and I think the location of Upton's attack on May 10 is incorrect on the map. According to the markers at the site, Upton attacked from a point a fair distance southwest of where the map shows, closer to the where the illustration shows the trees, from Warren's lines in a path roughly in line with the McCoull house. The location shown is much closer to the "Bloody Angle," where the May 12 attacks took place. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jaypea99 (talk • contribs) 01:44, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

I based the Wikipedia Spotsylvania maps (a long time ago!) mostly on the West Point Atlas maps. See their interpretation at http://www.westpoint.edu/history/SiteAssets/SitePages/American%20Civil%20War/ACW46c.gif Hal Jespersen (talk) 17:30, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

File:Battle of Spottsylvania by Thure de Thulstrup.jpg

Hello! This is a note to let the editors of this article know that File:Battle of Spottsylvania by Thure de Thulstrup.jpg will be appearing as picture of the day on May 8, 2014. You can view and edit the POTD blurb at Template:POTD/2014-05-08. If this article needs any attention or maintenance, it would be preferable if that could be done before its appearance on the Main Page. Thanks! — Crisco 1492 (talk) 01:29, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

Picture of the day

The Battle of Spotsylvania Court House was the second major battle in Ulysses S. Grant's 1864 Overland Campaign of the American Civil War. Following the Battle of the Wilderness, Grant's forces disengaged from Robert E. Lee's Confederate army and moved to the southeast. Elements of Lee's army beat the Union army to the critical crossroads of Spotsylvania Court House and began entrenching. Fighting occurred on and off from May 8 through May 21; ultimately the battle was tactically inconclusive, but with a total of almost 32,000 casualties, it was the costliest battle of the campaign.

This chromolithograph was published by L. Prang & Co. in 1887, based on the work by Thure de Thulstrup.Illustration: Thure de Thulstrup; restoration: Adam Cuerden

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"Inconclusive"

The citation for this actually reads indecisive, I think it was pretty clearly a tactical victory for the Confederates, who held the field and beat off many attacks and inflicted much higher casualties on the enemy, though these casualties were less replaceable. Grant wanted to break through Confederate lines and destroy Lee's army, he did neither and left. It's also probably overall a strategic victory for the CSA as keeping Lee's army intact and the war going was their primary objective, as well as trying to inflict as many casualties as possible before the Presidential elections. 124.254.119.18 (talk) 06:47, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

Template:Infobox military conflict says to use either "X victory" or "Inconclusive". I personally do not see much difference between inconclusive and indecisive. American Battlefield Trust says inconclusive while National Park Service says indecisive. –CWenger (^ • @) 16:01, 4 January 2023 (UTC)