Hand-To-Hand Fighting at Spotsylvania

George Norton Galloway 1841-1904) was a Union soldier with the 95th Pennsylvania who fought during the Overland Campaign. As Commanding General of the United States Army from 1864 to 1865, Ulysses S. Grant confronted Robert E. Lee in a series of very high casualty battles known as the Overland Campaign that ended in a stalemate siege at Petersburg. During the siege, Grant coordinated a series of devastating campaigns launched by William Tecumseh Sherman, Philip Sheridan, and George Thomas. Finally breaking through Lee's trenches at Petersburg, the Army of the Potomac captured Richmond, the Confederate capital, in April 1865. Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox. Soon after, the Confederacy collapsed and the Civil War ended.

After the war, Galloway wrote an account of the hand to hand fighting at Spotsylvania Court House, some of the bloodiest fighting of the war. The fighting took place due to a salient in the Confederates’ line that became known as the “Bloody Angle.” Galloway’s account became part of the well known Battles & Leaders series, full of primary accounts by the Civil War’s soldiers. This edition of Hand-To-Hand Fighting at Spotsylvania is specially formatted with maps of the campaign and pictures of the campaign’s important military commanders.