"Lee vs. Grant" Spotsylvania by etfromnc

Early in May of 1864, one of the five bloodiest battles of the Civil War was fought over a two week period between forces under the command of the most prominent generals of this bloody war, Robert E. Lee of the Confederates and Ulysses S. Grant of the Northern Aggressors. Historians rate the results of this battle as "inconclusive" but the Confederates were outnumbered by two to one and yet inflicted 50% more casualties on Federal forces than they suffered themselves and Grant was the one who first withdrew from this fray.
At the most fervent point of the battle, on 12 May 1864, (63 years to the day before my mother's birthday) Union and Confederate troops met in a bloody, 20-hour clash near Spotsylvania Court House. The nightmarish fighting, which took place at close quarters during a rain storm and in ankle-deep mud, ended in a stalemate at breastworks later dubbed the "Bloody Angle." Fighting continued sporadically for the next week, until Union Gen. Grant withdrew in an attempt to circumvent Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee's army to the south, leaving behind 18,339 casualties to the Confederates' 12,000.