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The Heart of Hell

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The Heart of Hell

Name: The Heart of Hell
Author: Jeffry D. Wert
ISBN: 9798890862907

The Soldiers' Struggle for Spotsylvania's Bloody Angle

by Jeffry D. Wert

Published by The University of North Carolina Press

Civil War America

Publication date: April 04, 2022

eBooks purchased directly from UNC Press will be delivered via Leaf eReader app

ISBN 9798890862907 | 320 Pages, 15 halftones, 11 maps, appends., notes, bibl., index

320 Pages, 15 halftones, 11 maps, appends., notes, bibl., index

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At Spotsylvania’s Bloody Angle, there was no escaping the brutality of Civil War combat

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.

“This is micro-battlefield history at its best.”—Virginia Magazine of History & Biography

“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

“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

“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

“Wert has produced a beautifully written and dramatically detailed narrative of the fighting at the Mule Shoe. Grounded in impressive research into the primary sources, The Heart of Hell goes deeper than any other book before it.”—Caroline E. Janney, author of Ends of War: The Unfinished Fight of Lee’s Army after Appomattox

“Jeff Wert’s latest masterpiece is the most complete treatment of the fighting on May 12, 1864, at Spotsylvania Court House ever written. Mining an extensive volume of eyewitness accounts, Wert’s narrative puts readers in the midst of Spotsylvania’s bloody trenches—indeed, in the heart of hell.”—A. Wilson Greene, author of A Campaign of Giants—The Battle for Petersburg

Short-listed, American Battlefield Trust Book Prize for History, American Battlefield Trust
2023 Winner, Dan and Marilyn Laney Book Prize, Austin Civil War Roundtable
2023 Winner, Richard Barksdale Harwell Award, Atlanta Civil War Round Table

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The Heart of Hell

The Soldiers' Struggle for Spotsylvania's Bloody Angle

The Heart of Hell

The Soldiers' Struggle for Spotsylvania's Bloody Angle

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