Spindle Field’s Fall Haircut

Imagine my delight as I pop out of the woodline on the southern edge of Spotsylvania’s Spindle Field and I see row upon row of corn. It’s exactly what I should see at this time of year, but such has not been the case for most of the summer. The uncultivated part of this field, closest to the woodline, has been in dire need of a haircut.

That’s been the case all across the Spotsylvania Courthouse Battlefield. The open fields—unburned in the spring and mowed all summer—have become many deciduous jungles of fast-growing oaks and scraggly pines. Occasional tulip poplars, tall and stringy, have stretched their way in, and in some places, sumac has grown so thick, they look like short stands of palm trees thick enough to require a machete. Bristly thistles have started to show their purple globe blossoms.

But these were farm fields once here around Sarah Spindle’s farm. Elsewhere, the Landrums, the McCools, the Harrisons had farms of their own. Sarah Spindle’s farm field is mostly in cultivation these days, but the others are left as natural places.

The challenge, of course, is that topography is such a vital part of the story of Spotsylvania Courthouse. The same can certainly be said on nearly any battlefield, but at a battlefield like Spotsylvania, where minimal interpretation and signage marks the field, being able to see the ground becomes especially important for understanding the story. When the foliage has taken over, land features get obscured and earthworks vanish.

In front of the Mule Shoe, the swale the did so much to direct troop movements into the maw of the Bloody Angle seems far less prominent, despite its sweep and size. The dueling earthworks along the Mule Shoe’s east face, where Federals and Confederates sniped at each other for twenty hours, dissolve into the terrain, obscuring the angry proximity of the lines. They have no power to illustrate, losing their most important value to us.

But the Park Service has been suffering budget cuts and staffing shortages. Mowing has tumbled down the priority list. And Spotsylvania, the least-visited of the park’s four battlefields, has always received less attention than the others because of its relative isolation.

But today I can see those rows of corn in the cultivated part of the field, no longer obscured by the wilder part of the field along the woodline.

What strikes me immediately is how they resemble rows of infantry. Imagine federal soldiers in Dennison’s Maryland Brigade lined up shoulder to shoulder in their advance at about 8:00 a.m. on May 8, 1864. I can’t see their point of departure on the far side of the field. A ridge cuts perpendicular across the field, obscuring its far side. When Federals reached the ridge, only then could they see another quarter of the field beyond and the confederate line at the far side along the woodline where I now stand.

That is something else the corn shows me today. Imagine those same Federal soldiers lined up in a long row, shoulder to shoulder, on the crest of that ridge line, silhouetted as easy targets for the waiting Confederates, who had only just rushed onto the field and perhaps hadn’t even had much time to get their bearings. Silhouettes on the ridge became easily recognizable targets for tired, disoriented veterans.

If I follow the walking trail down toward the corn, it intersects the ridge right next to Brock Road. Here, a bend in the road turns east toward the village, running along the upper lip of a large fishbowl in the landscape. Confederates used a rail fence along the road to help form a barricade against the first brigade-sized attack that crossed Spindle Field, six Federal regiments under the command of Peter Lyle.

For most of the summer, the fishbowl lay beneath a sea of foliage that seemed to fill the bowl. Now moved, the dramatic nature of the concavity shows. Lyle’s men got down into the fishbowl, many of his men in underneath the fire of the Confederates who could not depress their rifles far enough to hit them once the Federals got close enough. Lyle’s men ended up pinned against the lip of the fishbowl until finally flushed out by a flanking attack from Benjamin Humphrey’s Mississippians, who found it like shooting fish in a fishbowl.

Lyle’s men had no idea what they were marching into. From the perspective of their approach, a knoll hid the fishbowl in the same way that the ridge on the opposite side of the road hid the far woodline. The topography played tricks on everyone—tricks that have remained hidden this summer, buried beneath aggressive green.

Those of us in the preservation community talk about the value of “walking the ground” to better understand what happened there. But as this summer has illustrated, you have to be able to see the ground as you walk it.

I’m glad the Park Service has been able, finally, to mow. I’m sure for some folks, it seems like just another tedious chore that someone needs to do. But for those of us who know the ground and the stories it holds, a clear landscape makes a world of difference.