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Spotsylvania Driving Tour, #4, Harrison House Site
Transcript
At the top of the hill sit foundation stones, all that remain of the homestead of Edgar Harrison and his wife Ann. Built by 1860, the Harrison House, called La Villa, sat amid 190 acres, where the 11 enslaved people he owned grew oats, corn, tobacco, and churned butter. Edgar, who had joined the Confederate army, was with the cavalry and fought near his home throughout the battle. Joseph Walker, one of those enslaved by Harrison, was only nine years old in the spring of 1864. Years later, Walker wrote, “My mistress, Miss Harrison, and my mother began gathering up her silver to leave.” Ushered to the rear, Walker and the others fled as the battle of Spotsylvania began in earnest, sounding to Walker “like a thunderstorm.” Walker continued: “My mother’s house was pulled down to make breast works, and the yard and garden were used as a burying ground.” Freed by the end of the war, Walker lived until 1943. The vacant Harrison House was utilized by Gen. Richard Ewell, commanding the Confederate army’s Second Corps, as his headquarters. Robert E. Lee was also camped nearby on the morning of May 12. As fighting began in earnest at the Muleshoe, both generals rode towards the front. Lee found Ewell screaming and swearing at his soldiers, and beating them with the flat of his sword. With a stern voice, Lee reproached his subordinate and said, “How can you expect to control these men when you have lost control of yourself?” The first two weeks of May 1864 had all but destroyed the Army of Northern Virginia’s upper command and the Confederates were in dire straits. James Longstreet, commanding the army’s First Corps, had been perilously wounded at the Wilderness. Richard Ewell was screaming obscenities at his soldiers and on the verge of a nervous breakdown. A.P. Hill, commanding Lee’s Third Corps, was onset by a debilitating sickness that left him no choice but to turn command over to a subordinate. And unknown to Lee, at that very moment the cavalry commander J.E.B. Stuart was slowly dying in Richmond as a result of wounds sustained the day before outside of the Confederate capital. Something needed to be done to save the Confederate army from utter annihilation. For the third time in six days, Lee decided to personally lead soldiers into battle. Seeing General John Gordon and his men marching to the front, Lee went to direct them forward. Gordon and his men demanded he turn back to safety before they resumed their advance. “These men behind you are Georgians, Virginians, and Carolinians,” John Gordon told Lee. “They have never failed you on any field. They will not fail you here.” With cries of “Lee to the rear!” Gordon’s men turned Lee back towards safety before they plunged forward towards the Bloody Angle. As thousands of Confederates went forward into the maelstrom by the Muleshoe, Lee turned his attention to digging a new line that would connect his two flanks. Erected behind the slope of the Harrison House, the trenches and fortifications became known as Lee’s Last Line. The stunned survivors of Edward Johnson’s division, or what was left of it, were put to work digging. They were joined by the army’s small contingent of engineers. With the rest of the army actively engaged, the bulk of the digging and entrenching was likely done by enslaved laborers, pressed into service by a Confederate law passed in January 1864 that forced even free Black men between the ages of 18-50 to assist “in the way of work upon fortifications.” Hour after hour the digging continued as the fighting roared just a mile away at the Bloody Angle. Both commanders understood the importance of the Muleshoe and either capturing it or holding on long enough for the last line to be finished. Grant, understanding why the Confederates held on so tenaciously, wrote to his wife, “To lose this battle they lose their cause.” Working on the trenches, a Confederate soldier wrote “Generals Lee and Ewell walked up and down the line all night encouraging the men to work, and telling us that ‘the fate of the army depended on having that line done by daylight,’ and I knew by the way they acted that it was a critical time.” As U.S. and Confederate soldiers continued dying a mile away into the early morning hours of May 13, the digging continued.
Description
Part 4 of the Spotsylvania Driving Tour takes a look at the area surrounding the Harrison House. Located behind the Confederate line, this location served as Lee's headquarters as he coordinated counterattacks on May 12, 1864.
Credit
NPS
Date Created
05/11/2022
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