September 8, 2026 • 9 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, on May 12, 1864, a large oak tree stood in the middle of some of the fiercest fighting of the Civil War. For nearly 20 hours, Union and Confederate soldiers battled at close range at the Bloody Angle during the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House. Thousands of bullets ripped through the air, and so many struck the oak that they eventually cut through its trunk and brought the tree crashing down. What remained was a shattered, bullet-riddled stump.
In this installment of our American Objects series, Ashley Hlebinsky shares the story of the Spotsylvania Stump.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people,
coming to you from the city where the West begins,
Fort Worth, Texas. Until May 12, 1864, there was a
large oak tree in a rolling meadow just outside Spotsylvania
Courthouse in Virginia. That morning, 1,200 entrenched Confederates awaited the
(00:33):
assault on the city. of 5,000 Union troops. Here to
tell another story about objects in American history is our
own Ashley Lubinsky. Take it away, Ashley.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Inside the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, among artifacts
that define the many costs of war, there is an
object that does not necessarily read as a military object
at all.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
It's a fragment of a tree.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
It's this rough, splintered section of oak that stands only
a few feet high and when you look at this
object the wood is shredded and it's torn apart in
irregular patterns And there are these deep cavities that kind
of puncture its side. And the reason it looks like
this is because of something that you can see a
(01:24):
little bit deeper, which is that it's embedded with conically
shaped bullets, which were called mignet balls. They were developed
in the 19th century. It's basically what soldiers were using
by the time of the American Civil War.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
And these bullets were lodged.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
Into this stump back in 1864.
Speaker 3 (01:46):
And it's known as the Spotsylvania stump.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
And that is because a century earlier, during the American Revolution,
the traditional shape of the projectile was round.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
It was a round musket ball. But.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
In the 19th century, you start to see the development
of conically shaped projectiles.
Speaker 3 (02:03):
They're originally developed in France. They're called beignet balls.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
But in the U.S., there is a designer at Harper's
Ferry that modifies that.
Speaker 3 (02:12):
His name is James Burton.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
He's a part of a long legacy of designers throughout
American firearms history. And the reason that that's significant, well,
there's many reasons why that's significant. The first being that
a conically shaped projectile allows you to have a rifled
gun on the battlefield more so than you had during
the revolution. Earlier warfare, rifles were more of a sniper gun.
(02:35):
It wasn't your standard infantry gun.
Speaker 3 (02:37):
But by the Civil War.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
The conically shaped projectile allowed for a rifled musket, which
created a much more accurate firearm, which would show how
battlefield tactics would change throughout the war. But then the
other side, the more gruesome side of it, was the
injuries that.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
It caused to soldiers. And that was... Shattering of bone.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
So during the revolution, which is a century earlier, around
basketball would have more of a chance of a clean break,
which would sometimes allow for doctors on the battlefield to
set the injuries rather than have to amputate.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
But during the Civil War, there's a much higher.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
Rate of amputation because of what a clinically shaped projectile
will do to bone. And while that's a horrible thing,
to think about, if you look at the Spotsylvania stump,
you can see just that evisceration, that damage that can
be caused by a conically shaped projectile, just in the
sheer jagged nature of how the stump was cut down.
(03:39):
By 1864, the American Civil War had entered a new phase.
Speaker 3 (03:44):
Union General Ulysses S.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
Grant initiated what became known as the Overland Campaign, which
was a sustained series of engagements against Confederate General Robert E.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
Lee in Virginia.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
And unlike other campaigns, Grant's approach really emphasized continuous pressure.
So engaging Lee's army repeatedly, even after having heavy losses
on both sides, rather than withdrawing to regroup, which was
the standard at the beginning of the war.
Speaker 3 (04:12):
And the result was a.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
Series of battles marked by really high casualties and increasingly
entrenched positions. And many people actually attribute these types of
battles to early examples of trench warfare, which was a
shift from the kind of rank and file form that
soldiers were using earlier in the war. And trench warfare
is often most associated with World War I, but the
(04:36):
kind of origins of it are seen even in.
Speaker 3 (04:40):
The United States in the mid-19th century.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
One of the battles during this Overland Campaign with Ulysses S.
Grant was the Battle of Spotsylvania Courthouse, which was fought
in May of 1864.
Speaker 3 (04:55):
After the costly.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
Battle of the Wilderness, both armies moved southeast and they'd
entrenched themselves along defensive lines near Spotsylvania. And among these
kind of entrenched defensive lines, there was a protruding section
of a Confederate line that was known as the Muleshoe,
which was essentially a four-mile-long defensive line that would become
the focal point of Union.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
Attacks during the battle.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
On May 12th, Union forces launched a massive assault on
this position, breaking through part of the Confederate line and
initiating what became one of the most intense close quarters
engagements of the entire war. This location is called the
Bloody Angle, and during this breakthrough in the line, soldiers
fought for around 20 hours in continuous combat. And the
(05:42):
conditions in and of themselves deteriorated rapidly. Rain was falling
basically the entire time, and when you think about that
with a style of trench warfare, you now have trenches
where the soldiers are filled with mud.
Speaker 3 (05:55):
And visibility is relatively non-existent.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
But the firing did not stop, and thousands of rounds
were discharged at close range, often by soldiers standing only
yards apart. And it was within this concentrated zone of
fire that the oak tree once stood. The same volume
of rifle musket fire that killed and wounded thousands of
men that day also struck the tree. And shot after
(06:21):
shot tore into its trunk, gradually weakening it until something
during that prolonged engagement, it fell, cut down not by axes, but.
Speaker 3 (06:29):
By bullets alone. And when the fighting ended, only a.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
Portion of the trunk, which was about 22 inches high,
remained standing.
Speaker 3 (06:39):
After this horrific.
Speaker 2 (06:41):
Battle, the stump kind of became an immediate point of recognition,
almost something that memorialized the tragedies that happened there. And
soldiers remembered it. And visitors often sought.
Speaker 3 (06:55):
It out because.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
It represented something that statistics and written accounts would struggle
to convey. In the years after the war, the stump
was removed from the battlefield and eventually entered into different
institutional collections.
Speaker 3 (07:09):
So first, it was at the U.S.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
Army's Ordinance Museum, and then it was later transferred to
the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History.
Speaker 3 (07:16):
In 1888, where it stands today.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
And....
Speaker 2 (07:21):
There are some things that kind of are different about
the Civil War, or at least our understanding of the
memory of it, that do occur. For example, battlefield photography
became a major.
Speaker 3 (07:31):
Point of remembrance, but so is this stump.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
When you go to a museum, or when you work
in a museum, like I do, you always kind of
walk this fine line, especially in military history, of glamorizing
and or sterilizing the violence of the war. So you
see a lot of old museum exhibits where you see
uniforms or the guns and they're kind of divorced from
(07:56):
that human component.
Speaker 3 (07:58):
And curators weigh a lot when.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
They're deciding if they use something.
Speaker 3 (08:05):
That actually shows the result of that violence.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
A bloody uniform from someone who'd been struck down. And
now some museums are able to utilize that and interpret that.
But that is a really difficult pill for people to swallow.
It's really difficult for visitors to be faced.
Speaker 3 (08:23):
With something like that. And so this stump is just
a really rare artifact where you.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
Can come and really see what devastation, what violence, what
tragedy looked like during the Civil War without that kind
of glorification or glamorization of violence that you'd get if
you displayed something that was more human.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
And a terrific job on the production, editing, and storytelling
by our own Greg Hengler. And a special thanks to
Ashley Lubinsky. She's the former co-host of Discovery Channel's Master
of Arms. And she's also contributing to this recurring series,
Objects in American History. And what a story the Spotsylvania
(09:07):
stump tells. I mean, to imagine the kind of warfare
where that many bullets were exchanged, that it took down
an oak tree. The story of the Spotsylvania stump, part
of our Objects in American History series here on Our
American Stories. Thank you.
This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people,
coming to you from the city where the West begins,
Fort Worth, Texas. Until May 12, 1864, there was a
large oak tree in a rolling meadow just outside Spotsylvania
Courthouse in Virginia. That morning, 1,200 entrenched Confederates awaited the
(00:33):
assault on the city. of 5,000 Union troops. Here to
tell another story about objects in American history is our
own Ashley Lubinsky. Take it away, Ashley.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Inside the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, among artifacts
that define the many costs of war, there is an
object that does not necessarily read as a military object
at all.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
It's a fragment of a tree.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
It's this rough, splintered section of oak that stands only
a few feet high and when you look at this
object the wood is shredded and it's torn apart in
irregular patterns And there are these deep cavities that kind
of puncture its side. And the reason it looks like
this is because of something that you can see a
(01:24):
little bit deeper, which is that it's embedded with conically
shaped bullets, which were called mignet balls. They were developed
in the 19th century. It's basically what soldiers were using
by the time of the American Civil War.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
And these bullets were lodged.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
Into this stump back in 1864.
Speaker 3 (01:46):
And it's known as the Spotsylvania stump.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
And that is because a century earlier, during the American Revolution,
the traditional shape of the projectile was round.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
It was a round musket ball. But.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
In the 19th century, you start to see the development
of conically shaped projectiles.
Speaker 3 (02:03):
They're originally developed in France. They're called beignet balls.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
But in the U.S., there is a designer at Harper's
Ferry that modifies that.
Speaker 3 (02:12):
His name is James Burton.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
He's a part of a long legacy of designers throughout
American firearms history. And the reason that that's significant, well,
there's many reasons why that's significant. The first being that
a conically shaped projectile allows you to have a rifled
gun on the battlefield more so than you had during
the revolution. Earlier warfare, rifles were more of a sniper gun.
(02:35):
It wasn't your standard infantry gun.
Speaker 3 (02:37):
But by the Civil War.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
The conically shaped projectile allowed for a rifled musket, which
created a much more accurate firearm, which would show how
battlefield tactics would change throughout the war. But then the
other side, the more gruesome side of it, was the
injuries that.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
It caused to soldiers. And that was... Shattering of bone.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
So during the revolution, which is a century earlier, around
basketball would have more of a chance of a clean break,
which would sometimes allow for doctors on the battlefield to
set the injuries rather than have to amputate.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
But during the Civil War, there's a much higher.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
Rate of amputation because of what a clinically shaped projectile
will do to bone. And while that's a horrible thing,
to think about, if you look at the Spotsylvania stump,
you can see just that evisceration, that damage that can
be caused by a conically shaped projectile, just in the
sheer jagged nature of how the stump was cut down.
(03:39):
By 1864, the American Civil War had entered a new phase.
Speaker 3 (03:44):
Union General Ulysses S.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
Grant initiated what became known as the Overland Campaign, which
was a sustained series of engagements against Confederate General Robert E.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
Lee in Virginia.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
And unlike other campaigns, Grant's approach really emphasized continuous pressure.
So engaging Lee's army repeatedly, even after having heavy losses
on both sides, rather than withdrawing to regroup, which was
the standard at the beginning of the war.
Speaker 3 (04:12):
And the result was a.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
Series of battles marked by really high casualties and increasingly
entrenched positions. And many people actually attribute these types of
battles to early examples of trench warfare, which was a
shift from the kind of rank and file form that
soldiers were using earlier in the war. And trench warfare
is often most associated with World War I, but the
(04:36):
kind of origins of it are seen even in.
Speaker 3 (04:40):
The United States in the mid-19th century.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
One of the battles during this Overland Campaign with Ulysses S.
Grant was the Battle of Spotsylvania Courthouse, which was fought
in May of 1864.
Speaker 3 (04:55):
After the costly.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
Battle of the Wilderness, both armies moved southeast and they'd
entrenched themselves along defensive lines near Spotsylvania. And among these
kind of entrenched defensive lines, there was a protruding section
of a Confederate line that was known as the Muleshoe,
which was essentially a four-mile-long defensive line that would become
the focal point of Union.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
Attacks during the battle.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
On May 12th, Union forces launched a massive assault on
this position, breaking through part of the Confederate line and
initiating what became one of the most intense close quarters
engagements of the entire war. This location is called the
Bloody Angle, and during this breakthrough in the line, soldiers
fought for around 20 hours in continuous combat. And the
(05:42):
conditions in and of themselves deteriorated rapidly. Rain was falling
basically the entire time, and when you think about that
with a style of trench warfare, you now have trenches
where the soldiers are filled with mud.
Speaker 3 (05:55):
And visibility is relatively non-existent.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
But the firing did not stop, and thousands of rounds
were discharged at close range, often by soldiers standing only
yards apart. And it was within this concentrated zone of
fire that the oak tree once stood. The same volume
of rifle musket fire that killed and wounded thousands of
men that day also struck the tree. And shot after
(06:21):
shot tore into its trunk, gradually weakening it until something
during that prolonged engagement, it fell, cut down not by axes, but.
Speaker 3 (06:29):
By bullets alone. And when the fighting ended, only a.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
Portion of the trunk, which was about 22 inches high,
remained standing.
Speaker 3 (06:39):
After this horrific.
Speaker 2 (06:41):
Battle, the stump kind of became an immediate point of recognition,
almost something that memorialized the tragedies that happened there. And
soldiers remembered it. And visitors often sought.
Speaker 3 (06:55):
It out because.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
It represented something that statistics and written accounts would struggle
to convey. In the years after the war, the stump
was removed from the battlefield and eventually entered into different
institutional collections.
Speaker 3 (07:09):
So first, it was at the U.S.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
Army's Ordinance Museum, and then it was later transferred to
the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History.
Speaker 3 (07:16):
In 1888, where it stands today.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
And....
Speaker 2 (07:21):
There are some things that kind of are different about
the Civil War, or at least our understanding of the
memory of it, that do occur. For example, battlefield photography
became a major.
Speaker 3 (07:31):
Point of remembrance, but so is this stump.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
When you go to a museum, or when you work
in a museum, like I do, you always kind of
walk this fine line, especially in military history, of glamorizing
and or sterilizing the violence of the war. So you
see a lot of old museum exhibits where you see
uniforms or the guns and they're kind of divorced from
(07:56):
that human component.
Speaker 3 (07:58):
And curators weigh a lot when.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
They're deciding if they use something.
Speaker 3 (08:05):
That actually shows the result of that violence.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
A bloody uniform from someone who'd been struck down. And
now some museums are able to utilize that and interpret that.
But that is a really difficult pill for people to swallow.
It's really difficult for visitors to be faced.
Speaker 3 (08:23):
With something like that. And so this stump is just
a really rare artifact where you.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
Can come and really see what devastation, what violence, what
tragedy looked like during the Civil War without that kind
of glorification or glamorization of violence that you'd get if
you displayed something that was more human.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
And a terrific job on the production, editing, and storytelling
by our own Greg Hengler. And a special thanks to
Ashley Lubinsky. She's the former co-host of Discovery Channel's Master
of Arms. And she's also contributing to this recurring series,
Objects in American History. And what a story the Spotsylvania
(09:07):
stump tells. I mean, to imagine the kind of warfare
where that many bullets were exchanged, that it took down
an oak tree. The story of the Spotsylvania stump, part
of our Objects in American History series here on Our
American Stories. Thank you.
Host
Lee Habeeb
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