General Edward Johnson and his division of about four thousand men were captured in the angle. General Stuart was also taken. He and Hancock had been friends in their student days at West Point. The story goes that Hancock, recognizing his prisoner, said, "How are you, Stuart?" and offered his hand. The hot Confederate answered, "I am _General_ Stuart of the Confederate army, and under the circumstances I decline to take your hand." Hancock answered, "Under any other circumstances I should not have offered it!"
But there was no time for bantering. The very earth round about was in the chaos of roaring battle. Hancock had taken twenty guns with their horses, and about thirty battle flags. It was a tremendous capture, if he could hold his ground. No officer of the Union army ever showed to better advantage. The world may well forgive the touch of vanity and bluster in the undaunted Hancock, as he sent this despatch to Grant: "I have used up Johnson and am going into Hill." He found, however, that he should have terrible work even to keep the gain that he had made.
Lee no sooner perceived what was done than he threw heavy masses upon the position to retake it from the captors. Hancock was now on the wrong side of the angle! The Confederates came on during the day in five successive charges, the like of which for valor was hardly ever witnessed. The contested ground was literally piled with dead. There was hand-to-hand fighting. Men bayoneted each other through the crevices of the logs that had been piled up for defences. The storm of battle swept back and forth until the salient gained that name of "Death Angle" by which it will ever be known. The place became then and there the bloodiest spot that ever was washed with human life in America. The bushes and trees round about were literally shot away. At one point an oak tree, more than eighteen inches in diameter, was completely eaten off at the man-level by the bullet storm that beat against it. That tree in its fall crushed several men of a South Carolina regiment who still stood and fought in the death harvest that was going on.
The counter assaults of the Confederates, however, were in vain. They inflicted terrible losses, and were themselves mowed down by thousands; but they could not and did not retake the angle. Hancock and his heroes could not be dislodged. The battle of Spottsylvania died away with the night into sullen and awful silence, which was broken only by the groans of thousands of wounded men who could not be recovered from the bloody earth on which they had fallen. The antagonists lay crouching like lions, only a lion's spring apart, and neither would suffer the other, even for the sake of their common American humanity, to recover his dead.