This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1894 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XXIII. THE BLOODY ANGLE--THE PRISONER AND HIS BETRAYER. When in future times an American is tempted to the performance of an act which may tend to involve his country in civil war, may his good judgment counsel him to pause while he reads and reflects upon the story of the " Bloody Angle." Not in this book! Heaven forbid that I should shock its readers with a history which, after thirty years, I cannot read in the heat of a summer evening without a convulsive chill. It is with considerable hesitation that I give the slight sketch of it which my story seems to require. The place which gained this sanguinary title was an angle of nearly ninety degrees in the line of the Confederate field defences, extending northward from Spottsylvania Court-House about one and one-half miles and then abruptly turned westward. On the llth and 12th days of May, 1864, the two great generals of their time, each at the head of a powerful army of veteran soldiers, confronted each other on the plains of Virginia. Accident selected the field for most terrible fighting of these armies, the most deadly combat which ever took place upon the western continent. It was just within and around the sharp corner in these Confederate works which projected northward and toward the Federal advance. Behind this angle was the division of Major-General Edward Johnson, numbering very nearly three thousand men and comprising twenty pieces of artillery. In front of it, about a half-mile away, was Hancock's command of the Union army, which comprised the divisions of Barlow and Birney. I am perfectly aware that in the days when the short-sword of the Eomans conquered the world, warriors necessarily fought to their death within its short length of each other; that there must...