The contest from the right of the Sixth to the left of the Second Corps was kept up throughout the day along the whole line. Repeatedly the trenches had to be cleared of the dead. An oak tree twenty-two inches in diameter was cut down by musket-balls. Men leaped upon the breastworks, firing until shot down. The battle of the "angle" is said to have been the most awful in duration and intensity in modern times. Battle-line after battle-line, bravely obeying orders, was annihilated. The entrenchments were shivered and shattered, trunks of trees carved into split brooms. Sometimes the contestants came so close together that their muskets met, muzzle to muzzle, and their flags almost intertwined with each other as they waved in the breeze. As they fought with the desperation of madmen, the living would stand on the bodies of the dead to reach over the breastworks with their weapons of slaughter. Lee hurled his army with unparalleled vigor against his opponent five times during the day, but each time was repulsed. Until three o'clock the next morning the slaughter continued, when the Confederates sank back into their second line of entrenchments, leaving their opponents where they had stood in the morning. All the fighting on the 12th was not done at the "Bloody Angle." Burnside on the left of Hancock engaged Early's troops and was defeated, while on the other side of the salient Wright succeeded in driving Anderson back. The question has naturally arisen why that "salient" was regarded of such vital importance as to induce the two chief commanders to force their armies into such a hand-to-hand contest that must inevitably result in unparalleled and wholesale slaughter. It was manifest, however, that Grant had shown generalship in finding the weak point in Lee's line for attack. It was imperative that he hold the gain made by his troops. Lee could ill afford the loss resistance would entail, but he could not withdraw his army during the day without disaster. The men on both sides seemed to comprehend the gravity of the situation, that it was a battle to the death for that little point of entrenchment. Without urging by officers, and sometimes without officers, they fell into line and fought and bled and died in myriads as though inspired by some unseen power. Here men rushed to their doom with shouts of courage and eagerness. The pity of it all was manifested by the shocking scene on that battlefield the next day. Piles of dead lay around the "Bloody Angle," a veritable "Hell's Hole" on both sides of the entrenchments, four layers deep in places, shattered and torn by bullets and hoofs and clubbed muskets, while beneath the layers of dead, it is said, there could be seen quivering limbs of those who still lived.