The 12th of May was ushered in with a tremendous assault by the whole of the Second Army Corps, led by Hancock. The assault was at first a sweeping success, but inside the captured work another entrenchment was encountered behind which the Confederates massed their forces, and then the real combat of the day began. It is an old story; we have all heard how the armies, locked in deadly embrace, fought hand to hand so that several times during the day the trenches had to be cleared of the dead to give foothold for the living, and how great oak-trees were actually severed by riddling bullets so that they fell as if cut down by a woodman's axe. The morning was not far gone before all our army was engaged either within the salient, or in attempts to relieve the pressure there by fresh assaults on other portions of the line. In one of these the Fifteenth regiment met its culminating sacrifice. At one side of the Bloody Angle was an earthwork as yet untried by assault. Let us take a peep at it. To do so we must first force our way through a belt of dense pine thicket full of dead branches that tear clothes and flesh. At the edge of the thicket we come upon an open space. It is perhaps two hundred yards wide. Look across! At the farther side you see first a row of abatis--trees felled with their branches pointing outward and toward you, trimmed to sharpened points, and if you could examine closely you would find many fiendish "foot-locks" cunningly made to catch and trip any one trying to force his way through this savage fence. Beyond the abatis and above it rises a yellow earthwork, the top laid in logs, with the topmost log raised a few inches so that the defenders can fire through without exposing themselves. Here and there you see the muzzles of cannon gaping through embrasures, arranged in angles to sweep the open field with flank fire. The horrible, the hopeless task of the Jersey Brigade, with the Fifteenth regiment in the lead, is to capture that earthwork. The attempt seems hopeless, but attack, attack everywhere is the word to-day; no joint in the enemy's harness must be left unsmitten. Spottsylvania was not a place where only easy things were tried.