“The success of this attack depended upon its secrecy, and so all were ordered to keep very quiet and commands were to be given in a whisper.”–Diary of Josiah Marshall Favill.

May 11th. Everything quiet this morning. The enemy hug their entrenchments and are now around the Spottsylvania court house. In the afternoon Miles’s brigade was sent back to Todd’s tavern, but returned to camp in the evening, without finding any trace of the enemy. He never fired a shot, I think. Shortly after dark, we received orders to fall in and march, our division following Birney. The night was very dark and rainy, and the roads narrow and bad, but we stepped out briskly and very quietly. About midnight the column halted near a house, the “Brown house,” closed up and massed in close column of brigade, and was then informed it was to assault the enemy’s works in front, which at this point forms a salient angle. The success of this attack depended upon its secrecy, and so all were ordered to keep very quiet and commands were to be given in a whisper. The troops moved up near the enemy’s picket line, supposed to be twelve or fifteen hundred yards from the enemy’s works. Nobody knew exactly the position of the works or the nature of the ground, and so we had to take our chances, moving forward till we struck them. In front of our division the ground gradually ascended and was sparsely covered with trees, shrubs and bushes till near the rebel works, where it was entirely open. Birney’s division was on our right, also in brigade masses, with Mott in rear of him, while Gibbon’s division remained in reserve in rear of all. It took a long time to form the division in column of assault; each brigade was closely massed, all the mounted officers dismounted, and the orders were to advance without firing a shot, and by simple weight of numbers crush everything in front of us. Before starting, the engineer officers found the general direction of the rebel lines by compass and pointed it out to Barlow and the brigade commanders. There was another house in front, called the Landron house, which was supposed to be some four hundred yards from the rebel works, and this was to be our principal guide. The Fourth brigade was on the left, the Second brigade on the right, with Miles and Brooke in command. The Third brigade, now commanded by Brown, and Smyth’s Irish brigade formed the second line and were to advance close behind the first line.