Bloody spring : forty days that sealed the Confederacy's fate

Bloody spring Forty days that sealed the Confederacy's fate

Joseph Wheelan

Book - 2014

In the spring of 1864, Virginia remained unbroken, its armies having repelled Northern armies for more than two years. Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia had defeated the campaigns of four Union generals, and Lee's veterans were confident they could crush the Union offensive this spring, too. But their adversary in 1864 was a different kind of Union commander-Ulysses S. Grant. The new Union general-in-chief had never lost a major battle while leading armies in the West. A quiet, rumpled man of simple tastes and a bulldog's determination, Grant would lead the Army of the Potomac in its quest to destroy Lee's army. During six weeks in May and June 1864, Grant's army campaigned as no Union army ever had. During ...nearly continual combat operations, the Army of the Potomac battered its way through Virginia, skirting Richmond and crossing the James River on one of the longest pontoon bridges ever built. No campaign in North American history was as bloody as the Overland Campaign. When it ended outside Petersburg, more than 100,000 men had been killed, wounded, or captured on battlefields in the Wilderness, near Spotsylvania Court House, and at Cold Harbor. Although Grant's casualties were nearly twice Lee's, the Union could replace its losses. The Confederacy could not.

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Location Call Number   Status
2nd Floor 973.736/Wheelan Checked In
Subjects
Overland Campaign, Va., 1864.
Published
Boston, MA : Da Capo Press, a member of the Perseus Books Group 2014.
Language
English
Main Author
Joseph Wheelan (-)
Physical Description
411 pages ; 24 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 375-389) and index.
ISBN
9780306822063
  • Spring 1864
  • Two bloody roads: the Wilderness
  • The red hour: Spotsylvania
  • The battle that never happened: the North Anna
  • "Not war but murder": Cold Harbor
  • Race to stalemate: the James River
  • Epilogue: the beginning of the end.
Review by Kirkus Book Review

The author of Terrible Swift Sword: The Life of Philip H. Sheridan (2012) and other works about the Civil War returns with a tactic-by-tactic, blow-by-blow account of the sanguinary actions between the forces of Ulysses Grant and Robert E. Lee near the end of the war.Wheelan begins in March 1864 and ends in mid-June. In between are grim images, insights into the characters of Lee, Grant (24 cigars per day!), Abraham Lincoln and others, as well as some second-guessing and deeply informed reasoning about why the North ultimately prevailed. By 1864, the Union Army was considerably larger and better equipped than the Confederates, as Wheelan continually reminds us. However, Leewhose abilities the author patently admireswas tactically superior to most of the commanders he faced and had kept victory within the South's reach. But Grant was a different animal. As Wheelan shows us repeatedly, he simply sent waves of soldiers into battle. Although he sustained substantial losses, he also inflicted the same, and the South simply could not win a war of attrition. So the battles at the Wilderness, Spotsylvania Court House and Cold Harborthough not really "victories" for the Northwere nonetheless successful due to their devastating effects on Confederate troop strength and supplies. Wheelan also provides interesting side storiese.g., the career of Gen. George Meade, the flamboyant brilliance of George Armstrong Custer and the untimely death of Jeb Stuart. Some of the horrors are hard to readnot just the mere numbers of casualties, but the details about rotting piles and parts of dead human beings. The author also distributes helpful maps throughout, but he does not comment on the justness or causes or necessity of the war.Well-researched and -argueda text that Civil War scholars and buffs will consume with glee. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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