A fire in the wilderness The first battle between Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee

John Reeves, 1962-

Book - 2021

In the spring of 1864, President Lincoln feared that he might not be able to save the Union. The Army of the Potomac had performed poorly over the previous two years, and many Northerners were understandably critical of the war effort. Lincoln assumed he'd lose the November election, and he firmly believed a Democratic successor would seek peace immediately, spelling an end to the Union. A Fire in the Wilderness tells the story of that perilous time when the future of the United States depended on the Union Army's success in a desolate forest roughly sixty-five miles from the nation's capital. At the outset of the Battle of the Wilderness, General Lee's Army of Northern Virginia remained capable of defeating the Army of ...the Potomac. But two days of relentless fighting in dense Virginia woods, Robert E. Lee was never again able to launch offensive operations against Grant's army. Lee, who faced tremendous difficulties replacing fallen soldiers, lost 11,125 men--or 17% of his entire force. On the opposing side, the Union suffered 17,666 casualties. The alarming casualties do not begin to convey the horror of this battle, one of the most gruesome in American history. The impenetrable forest and gunfire smoke made it impossible to view the enemy. Officers couldn't even see their own men during the fighting. The incessant gunfire caused the woods to catch fire, resulting in hundreds of men burning to death. "It was as though Christian men had turned to fiends, and hell itself had usurped the place of the earth," wrote one officer. When the fighting finally subsided during the late evening of the second day, the usually stoical Grant threw himself down on his cot and cried.

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Subjects
Published
New York : Pegasus Books 2021.
Language
English
Main Author
John Reeves, 1962- (author)
Edition
First Pegasus Books cloth edition
Item Description
Maps on lining papers.
Physical Description
270 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color), maps ; 24 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 261-291) and index.
ISBN
9781643137001
  • 1. The Ghost of Stonewall Jackson
  • 2. Private William Reeves
  • 3. Confederates on the Turnpike
  • 4. The Elephant Appears
  • 5. Raging Fire at Saunders Field
  • 6. Confederates on the Orange Plank Road
  • 7. Nighttime in the Wilderness
  • 8. Lee to the Rear
  • 9. High Noon on the Orange Plank Road
  • 10. Robert E. Lee's Enticing Opportunity
  • 11. Grant's Night March
  • 12. "The Great Army of the Wounded"
  • 13. The Bloody Angle
  • 14. Arlington
  • 15. Gen. Wads-worth's Body
  • 16. Fathers and Sons
  • Acknowledgments
  • Selected Bibliography
  • Endnotes
  • Index
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Historian Reeves (The Lost Indictment of Robert E. Lee) delivers an exhaustive and intermittently riveting account of the 1864 Battle of the Wilderness. Interweaving high-level strategy with the perspectives of frontline soldiers, Reeves recounts how Union Army commander Ulysses S. Grant planned to cross Virginia's Rapidan River, pass through the heavily forested region known as the Wilderness, and attack Gen. Robert E. Lee on his right flank before capturing Richmond and ending the war. The odds were overwhelming in Grant's favor (120,000 Union soldiers vs. 65,000 Confederates), but the dense woods neutralized the North's advantages. The fighting began on May 5, when Union troops, launching an attack, stumbled onto Confederate defenses. Over the next several days, wadding from paper cartridges ignited the underbrush, turning the battlefield into a "raging inferno" and contributing to heavy losses on both sides. Grant eventually moved his troops to the nearby town of Spotsylvania Court House, where some of the heaviest fighting of the war again produced no clear winner, but contributed to the steady attrition of soldiers that would eventually doom the South. Reeves has a firm grasp of the subject and skillfully draws from firsthand accounts, but often stops the action for long-winded asides. This deep dive is best suited for Civil War completists. (May)

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

Documenting the first clash between two of the Civil War's most iconic figures. "Not since Napoleon fought the Duke of Wellington at Waterloo in 1815," writes historian Reeves, "had two such celebrated commanders faced one another in the field." The author sets the scene in the spring of 1864, when the Army of the Potomac, huge and well equipped but not terribly confident after three years of mostly painful experiences at the hands of Robert E. Lee's smaller Army of Northern Virginia, began the year's campaign. Perhaps the North's principal advantage was its commander, Ulysses Grant, who understood that wars are won by resources and persistence, both of which he possessed. He faced a very aggressive commander who focused on battlefield victories when preserving his army might have been a better idea. Marching south in early May, Grant's army entered the Wilderness, "a tangled forest of underbrush and thickets." He hoped to pass through quickly, but the Army of the Potomac did nothing quickly, and Lee attacked the following day. Thick brush restricted visibility to a few yards, and copious rifle smoke restricted it even more. Units became lost or panicked or attacked into the unknown with suicidal results. Communications were worse than usual; messages were delayed or lost, units attacked piecemeal. At the end of the second day, the advance seemed stalled, and the Union had suffered greater losses. But instead of imitating his predecessors by retreating north to recover, Grant continued on toward Richmond. Another year of fighting remained, but Lee's shrunken army never attacked again. Reeves offers visceral descriptions of the fires that spread through the dry forest, burning to death hundreds of wounded soldiers, as well as vivid accounts of movements, battles, debates between commanding generals, and a generous helping of anecdotes from individual soldiers. He has clearly absorbed the confused geography of the Wilderness, but the maps could use improvement. Readers should keep a Civil War military atlas on hand. An expert account of a particularly horrific Civil War battle. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.