With Grant And Meade From The Wilderness To Appomattox

Theodore Lyman was a member of the staff of General George Meade, who commanded the Army of the Potomac during the Civil War from 1863-1865, including most famously at the Battle of Gettysburg. Beginning in 1864, Meade's army was accompanied by Ulysses S. Grant, who made most of the command decisions for the Army of the Potomac even though Meade continued to nominally be in command of it. With Grant and Meade from the Wilderness to Appomattox is an amazing collection of Lyman's letters, in which he discusses contemporary events during the last year of the war, including the Overland Campaign, the siege of Petersburg, and Lee's surrender to Grant at Appomattox.

When Gen. Robert E. Lee fled from Petersburg and Richmond, Virginia, in April 1865, many observers did not realize that the Civil War had reached its nadir. A large number of Confederates, from Jefferson Davis down to the rank-and-file, were determined to continue fighting. Though Union successes had nearly extinguished the Confederacy's hope for an outright victory, the South still believed it could force the Union to grant a negotiated peace that would salvage some of its war aims. As evidence of the Confederacy's determination, two major Union campaigns, along with a number of smaller engagements, were required to quell the continued organized Confederate military resistance. In Spring 1865 Perry D. Jamieson juxtaposes for the first time the major campaign against Lee that ended at Appomattox and Gen. William T. Sherman's march north through the Carolinas, which culminated in Gen. Joseph E. Johnston's surrender at Bennett Place. Jamieson also addresses the efforts required to put down armed resistance in the Deep South and the Trans-Mississippi. As both sides fought for political goals following Lee's surrender, these campaigns had significant consequences for the political-military context that shaped the end of the war as well as Reconstruction.

Business is a battlefield. Learn from two of America's greatest generals.

Discusses how the public opinion of Ulysses Grant has changed from that of a revered President to the twentieth-century view of him as only a mediocre one, describing how the change is paralleled by a reassessment of the Civil War period itself.

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The final year of the Civil War witnessed a profound transformation in the practice of modern warfare, a shift that produced unprecedented consequences for the soldiers fighting on the front lines. In The Army of the Potomac in the Overland and Petersburg Campaigns, Steven E. Sodergren examines the transition to trench warfare, the lengthy campaigns of attrition that resulted, and how these seemingly grim new realities affected the mindset and morale of Union soldiers. The 1864 Overland Campaign created tremendous physical and emotional suffering for the men of the Army of the Potomac as they faced a remarkable increase in the level and frequency of combat. By the end of this critical series of battles, surviving Union soldiers began to express considerable doubt in their cause and their leaders, as evidenced by widespread demoralization and the rising number of men deserting and disobeying orders. Yet, while the Petersburg campaign that followed further exposed the Army of the Potomac to the horrors of trench warfare, it proved both physically and psychologically regenerative. Comprehending that the extensive fortification network surrounding them benefitted their survival, soldiers quickly adjusted to life in the trenches despite the harsh conditions. The army’s static position allowed the Union logistical structure to supply the front lines with much-needed resources like food and mail—even a few luxuries. The elevated morale that resulted, combined with the reelection of Abraham Lincoln in November 1864 and the increasing number of deserters from the Confederate lines, only confirmed the growing belief among the soldiers in the trenches that Union victory was inevitable. Taken together, these aspects of the Petersburg experience mitigated the negative effects of trench warfare and allowed men to adapt more easily to their new world of combat. Sodergren explores the many factors that enabled the Army of the Potomac to endure the brutal physical conditions of trench warfare and emerge with a renewed sense of purpose as fighting resumed on the open battlefield in 1865. Drawing from soldiers’ letters and diaries, official military correspondence, and court-martial records, he paints a vivid picture of the daily lives of Union soldiers as they witnessed the beginnings of a profound shift in the way the world imagined and waged large-scale warfare.

May 1864. The Army of the Potomac and the Army of Northern Virginia spent three days in brutal close-quarter combat in the Wilderness that left the tangled thickets aflame. No one could have imagined a more infernal battlefield—until the armies moved down the road to Spotsylvania Court House. Even the march itself was unprecedented. For three years the armies had fought battles and disengaged after each one. That pattern changed on the night of May 7. Instead of leaving the Wilderness to regroup, Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant led the Federal army southward, skirmishing with Confederates all the way. “There will be no turning back,” he had declared. He lived up to his word. By dawn on May 8, the armies had tussled their way ten miles down the road and opened another large-scale fight that would last until May 21. “One thing is certain of this campaign thus far,” explained Dr. Daniel Holt of the 121st New York: “More blood has been shed, more lives lost, and more human suffering undergone than ever before in a season.” The fighting launched a score of new place-names and events that would sear themselves into the American consciousness, such as Spindle Field, Upton’s assault, the Mule Shoe, the Bloody Angle, and the Harris Farm. The casualties exacted at Spotsylvania exceeded those of the Wilderness by thousands. The fighting severely tested the offensive capabilities of Gen. Robert E. Lee’s Southern army, just as the defensive posture his men embraced would, in turn, test the limits of Federal endurance. A Tempest of Iron and Lead: Spotsylvania Court House, May 8–21, 1864 is a comprehensive and comprehensible study of this endlessly fascinating campaign. Author Chris Mackowski is intimately familiar with the battle of Spotsylvania Court House. He is a former historian at Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park, and he continues to give tours of the battlefield as the historian-in-residence at Stevenson Ridge, a historic property on the battlefield’s eastern front. His meticulous knowledge of the landscape and familiarity with primary source materials, earned over nearly two decades—coupled with outstanding maps and helpful images—create a readable and satisfying single-volume account the campaign has so richly deserved.

In the seventy-three succinct essays gathered in The Enduring Civil War, celebrated historian Gary W. Gallagher highlights the complexity and richness of the war, from its origins to its memory, as topics for study, contemplation, and dispute. He places contemporary understanding of the Civil War, both academic and general, in conversation with testimony from those in the Union and the Confederacy who experienced and described it, investigating how mid-nineteenth-century perceptions align with, or deviate from, current ideas regarding the origins, conduct, and aftermath of the war. The tension between history and memory forms a theme throughout the essays, underscoring how later perceptions about the war often took precedence over historical reality in the minds of many Americans. The array of topics Gallagher addresses is striking. He examines notable books and authors, both Union and Confederate, military and civilian, famous and lesser known. He discusses historians who, though their names have receded with time, produced works that remain pertinent in terms of analysis or information. He comments on conventional interpretations of events and personalities, challenging, among other things, commonly held notions about Gettysburg and Vicksburg as decisive turning points, Ulysses S. Grant as a general who profligately wasted Union manpower, the Gettysburg Address as a watershed that turned the war from a fight for Union into one for Union and emancipation, and Robert E. Lee as an old-fashioned general ill-suited to waging a modern mid-nineteenth-century war. Gallagher interrogates recent scholarly trends on the evolving nature of Civil War studies, addressing crucial questions about chronology, history, memory, and the new revisionist literature. The format of this provocative and timely collection lends itself to sampling, and readers might start in any of the subject groupings and go where their interests take them.