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Title: Cold Harbor: Grant and Lee, May 26-June 3, 1864 by Gordon C. Rhea ISBN: 0-8071-2803-1 Publisher: Louisiana State University Press Pub. Date: 01 September, 2002 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $34.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4 (9 reviews)
Rating: 2
Summary: Can't See the Forest for the Trees
Comment: In this fourth work in a series involving Grant vs. Lee, the author continues to lose the reader in the details. I am appreciative of the author's indepth research, but his insistence on including every letter and diary that he can find does not make his book better. The first two books by this author were both highly readible and insightful. In this volume he has completely bought into the revisionist viewpoint of Grant and Lee, i.e. that Grant has not received nearly the credit that he deserves and that Lee is vastly overrated. In the context of the Civil War period covered in this book, there is some truth to that. Though this book makes some valuable contributions overall I did not find it up to the standard set by Rhea's Wilderness and Spotsylvania books.
Rating: 4
Summary: Cold Harbor as campaign history...
Comment: Most contemporary histories of the Civil War cover the 1864 Overland Campaign as a series of maneuvers from the Rapidan river ultimately to Appomattox with emphasis on the major battles fought at the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, North Anna River, Cold Harbor and the siege at Petersburg. Little is publicized concerning the planning and marches to and from these prestigous battlefields, until Gordon Rhea's study of this series of battles. In Cold Harbor, Rhea's latest in this series, he comes clean with the details of the maneuvers from the North Anna river to Cold Harbor and the ensuing battles on June 1st and 3rd, 1864. By providing such a complete and comprehensive campaign history, Rhea sacrifices (in my opinion) some of his previous improvements in "readability" and essentially redefines what a "campaign history" reads like.
Even though this period does encompass a significant amount of maneuvering, cavalry battles, small infantry engagements and entrenchments, Rhea, as in his previous works, feels obligated to discuss all of it in detail. While he does accomplish an amazingingly organized study of this amazingly complex series of movements, he loses many a reader to these details and ultimately the whole book suffers somewhat in terms of quality.
This isn't to say that this is a bad book...on the contrary, as I've previously stated, Rhea presents an impressive study, taking no liberties in his research to uncover what really happened and when. We start out with the armies facing each other at the North Anna river. U.S. Grant, having realized that R.E. Lee's inverted "V" entrenchment south of the river is indeed a trap, decides to again move "by the left flank" and steals a march on Lee by crossing the Pamunkey river with his sights set on Richmond. Lee finally discovers this and sets up strong defenses along Totopotomoy creek between Grant and Richmond. Cavalry battles at Haw's Shop/Enon Church, Bethesda Church and Matadequin Creek presage the infantry "skirmishes" along Shady Grove Road and Old Church Road.
Then "a fateful cascade of events had brought Cold Harbor to the forefront Grant's and Lee's attention. Federal commanders initially had no intention of using the place in their offensive operations. They considered the road junction significant only because Confederates might exploit it as a staging area to harass Union supply lines and thwart (Union General Baldy) Smith's arrival." Lee, sensing Grant's intention to capture the crossrads and use it as a launching pad for an invasion of Richmond, sends Cavalry to Cold Harbor to prevent them from taking it. Union Cavalry under Phil Sheridan fears that the Confederates plan to attack him there and goes on the offensive. Lee conversely thinks that the Cavalry attack is the vanguard for a major Union attack and shifts an entire infantry corps there. Grant sees this and starts his infantry there and the engagement is on.
The famous confrontations on June 1st and 3rd mark the true battles at Cold Harbor and Rhea hits his stride in discussing them: "Writers later alluded to a 'Cold Harbor' syndrome, claiming that the carnage Union soldiers witnessed in the fighting there persuaded them to shy away from assaulting entrenched positions. In fact, by the time the Army of the Potomac reached Cold Harbor, veterans had already learned that valuable lesson. Cold Harbor is where newcomers discovered what old timers already knew." Famous engagements involving the 2nd Connecticut Heavy Artillery and the 8th New York Heavy Artillery are detailed here making these stories a remarkable companion for the History Channel's "Civil War Combat" episode on Cold Harbor. These army-wide assaults against the entrenched Confederate positions have driven many historians to indict Grant for mis-management of this battle and garnering him the reputation of a "butcher". Rhea dispels these myths: "When viewed in the war's larger context, the June 3 attack falls short of it's popular reputation for slaughter. Grant lost more men each day in the Wilderness and on two different days at Spotsylvania Court House than he did on Jume 3, making his main effort at Cold Harbor only the fifth bloodiest day for the Federals since crossing the Rapidan." What Grant and the Union army is guilty of is army-wide coordination. Time and again, they have an advantage taken away when coordinated movements go awry and the Confederates are able to capitalize...Rhea documents these in his closing chapter and discusses Grant's feeling that this was not a major defeat, but just another obstacle in his road to defeating Lee's army.
A study not for the general reader, but an essential component for historians and of Civil War history, Gordon Rhea's latest book continues his impressive documantation of the close of the war in Virginia and I would encourage all Civil War buffs to read these books.
Rating: 4
Summary: A Stand-Up Fight in an Open Field Against an Intrenched Foe
Comment: Gordon C. Rhea marshals an impressive mass of detail about the events between Ulysses S Grant's movement from the lines on the North Anna River to the end of the Battle of Cold Harbor proper on June 3, 1864. I have heard many of the opinions about the battle ranging from the judgment of Grant as an unfeeling butcher on a large scale to Rhea's revisionist approach, which puts the casualties into some perspective for the campaign and the war as a whole.
The title of my review, which comes from a quote by Lt Col Charles Cummings of the 17th Vermont, is a good description of the main battle. Cold Harbor looks forward to the grim battle lines of the First World War, where men dug in and ventured from their trenches at their peril. As the war went on, the veteran troops on both sides learned to dig in. It was the gung-ho new regiments from the North that had the heaviest casualties: They had not yet developed the basic survival skills.
Rhea's study went in for such heavy detail that at times, I yearned for an occasional editorial perspective, which this author pretty much restricted to the first and last chapters.
Robert E Lee came out relatively unsinged from Cold Harbor, but Grant has taken much of the blame for the unfortunate general staff culture of the Army of the Potomac. Remember that it was only a short time before that he took over the command, and he had to make do with prima donnas like Meade -- who comes off particularly badly -- as well as Burnside, Warren, and Wright. Even Baldy Smith, Grant's friend whom he had rescued from the country club atmosphere of Butler's command at Bermuda Hundred, spent most of the time (though somewhat justifiably) complaining about lack of food and ammunition, and contradictory commands from the top.
After I finished reading this book, I looked up Grant's own memoirs and saw an interesting bit that Rhea omits entirely: After the battle, there was an exchange of letters between Grant and Lee (which Grant quotes verbatim) in which the Union general requests a truce to collect the dead and wounded. Lee refused repeatedly, until several days later, by which time only two of the many thousands wounded left on the battlefield survived. This is a serious charge and should be addressed in any book on Cold Harbor, if only to dismiss it. Perhaps Rhea will put it in his next volume?
I was enchanted by Lee's inherent ability to create good ground for a battle by his knowledge of the countryside and his superior relationship to his staff officers. He was for certain a formidable and great adversary. Grant, on his side, was walking on eggshells. The nominating convention to select a candidate to run against Lincoln was about to take place: A complete route of the Union forces would have led to, God save us all, a President George B. McClellan.
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Title: To the North Anna River: Grant and Lee, May 13-25, 1864 by Gordon C. Rhea ISBN: 0807125350 Publisher: Louisiana State University Press Pub. Date: 01 May, 2000 List Price(USD): $34.95 |
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Title: The Battles for Spotsylvania Court House and the Road to Yellow Tavern May 7-12, 1864 by Gordon C. Rhea ISBN: 0807121363 Publisher: Louisiana State University Press Pub. Date: 01 May, 1997 List Price(USD): $34.95 |
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Title: The Battle of the Wilderness May 5-6, 1864 by Gordon C. Rhea ISBN: 0807118737 Publisher: Louisiana State University Press Pub. Date: 01 July, 1994 List Price(USD): $34.95 |
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Title: The Fredericksburg Campaign: Winter War on the Rappahannock by Francis Augustin O'Reilly ISBN: 0807128090 Publisher: Louisiana State University Press Pub. Date: 01 November, 2002 List Price(USD): $39.95 |
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Title: Chancellorsville by Stephen W. Sears ISBN: 039587744X Publisher: Mariner Books Pub. Date: 22 June, 1998 List Price(USD): $17.00 |
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