And Keep Moving On: The Virginia Campaign, May-June 1864

Military Review, Jan-Feb, 2004 by James Gates

AND KEEP MOVING ON: The Virginia Campaign, May-June 1864, Mark Grimsely, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, 2002, 283 pages, $45.00.

Although not groundbreaking like his first book, The Hard Hand of War: Union Military Policy Toward Southern Civilians, 1861-1865 (Cambridge University Press, New York, 1997), Ohio State University Professor Mark Grimsley's new book, And Keep Moving On: The Virginia Campaign, May-June 1864, is a superb overview of the 1864 Overland Campaign.

Grimsley presents little new information, but he continues the recent trend of elevating Union General Ulysses S. Grant's reputation without lowering Confederate General Robert E. Lee's. In fact, Grimsley argues that rather than a campaign by Lee, the "master of maneuver," versus Grant, "the butcher," the two men were much more alike than many will admit. The reason being that both men were so alike in strategy, tactics, and temperament.

After the Civil War, Grant's reputation suffered. He was maligned as a butcher--a heartless commander who simply bludgeoned his way to victory. Grimsely shows that this was not the case. The 1864 Overland Campaign was much more than simply launching frontal attacks between the Army of the Potomac and the Army of Northern Virginia. Grant saw the war in totality, ordering General Nathaniel Banks to drive for Mobile; General William Sherman to drive on Atlanta; General Benjamin Butler to threaten Richmond from the southeast; and General Franz Sigel to cut off Richmond's supply lines in the Shenandoah. Grant hoped to tie down Confederate forces so Union numerical strength could be effective somewhere, or everywhere. Only Sherman understood the "new war"; all of the other commanders failed or retreated after limited gains.

Grimsely shows Grant as continually trying to maneuver Lee into the open. Grant soon discovered, however, that he was not facing an average general. For the first time, Grant had met his equal.

By anticipating Grant's actions, Lee parried each of Grant's thrusts, forcing head-to-head confrontations. But, just as Grant could not catch Lee in the open, Lee could not wrest the initiative from Grant. Grant succeeded in tying Lee's army down and inflicting over 30,000 casualties. Unfortunately, to do this, Grant's army incurred over 50,000 casualties. These casualties destroyed both armies' offensive capabilities.

With the Union defeat at Cold Harbor, Grant lost his last chance to catch Lee in the open. Grant launched the ill-fated Petersburg Campaign, and just as at Vicksburg and Donelson, Grant maneuvered his enemy into a siege. At this point, assuming that President Abraham Lincoln would win a second term, Grant felt it was only a matter of time before the Army of Northern Virginia would fall. In this respect, Lee had met his match.

One of the problems with a history of the Overland Campaign is the sense one gets of a lack of completion. When all is said and done, neither side had an advantage, and the end of the war was no closer than at the outset. The reader wishes that after the armies suffered nearly 90,000 casualties there had been a more definitive ending than a stalemate.

As an operational history, this book provides a good discussion about the bloodiest summer in U.S. history. Grimsley shows the awful tragedy of what can happen when two armies fight force-on-force instead of asymmetrically. While readers interested in the unit-by-unit and minute-by-minute detail should continue to read Gordon C. Rhea's works, Grimsley has produced one of the finest operational Civil War histories in recent memory.

MAJ James Gates, USAF, Lake Ridge, Virginia