Rating: 
Summary: Great Book
Review: Like Rhea's other books, this book is meticulously researched and Rhea continues to offer his analysis of everything surrounding both armies, most interestingly the personality conflicts in the chains of command.
However, there were a few things in this book that made it the least readable book among the 4 books of his Overland Campaign series:
#1 - The amount of technical detail makes the reading in some spots very bland. This was not a problem in any of the other 3 books.
#2 - This book had a thesis type feel to it because Rhea sets out to prove not only that the Cold Harbor campaign didn't make Grant a butcher, but also that Grant and Lee were equals whose generalships were at times great and at times shoddy.
In my opinion, Rhea is not giving Lee enough credit for his repulse of Grant in every major campaign of the Overland campaign from the Wilderness to Cold Harbor. Other than May 12, the Army of the Potomac could not claim a tactical victory in any serious contest, despite having a 2 to 1 advantage in manpower.
Lee's defenses were masterful through the North Anna River. He suffered dysentery and was ill throughout the Cold Harbor portion of the Overland Campaign and his subordinates were able to defend the line against the Union's assaults.
Rhea credits Grant for continuing to move forward in the face of repulse after repulse, which certainly is a testament to his aggressive nature. However, Rhea writes as if Lee's army is on equal footing with Grant's army throughout the book. Given his incredible deficiency in manpower, it's hard to hold it against Lee that he was unable to wrest the initiative away.
Lee's mistakes in the Cold Harbor campaign can be attributed to the fog of war. Grant and Meade don't even personally supervise the Confederate lines before ordering assaults. And while Rhea points out that both armies had lost nearly the same proportion of strength, that still means Grant had lost 22,000 more casualties than Lee in the span of a month.
#3 - Rhea's book doesn't cover the entire conclusion of the Cold Harbor campaign, although I assume it's likely he'll cover the "truce controversy" in the next book, since this one only covers up to June 3. Rhea offers plenty of proof that points to Grant being a tactician, not a butcher. At the same time, this book doesn't cover the fact that Grant needlessly left the wounded to die on the field instead of offering official truces as dictated by the rules of warfare, knowing full well that most of the wounded were his own men.
Regardless of these reservations, thankfully Rhea leaves the book hanging with the seeming intention of writing a sequel covering the armies' movements toward the James.
Rating:
Summary: Cold Harbor as campaign history...
Review: 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: 
Summary: Cold Harbor
Review: Mr. Rhea has provided a clear, lucid account of that portion of the Overland Campaign from the North Anna River to Grant's decision to invest Petersberg instead of Richmond. Although somewhat over generous in presenting minor details concerning the movements of the Armies and details of the various assaults,
his narrative is fairly easy to follow and to comprehend. I especially appreciated the numerous, detailed maps which did not overlook showing locations whose place names appeared in the text.
|
