Command Conflicts in Grant’s Overland Campaign: Ambition and Animosity in the Army of the Potomac

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This book follows the men of the 5th Corps and the Army of the Potomac through the Wilderness, Spotsylvania and Cold Harbor, with the army condemned to move blindly through enemy territory without the benefit of cavalry scouting or screening. It considers the lost opportunities of June 1864, when Grant’s masterly movement of the Army of the Potomac across the James to confront the enemy at Petersburg should have ended in victory and the fall of Richmond. Bungling and complacency doomed the attacks onPetersburg’s fortifications, and instead of victory, the battered Federals were condemned to a drawn-out siege, and another 10 months of war. Finally, it considers what happened to a number of the prominent Federal participants in the Overland Campaign during the last year of the war and after. Many of those who lied and cheated their way to the top became government leaders and the authors of policy for years to come.