A Fire in the Wilderness
The First Battle Between Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee
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- $18.99
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- $18.99
Publisher Description
The riveting account of the first bloody showdown between Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee—a battle that sealed the fate of the Confederacy and changed the course of American history.
In the spring of 1864, President Lincoln feared that he might not be able to save the Union. The Army of the Potomac had performed poorly over the previous two years, and many Northerners were understandably critical of the war effort. Lincoln assumed he’d lose the November election, and he firmly believed a Democratic successor would seek peace immediately, spelling an end to the Union. A Fire in the Wilderness tells the story of that perilous time when the future of the United States depended on the Union Army’s success in a desolate forest roughly sixty-five miles from the nation’s capital.
At the outset of the Battle of the Wilderness, General Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia remained capable of defeating the Army of the Potomac. But two days of relentless fighting in dense Virginia woods, Robert E. Lee was never again able to launch offensive operations against Grant’s army. Lee, who faced tremendous difficulties replacing fallen soldiers, lost 11,125 men—or 17% of his entire force. On the opposing side, the Union suffered 17,666 casualties.
The alarming casualties do not begin to convey the horror of this battle, one of the most gruesome in American history. The impenetrable forest and gunfire smoke made it impossible to view the enemy. Officers couldn’t even see their own men during the fighting. The incessant gunfire caused the woods to catch fire, resulting in hundreds of men burning to death. “It was as though Christian men had turned to fiends, and hell itself had usurped the place of the earth,” wrote one officer. When the fighting finally subsided during the late evening of the second day, the usually stoical Grant threw himself down on his cot and cried.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Historian Reeves (The Lost Indictment of Robert E. Lee) delivers an exhaustive and intermittently riveting account of the 1864 Battle of the Wilderness. Interweaving high-level strategy with the perspectives of frontline soldiers, Reeves recounts how Union Army commander Ulysses S. Grant planned to cross Virginia's Rapidan River, pass through the heavily forested region known as the Wilderness, and attack Gen. Robert E. Lee on his right flank before capturing Richmond and ending the war. The odds were overwhelming in Grant's favor (120,000 Union soldiers vs. 65,000 Confederates), but the dense woods neutralized the North's advantages. The fighting began on May 5, when Union troops, launching an attack, stumbled onto Confederate defenses. Over the next several days, wadding from paper cartridges ignited the underbrush, turning the battlefield into a "raging inferno" and contributing to heavy losses on both sides. Grant eventually moved his troops to the nearby town of Spotsylvania Court House, where some of the heaviest fighting of the war again produced no clear winner, but contributed to the steady attrition of soldiers that would eventually doom the South. Reeves has a firm grasp of the subject and skillfully draws from firsthand accounts, but often stops the action for long-winded asides. This deep dive is best suited for Civil War completists.