Not War But Murder: Cold Harbor 1864

Doing an end run around Thomas Rhea's three-volume analysis of the Wilderness Campaign, journalist and historian Furgurson (Ashes of Glory; Chancellorsville 1863) addresses the climax of the operation: the Union attack on the Confederate entrenchments at Cold Harbor, Va., on June 3, 1864. Instead of breaking through to Richmond, the reinforced Army of the Potomac lost over 10,000 men, most of them in a single morning. Confederates called it the easiest victory of the war. In the North, Cold Harbor confirmed Grant's reputation as a butcher heedless of casualties--an image that endured until very recently. Furgurson, however, fixes primary responsibility for the debacle on convoluted command arrangements that left Gen. George Meade in direct command of the Army of the Potomac, but had Commander-in-Chief Grant in the field looking over his shoulder. Meade, increasingly resentful at being eclipsed, took fewer and fewer pains in planning the details of operations. The result was a haphazard attack on Confederate troops who had become masters at field entrenchment. Furgurson concludes that Lee's skillful handling of his smaller army maximized Union mistakes throughout the Wilderness Campaign, and led to his last great victory at Cold Harbor. This book does not prove the point, but it does make a solid case that will impress scholars--and it does so in prose so direct and compelling that even those without a previous interest in the Civil War are sure to be drawn in. Fergurson's engagement with the people he writes about comes through in every line, making one of the most wrenching incidents of the war grimly immediate. (June)