Campaign of Giants--The Battle for Petersburg

Grinding, bloody, and ultimately decisive, the Petersburg Campaign was the Civil Wars longest and among its most complex. A Campaign of Giants: The Battle for Petersburg offers a gripping, comprehensive history of the decisive campaign in the eastern theater. In this second of three volumes, A. Wilson Greene narrates the critical months from August through October 1864, during which Ulysses S. Grants army group launched three major offensives against Robert E. Lees defenses around Petersburg and the Confederate capital in Richmond. The Confederates counterpunched after each Union advance and conducted a spectacular cavalry raid that netted almost 2,500 cattle from Federal grazing grounds. But as winter approached, Grant had captured one of Lees primary supply routes and extended the lines around Petersburg and Richmond to some thirty-five miles.Supported by thirty-four detailed maps, Greenes narrative chronicles these bloody engagements using many previously unpublished primary accounts from common soldiers and ranking officers alike. The struggle for Petersburg is often characterized as a siege, but Greenes narrative demonstrates that it was dynamic, involving maneuver and combat equal in intensity to that of any major Civil War operation.