Fantastic combo of troops, tactics, and terrain. I can't believe it has taken me 20 years to discover G Rhea. ( )

Finally I understand this first chaotic battle of the Overland Campaign. ( )

“Forest fires raged; ammunition trains exploded; the dead were roasted in the conflagration; the wounded, roused by its hot breath, dragged themselves along, with their torn and mangled limbs, in the mad energy of despair, to escape the ravages of the flames; and every bush seemed hung with shreds of blood-stained clothing. It seemed as though Christian men had turned to fiends, and hell had usurped the place of earth.” E. Porter Alexander

“It was awful. This is the real thing.” A Vermont soldier.

Although Antietam was the single bloodiest day in the U.S Civil War, and at Gettysburg casualties amounted to more than 56,000, no other battle was as nightmarish as the Battle of the Wilderness. A its name implies, the Wilderness was a dense mass of woods and nearly impenetrable undergrowth, though which only a few roads passed.
It was the first time that Lee and Grant had met and it presaged the casualty lists to come.

Actually, it really was two battles, and sometimes three that were fought simultaneously along two of the roads: The Orange Turnpike Road and the Orange Plank Road. For two days, the Confederate and Union armies struggled to dislodge each other at these two main positions, fighting in conditions in which visibility was limited in most cases to a few yards ahead (described by a Union solder as “invisible fighting invisibles”), where entire regiments were broken up by the massed thickets, and no one could be sure of where they were or where they were going. Survivors inevitably compared it to some version of Hell.

Because of the terrain and the separate engagements, the battle was a complex one, so much so that inevitably general histories of the Civil War limit themselves to descriptions of the Wilderness, a few remarks about the battles along the roads and the ensuing carnage, along with graphic descriptions from survivors of wounded men being burned to death in the fires that raged around the locales of some of the worst fighting. There is simply no room in a general history to do more than that.

In The Battle of the Wilderness, Rhea does an outstanding job of describing and explaining the fighting in all its aspects: why Meade chose to halt in the Wilderness, how the two armies met almost accidentally along the two roads, the suicidal charges on both sides, and the terrible losses inflicted by both armies on each other, the blundering of troops through thickets, swamps and swales, and the mistakes made by both Grant and Lee and various subordinates on both sides.

The maps are excellent; the only lack is sufficient maps of the morning of May 6th--the reader has to page back 50 pages or so to two maps that show the positions of the armies and the geography of the general area. But overall, the maps, both in quantity and quality, are among the best I’ve seen in military histories of the war.

The only fault the book has in my opinion is the prose. Many years ago, a writer told me that there were two aspects to any author’s work: technique--the actual writing itself--and the ability to tell a story--narrative style. While Rhea’s writing is mostly very good, at times he descends into cutsiness, such as armies being “lost in the leafy expanse,” cannon “belching”, and troops “tumbling back” in retreat. I really became bored with Rhea calling Longstreet the War Horse; once is sufficient, twice is already annoying, and half a dozen times is enough to grit teeth.

But he more than makes up for it in his narrative style, which is superb; Rhea can really tell a story. He’s a master at detail but written in such a way that the reader does not become bogged down. Like just about all modern historians of the war, he quotes copiously from memoirs, diaries, letters of all soldiers from Mead and various Confederate and Union generals down to the common soldiers of both armies. In most accounts, these add human interest if nothing else; Rhea does a superb job of using these personal records in order to illuminate the action as well. It makes for an absorbing story. Rhea also does an excellent job of summarizing and analyzing, presenting reasons for choosing sides in the inevitable controversies and failures in commands on both sides.

For those who really want to fully understand this complex and deadly battle, The Battle of the Wilderness is a must read. Highly recommended. ( )

This book is a meticulously researched and well documented history of the Battle of the Wilderness. While I would not recommend it for the casual reader, students of the American Civil War or those looking for more scholarly treatments of Grant's Overland Campaign will find this to be an invaluable resource.

The Battle of the Wilderness marked U.S. Grant's introduction to the Army of Northern Virginia, and his first battlefield exposure to the tactics of Robert E. Lee (and vice versa). It would be fair to say that each party to the battle was very unpleasantly surprised, for while Lee could rightly claim a tactical victory, overall strategic advantage lay with Grant's Army.

Grant's ascension to overall command of Union forces marked the beginning of the end for the Confederacy, as Lincoln finally identified a commander willing to bring to bear all of the advantages of the Union, most notably virtually unlimited men and supplies. From his crossing of the Rapidan and ultimately to Appomattox, Grant maintained relentless pressure on Lee, slowly bleeding men and resources from the Confederate forces until resistance became futile.

In this book, detailing the intial clash of Armies in the Overland Campaign, Gordon Rhea delves deeply into the strategies, tactics and movements of the two armies, all the way to the brigade level. In this respect, casual readers may become bogged down in the minutia, though avid students will be appreciative. He intersperses very well presented and thought out analysis, with competing hypotheses fairly explained and addressed.

I enjoy Civil War literature and have read my share of it, though I would hesitiate to label myself a "student" of the conflict. For that reason, some of the book dragged for me, especially the long passages identifying various battalions, brigades and their officers. Nevertheless, serious students of Civil War history will validly consider this a gold standard, five star work. ( )

This is the first of four volumes describing the battles of the forty days. The author seems to have done a very good job of putting all of the sources together and producing an extremely detailed book. There is a lot of dialog and descriptions of small incidents that show the extensive use of primary source. The account is very balanced between the Confederates and the Federals.
The primary significance was what happened after the battle. Grant had been beat almost as badly as Hooker at Chancellorsville but instead of retreating he marched south to Lee's right as if he had won the battle. His soldiers cheered when they took the turn south instead of back to the Rapidan and Lee knew he was in the fight of his life. Lincoln had said if he could find a general who could "stand the arithmetic", that is take greater casualties while he ground down Lee's army the North would win. In Grant he found that General. I should point out that if you read Grant's memoirs on this battle he did not see it as a defeat. ( )