A Campaign of Giants--The Battle for Petersburg

Volume 2: From the Crater's Aftermath to the Battle of Burgess Mill

A. Wilson Greene

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Year: 2025
• Print ISBN: 9781469684819
• eBook ISBN: 9781469683812
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: American Civil War History
• Index: History

Grinding, bloody, and ultimately decisive, the Petersburg Campaign was the Civil War’s 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. Grant’s army group launched three major offensives against Robert E. Lee’s 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 Lee’s primary supply routes and extended the lines around Petersburg and Richmond to some thirty-five miles.

Supported by thirty-four detailed maps, Greene’s narrative chronicles these bloody engagements using many previously unpublished primary accounts from common soldiers and ranking officers alike.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 Greene’s narrative demonstrates that it was dynamic, involving maneuver and combat equal in intensity to that of any major Civil War operation.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Maps
• Preface
• Map
• Halftitle Page
• This Is a Hard and Bloody Campaign and God Only Knows When It Will End
• The Most Destruction I Have Seen for the Time It Took: Second Deep Bottom, August 13–20
• A Most Soul-Harrowing Dilemma: The Battle of Weldon Railroad, August 18–19
• A Prettier Fight I Never Saw: The Battle of Weldon Railroad, August 20–21
• One of the Most Terrible Battles I Ever Seen: Second Reams’ Station, August 22–25
• The Whole Face of the Country Utterly Changed: Late-Summer Interlude
• September 1864
• I Did Not Expect to Carry Richmond: North of the James, September 29
• The Fearful Destruction of Life in Our Ranks: The Fifth Offensive Continues, September 29–30
• A Move in the Right Direction: The Fifth Offensive Concludes, October 1–2
• The Guns of October
• A Great Calamity Will Befall Us: The Sixth Petersburg Offensive, October 27–28
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index