For sixteen days the armies had grappled--a grueling horror-show of
nonstop battle, march, and maneuver that stretched through May of 1864.
Federal commander Ulysses S. Grant had resolved to destroy his
Confederate adversaries through attrition if by no other means. He would
just keep at them until he used them up.
Meanwhile, Grant's Confederate counterpart, Robert E. Lee, looked for an
opportunity to regain the offensive initiative. "We must strike them a
blow," he told his lieutenants.
The toll on both armies was staggering.
But Grant's war of attrition began to take its toll in a more insidious
way. Both army commanders--operating on the dark edge of exhaustion,
fighting off illness, pressure-cooked by stress--began to feel the
effects of that continuous, merciless grind in very personal ways.
Punch-drunk tired, they began to second-guess themselves, began missing
opportunities, began making mistakes.
As a result, along the banks of the North Anna River, commanders on both
sides brought their armies to the brink of destruction without even
knowing it.
Picking up the story started in the Emerging Civil War Series book A
Season of Slaughter: The Battle of Spotsylvania Courthouse, historian
Chris Mackowski follows the road south to the North Anna River. Strike
Them a Blow: Battle Along the North Anna River offers a concise,
engaging account of the mistakes and missed opportunities of the
third--and least understood--phase of the Overland Campaign.
