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Jul 11

The Battle of The Crater

Volume XXX Issue #5 • An Excerpt From:

The Battle of the Crater

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by Emmanuel Dabney

In March 1864, President Abraham Lincoln appointed Ulysses S. Grant to be the new general-in-chief of the Federal forces. The Civil War turned three years old in the spring of 1864, and for Lincoln and the War Department the conflict was no closer to victory than when it started. Despite assertions made in the years since the war that the South was doomed to defeat after the Battle of Gettysburg, the truth is that the Confederacy was still motivated to fight the war. Grant and Lincoln both recognized this and for Lincoln it was particularly important to end the war, as he faced an election in the fall of 1864. General Grant decided to accompany Maj. Gen. George G. Meade’s Army of the Potomac for the spring campaign of 1864.

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Jul 10

Editors Letter: The Battle of the Crater

The Battle of the Crater

This issue features one of the most brutal contests of the Civil War, displaying on the one hand the worst attributes of mankind, and on the other hand the kind of spunk and ingenuity that made America the greatest country on the globe. Then, as usual, politics got in the way to ruin a perfectly good plan.

The campaign in Virginia in the spring of 1864 pits Grant and Lee against each other for the first time. The recently appointed commander of all United States forces chooses to make his headquarters with the armies of the Eastern Theater to face the South’s greatest general.

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