num_pages: 167
description: [T]here will be no turning back said Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant. It was May 1864. The Civil War had dragged into its fourth spring. It was time to end things Grant resolved once and for all.With the Union Army of the Potomac as his sledge Grant crossed the Rapidan River intending to draw the Army of Northern Virginia into one final battle. Short of that he planned to hammer continuously against the armed forces of the enemy and his resources until by mere attrition if in no other way there should be nothing left to him . . . . Almost immediately though Robert E. Lee s Confederates brought Grant to bay in the thick tangle of the Wilderness. Rather than retreat as other army commanders had done in the past Grant outmaneuvered Lee swinging left and south.There was after all no turning back. I intend to fight it out along this line if it takes all summer Grant vowed. And he did: from the dark close woods of the Wilderness to the Muleshoe of Spotsylvania to the steep banks of the North Anna River to the desperate charges of Cold Harbor. The 1864 Overland Campaign would be a nonstop grind of fighting maneuvering and marching much of it in rain and mud with casualty lists longer than anything yet seen in the war.In No Turning Back: A Guide to the 1864 Overland Campaign from the Wilderness to Cold Harbor May 4 - June 13 1864 historians Robert M. Dunkerly Donald C. Pfanz and David R. Ruth allow readers to follow in the footsteps of the armies as they grapple across the Virginia landscape. Pfanz spent his career as a National Park Service historian on the battlefields where the campaign began; Dunkerly and Ruth work on the battlefields where it concluded. Few people know the ground or the campaign better.
language: English
title: No Turning Back: A Guide to the 1864 Overland Campaign, from the Wilderness to Cold Harbor, May 4 - June 13, 1864
publisher: Savas Beatie