Overland Campaign: Throwing Men Into the Meat Grinder of the US Civil War
The Overland Campaign (4 May to 12 June 1864) was a major Union offensive into Virginia, launched during the final year of the American Civil War (1861-1865). It saw the Union Army of the Potomac fight the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia in five important engagements:
Battle of the Wilderness
Battle of Spotsylvania Court House
Battle of Yellow Tavern
Battle of North Anna
Battle of Cold Harbor
It resulted in over 80,000 casualties and led to the Siege of Petersburg (June 1864 to April 1865), one of the last military operations of the war.
Background
In March 1864, Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant was named general-in-chief of all Union armies. His appointment came at a critical point in the war – it was an election year, and throughout much of the North, people were growing war-weary, tired of learning of battlefield defeats. There was a real chance that US President Abraham Lincoln would fail to be re-elected come November and that a potential successor would strike a disadvantageous peace with the South, just to appease the growing anti-war faction. To stave off this eventuality, Grant knew he had to win a series of victories dazzling enough to restore confidence in Lincoln and his pro-Union administration.
To do this, Grant needed to be aggressive. Indeed, he spent his first weeks in command planning a multi-pronged offensive designed to squeeze the Southern Confederacy into submission. In the Western theater, Maj. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman would lead his 100,000-man army into Georgia, beginning the decisive Atlanta Campaign (May-September 1864). Simultaneously, the 118,000-man Army of the Potomac, under Maj. Gen. George Gordon Meade, would cross the Rapidan River and launch an offensive into Virginia.
Unlike previous offensives, however, Meade's objective would not be the Confederate capital of Richmond. Rather, his goal would be to seek out and destroy the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia under Gen. Robert E. Lee. Only after the destruction of Lee's army, Grant believed, could Richmond be taken. His exact instructions to Meade were "wherever Lee's army shall go, you shall also go" (quoted in McPherson, 722). As Meade dealt with Lee, another army under Maj. Gen. Benjamin Butler would move up the James River to threaten Richmond from the southeast, while yet another force under Maj. Gen. Franz Sigel was to disrupt Confederate supply lines in the Shenandoah Valley.
Grant was no armchair general, and before the end of March, he had joined the Army of the Potomac at its camp north of the Rapidan River. He immediately set to work, helping Meade reorganize the army – condensing five infantry corps into three – and conducted regular troops inspections. His reputation as a fighter preceded him, and the soldiers found themselves looking on him with awe; here, at last, was a man they felt could lead them to victory. "We finally felt like the boss had arrived", one soldier remarked (quoted in Catton, 46). Grant's plan was to cross the Rapidan in early May, quickly moving the army into a dense section of woodlands known as the Wilderness. Though the Wilderness offered few roads and little room to maneuver, Grant hoped to swiftly make his way through before Lee had a chance to stop him. Once he was out of the trees, he could fight Lee on open ground of his own choosing.
Meanwhile, Lee was bracing for the attack he knew was coming. He had two infantry corps at hand, the Second and Third Corps; the First Corps, under Lt. Gen. James Longstreet, had just returned from a stint in Tennessee and was still nine miles (14.5 km) away at Gordonsville. Lee's plan was to use the Second and Third Corps to contain the Army of the Potomac as it marched through the Wilderness, a move that would negate Grant's numerical superiority. These corps would keep Grant's army bottled up for as long as it took for Longstreet to come up and hammer the Army of the Potomac into submission. It was a long shot, to be sure, but Lee had won his most impressive victories after taking similar gambles.
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⇒ Overland Campaign: Throwing Men Into the Meat Grinder of the US Civil War
