John F. Schmutz

After the first attempt to storm Petersburg failed on June 18, 1864, Ulysses S. Grant decided to try again. War weariness was growing in the North. Gold shot up in price. Republicans schemed to replace Abraham Lincoln. The Democrats delayed their nominating convention, confident that Grant would be no nearer to victory. With William Tecumseh Sherman seemingly stalled before Atlanta, Grant decided to try again. Only one day after the disastrous assault of June 18, Grant ordered George Meade to swing out to the west and cut off the railroads leading to Petersburg, while Grant unleashed his cavalry on Lee’s communications. The Federals suffered a stunning defeat at Jerusalem Plank Road, and Grant’s cavalry was ravaged. Grant settled for a siege while still looking for a chance to turn the tide. Grant saw that chance in Ambrose Burnside’s mine. For weeks, IX Corps dug a mine under P.G.T. Beauregard’s front with the plan to blow a literal hole in the Confederate works. Despite mockery from Meade and others, the mine was ready by July 30. By then, Robert E. Lee had most of his army at Deep Bottom, opposing the latest offensive by Grant. It seemed Petersburg would fall, and with it Lincoln’s election all but decided. Instead, the attack failed. Warren Wilkinson of the 57th Massachusetts called the Crater “a scene of unparalleled horror. In places, the panic-stricken soldiers were so tightly packed together that they could not move or even raise their arms to defend themselves.” When the dust cleared, one of the most horrific battles of the Civil War was over and Grant was no closer to Petersburg. Sean Michael Chick and John F. Schmutz portray the weeks after the June 18 attack in Unparalleled Horror: The Battles of Jerusalem Plank Road and the Crater, June 19-July 31, 1864. The narrative considers Grant and Lee’s evolving reaction to a situation neither man wanted. Lee saw Grant’s eventual victory as a “mere question of time,” while Grant was under tremendous pressure to deliver a victory that would secure Lincoln another term. The result was a series of Federal disasters, although Lee lacked the strength to pry Grant away from Petersburg, therefore leaving both sides in a stalemate as the summer of 1864 wore on and the presidential election loomed.

Compounding the devastating tragedy of the Civil War was the failure of the warring parties to consistently maintain a system for the effective exchange of prisoners of war, rather than imprisoning combatants for the duration. This failure added at least 56,000 deaths to those accumulating on the battlefield and caused the untold suffering of many thousands more. This book focuses on 600 Confederate officers, made prisoners of war, who were dispatched to Charleston Harbor to act as human shields, and were subsequently imprisoned elsewhere and deliberately starved nearly to death. These actions were the result of the breakdown of the exchange cartel, as well as the "retaliation" policies promoted by the Secretary of War and the Lincoln administration.

The Battle of the Crater is one of the lesser known yet most interesting battles of the Civil War. This book, detailing the onset of brutal trench warfare at Petersburg, Virginia, digs deeply into the military and political background of the battle. Beginning by tracing the rival armies through the bitter conflicts of the Overland Campaign and culminating with the siege of Petersburg and the battle intended to lift that siege, this book offers a candid look at the perception of the campaign by both sides.