Good news for those of us – and our numbers are legion – who are abidingly and insatiably interested in the American Civil War and the large footprint it has left on our history: Mackubin Owens has published a splendid piece in the current National Review on the battles and maneuvers of 150 years ago that have come to be known as “The Virginia Overland Campaign.” In his treatment of the Civil War, Shelby Foote supplied more biblical resonance, calling it “The Forty Days.”
It was an epic and tragic chapter in the struggle, with Grant attempting to maneuver Lee into a situation where he would be obliged to fight on open ground against the numerically superior Union army, and the Confederate general eluding the traps and setting those of his own that invited exceedingly bloody frontal assaults like the one on the “Mule Shoe” at Spotsylvania. (Which is, incidentally, where an ancestor of the Francis Underwood character played by Kevin Spacey in House of Cards was killed.)
