Bloody Roads South: The Wilderness to Cold Harbor, May-June 1864

by Noah Andre Trudeau

An account of the 1864 Virginia Campaign draws on memoirs, letters, diaries, and regimental histories.

Genres: Civil War, American Civil War, History, American History, Nonfiction, Military History, Civil War Eastern Theater

354 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1989

About the author

American Civil War historian. He has won the Civil War Round Table of New York's Fletcher Pratt Award and the Jerry Coffey Memorial Book Prize. A former executive producer at National Public Radio, he lives in Washington, DC.

Reviews

[John Nellis · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book mostly told through first hand accounts, is a good start for studying the Overland campaign of 1864. It is not as detailed account with every troop movement or event throughly explained. But is a good general history of the campaign. The accounts given do a good job telling the story of events as they happened. The battles of the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, and Cold Harbor are all covered. It was Grant's grand offensive to defeat Robert E Lee and end the Civil War. The campaign was the beginning of the end for the Confederacy. At its conclusion the Armies would be entrenched around Petersburg Virginia beginning a new campaign.

[Manray9 · Rating 3 out of 5]

Noah Andre Trudeau's Bloody Roads South: The Wilderness to Cold Harbor, May-June 1864 left me unimpressed. This was his first book and it shows. I am familiar with the campaign and have walked the ground at the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, and Cold Harbor, but his presentation seems muddled to me. The bouncing back and forth between Confederate and Union perspectives confuses the picture and often the reader needs to double check to see which view he's presenting. As is often the case with recent books, the maps are poor. My 1989 Little, Brown hardback has four maps, too heavily shaded, of one page each to cover the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, North Anna, and Cold Harbor.

Trudeau earned just Three Stars from me. His later work is better.

[David Elkin · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very well written book that takes a look at the common soldier as well as the mover and shakers. A very misunderstood campaign very well treaded. Recommended for all civil war fans. Second read was just as good

[Jimmy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good one volume history of the campaign. It doesn't go into any detailed tactical analysis of the battles (Gordon C. Rhea's books do a good job of that). Mr. Trudeau probably depended too heavily on quotations to tell the story. The maps in this book are really bad. Only four maps, all placed at the front of the book, are used to show six weeks of combat and marching. For the two weeks of Spotsylvania, only a single full page map was used, with three tiny inset maps.

[John Matthew IV · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a history of an important period of the Civil War and told in a different way than normal.

It breaks up everything by date and time. So you always know when the events described happened but it does break up the flow.

And you get lots of snippets about individuals who come and go in a page, maybe even a paragraph.

So it is a flood of names.

There are contemporary maps but they are insufficient.

I did enjoy the anecdotes but would prefer a more conventional narrative.

p. 113: Grant on Lee: "Oh, I am heartily tired of hearing about what Lee is going to do. Some of you always seem to think he is suddenly going to turn a double somersault, and land in our rear and on both of our flanks at the same time. Go back to your command, and try to think what we are going to do ourselves, instead of what Lee is going to do."

p. 145: General Sedgwick's final words before being shot by a sniper: "Why, what are you dodging for? They could not hit an elephant at that distance."

p. 156: The Complete Poems of Stephen Crane "War is kind"

p. 171: Spotsylvania: "The stage was sent for the longest sustained hand-to-hand combat of the Civil War."

p. 182: "In a war that had birthed its share of bloody angles, this day and the morning of the next at Spotsylvania would give birth to the bloodiest of them all."

p. 184: Lee: "General Stuart has been mortally wounded; a most valuable and able officer. He never brought me a piece of false information."

p. 202: Voltigeurs | "Even as the opposing voltiguers began firing in earnest, the Confederate column deployed into a line of battle." | The Voltigeurs were French military skirmish units created in 1804 by Emperor Napoleon I.

p. 225: Videttes | "It was midday when the Confederate videttes who had been posted north along the Telegraph Road came hurrying in with word that the Yankees were coming." | "A mounted sentinel stationed in advance of pickets"

p. 239: North Anna, Tuesday, May 24: "In a private agony he shared with no one, the enfeebled Confederate commander realized that the chance for victory that he had been seeking for three bloody weeks was slipping from his grasp."

p. 274-5: Meade: "The papers are giving Grant all the credit for what they call successes; I hope they will remember this if anything goes wrong."

[Anthony Bracciante · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent overview of the Civil War campaigns in the east from the Wilderness in May of 1864 up through Cold Harbor in June of the same year just prior to the siege of Petersburg. Many first hand accounts from both Union and Confederate sources and diaries that illustrate the horrors of this bloody, uncivil conflict especially in places such as the angle at Spotsylvania and the forests that caught fire in the Wilderness trapping the wounded that could not escape to safety.

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty good. Could use more maps!!

[Josh Liller · Rating 3 out of 5]

Noah Andre Trudeau's Southern Storm is a masterpiece about Sherman's March to the Sea. Two decades before "Southern Storm", Trudeau wrote "Bloody Roads South" about the Overland Campaign and he's come a long way as an author in those two decades. (I also think Trudeau's Gettysburg: A Testing of Courage is a better book than this.)

Don't get me wrong: this book is by no means terrible. It is an adequate single-volume history of the Overland Campaign. It's handicapped by being written a decade before the first of Gordon C. Rhea's Overland Campaign series came out and before much of the recent scholarship reexamining Grant. Whereas "Southern Storm" blew me away with day-by-day maps, "Bloody Roads South" just has a few terrible maps at the beginning. I felt the book focused too much on the soldiers' experiences and not enough on the leaders. But what really hurts this book is Trudeau's extreme over-reliance on quotations.

There are flashes of better writing, but overall I found this disappointing. I'm giving it 3 stars, but really it's more like 2 1/2.

[Tim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another masterpiece by a great Civil War writer. Slowly getting through his works, and this one was fascinating. I appreciated how Grant just kept moving on, though he was clearly personally effected by the alarming rate of casualties. The numbers were on his side, and with complete confidence from Lincoln he just moved on.
Trudeau always shows how Lee was the greatest general of his generation. When the Union army slips south while the Confederates are waiting and start he siege of Petersburg, Lee knows the war is over - it is just a matter of time.
Unlike his fellow Generals, Lee know he must finish the war on the open battlefield, but Grant won't let him.

[Trevor Rowland · Rating 4 out of 5]

The history of the bloodiest campaign of the Civil War: Ulysses S. Grant's 1864 Overland Campaign against Robert E. Lee's Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, told mostly through the words of those who experienced it. A popular history, the notes/citations are slim, but its day-by-day, sometimes hour-by-hour narrative makes it feel like you're traveling with the two armies while reading it. I used this book to follow along with the events of the campaign each day during the sesquicentennial anniversaries, and it served that purpose very well.

[Bap · Rating 4 out of 5]

Grant moves east to take command. He loses the battle of the wilderness but keeps on going against an increasingly exhausted south. Ultimately he shows that in a meat grinder series of battles that the south may win individual battles but the North can sustain causalties better than the south. Despite Lee's victories, Grant pushes Lee all the way to Petersburg, siege, and a northern victory the following Spring.

A good read.

[John E · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first of Trudeau's four volumes of the final campaign in Virginia in 1864-5. These are the most contested and bloodiest of the battles between Grant and Lee. Shows the tenacity of Grant and the defensive skills of Lee. Also shows the hazards of the offensive in the Civil War and the costs of undertaking offensive attacks (even a day could aid the defense so much to as to negate a 2 to 1 advantage). Very well written.

[Benny · Rating 3 out of 5]

Like The Last Citadel, Trudeau brings these battles to life through first person accounts of the men who were there. A little short on strategy and tactics, but that is not the author's style.

[Straw · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mister Trudeau is one of my favorite Civil War authors. This book is a great little history of the ascendance of Grant into control in the East. I always love the way he intermixes the story of the individual soldiers that compromised this great army.

[Greg · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good overall campaign level summary of the Spring 1864 battles in the Eastern theater. Liked how Trudeau switched back and forth, day to day, sometimes even hour to hour, between Grant and Lee. Gave a sense of the chess match that rapidly evolved between the two.

[Avis Black · Rating 1 out of 5]

Like all of Trudeau's books, it's okay if you like a shallow overview.

[David Adams · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this as my interest in the Civil War was beggining to grow. Loved the approach Trudeau took to telling the story through the eyes of those that fought the battles.