Petersburg Campaign

The loss in April 1865 of the railroad center at Petersburg, just south of Richmond, sealed the doom of the Confederacy. The campaign for Petersburg was a long siege operation of grueling trench warfare marked by bloody battles, incompetence, political maneuvering and cowardice. It was the type of campaign that both Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant had originally wanted to avoid. The Petersburg Campaign: June 1864 - April 1865 is a dramatic narrative supplemented by special charts covering strengths and losses for both sides. Confederate desertion rates, and statistics for other sieges of the Civil War. Sidebars discuss styles of command, the famous Crater explosion, the role of snipers and sharpshooters, and the campaign's no-quarter encounters between Souther whites and Union men of color. The Petersburg Campaign is a significant and welcome contribution to the growing body of Civil War literature and will prove much appreciated by students and historians of the great American conflict that threatened to divide and destroy the nation.