Trench Warfare under Grant and Lee: Field Fortifications in the Overland Campaign

By Earl J. Hess.

Illustrated, index, bibliography, 336 pp., 2007. The University of North Carolina Press, P.O. Box 2288, Chapel Hill, NC 27515-2288, $39.95 plus shipping.

Reviewer: Ethan S. Rafuse

Ethan S. Rafuse is associate professor of military history at the U. S. Army Command and General Staff College. His publications include A Single Grand Victory: The First Campaign and Battle of Manassas; George Gordon Meade and the War in the East; and, most recently, McClellan’s War: The Failure of Moderation in the Struggle for the Union.

Review:

Trench Warfare under Grant and Lee is the second outstanding entry in a multi-volume examination by Earl J. Hess of the role and use of field fortifications in the Eastern Theater.

The first volume, published in 2005, studied the use of fieldworks prior to the great campaigns of May-June 1864 in which they emerged as one of, if not the, most important factor that shaped the course and conduct of operations.

This volume looks at the Overland Campaign from the battle of the Wilderness through the operations at Cold Harbor, as well as the campaign conducted by the Army of the James on Bermuda Hundred.

Of course, the Overland and Bermuda Hundred Campaigns have been extensively chronicled in recent years, most thoroughly and insightfully by Gordon C. Rhea, William Glenn Robertson, and Mark Grimsley. Hess effectively supplements these works by providing a well-constructed narrative of events and keen analysis of their significance in the evolution of trench warfare.

His work is rooted in excellent documentary research and thorough examination of the remnants of the fortifications the armies of the Union and Confederacy constructed in 1864. In the course of his study, Hess argues for recognition of the battle of Spotsylvania as a watershed in the military conduct of the Civil War.

Prior to this engagement, Union and Confederate armies in the East tended to, according to Hess, “let fortifications play a marginal role before and during the fighting, but to eagerly dig in after the men had smelled powder.”

Spotsylvania marked the first time both the Army of the Potomac and Army of Northern Virginia, as a consequence of Ulysses S. Grant’s aggressiveness — and not the rifled musket — made a point of fortifying their positions as soon as they were reached whenever there was any prospect of contact with the enemy. And, since Grant’s methods ensured the two armies would be in continuous contact for most of the rest of the war, trench warfare subsequently became a constant feature of the war in the East until 1865 as a matter of course.

In the process of developing and supporting his arguments, Hess offers many useful insights into the war in the East. For instance, he challenges the thesis that the tangled character of the Wilderness provided an advantage to the Army of Northern Virginia by noting it “was just as much an impediment to [Robert E.] Lee’s ability to bring his troops to bear on Grant as vice versa.”

His treatment of the week and a half that followed the June 3 Union assault at Cold Harbor likewise provides a clear and thorough treatment of the work of both armies to improve their fortifications, Grant’s brief flirtation with formal siege warfare tactics against Lee’s lines, and the effect of trench warfare on the physical and moral condition of both armies.

Readers who relish walking the battlefields will especially appreciate the painstakingly researched appendix in which Hess describes and analyzes fieldworks from 1864 that are still extant.

Although its many fine qualities make this a work of value to anyone with an interest in the war, this appendix makes this terrific book one that the legions of “trench nerds” will particularly enjoy — and want close at hand the next time we find ourselves in Eastern Virginia.