One Continuous Fight: The Retreat from Gettysburg and the Pursuit of Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia
By Eric J. Wittenberg, J. David Petruzzi and Michael F. Nugent
(October 2008 Civil War News)

Illustrated, maps, appendix, endnotes, bibliography, index, 519 pp., 2008. Savas Beatie, P.O. Box 4527, El Dorado Hills, CA 95762, $34.95 plus shipping.

Reviewer: Michael Russert
Michael Russert, a member of the North Shore Round Table of Long Island and the Company of Military Historians, has a MALS plus 60 hours in American Studies. He is Coordinator of The New York State Veteran Oral History Program.

Review:
Until recently little has been written concerning the retreat and pursuit of the armies following the battle of Gettysburg. John W. Schildt’s Roads from Gettysburg (1979) long remained the only real chronicle until Kent Masterson Brown’s Retreat from Gettysburg: Lee, Logistics, and the Pennsylvania Campaign (2005) emerged as the best study devoted to this aspect of the campaign.

One Continuous Fight, the work of three authors, has now become the best account to date.

Wittenberg and Petruzzi’s book Plenty of Blame to Go Around focused on Stuart’s journey around the Army of the Potomac during the Pennsylvania Campaign. If Stuart’s pre-battle ride was controversial, Meade’s pursuit following the battle  was too and has been open to disagreement by both participants and modern historians.

Wittenberg and fellow authors begin their in-depth study with the formation of the Confederate wagon train of wounded, the retreat of the retiring Confederate forces, and Meade’s pursuit. The authors take the reader through the driving rains, along ankle deep muddy roads and into the retreat’s 22 engagements, skirmishes and battles such as Monterey Pass, Hagerstown, Williamsport, Funkstown and Boonsboro.

The continuous actions between July 4-14 certainly support the contention that Meade and the Army of the Potomac were not hesitant in their pursuit of Lee’s army.

One Continuous Fight is a masterful account of what the Army of the Potomac and the Army of Northern Virginia did during the 10-day period following the battle of Gettysburg, of course concentrating on the cavalry arm of both armies that were so active during this phase of the campaign.

Credit is rightfully given to the oft-maligned Confederate horseman John Imboden, who saved the Confederate wounded wagon train during the withdrawal. The authors relate details concerning the participants and actions in a fast-paced and very readable narrative which is accompanied by dozens of photographs along with 18 original and easy to follow maps.

One Continuous Fight is divided into two sections — the primary narrative concentrating on the retreat and pursuit and the appendix, the majority of which is devoted to a driving tour of the retreat, listing stops and detailed driving directions.

Many books give driving tour routes; however, this is among the first, if not the first, to be accompanied by stops with Global Positioning System (GPS) coordinates. This alone greatly enhances the value of One Continuous Fight.
A great assortment of primary accounts from letters, diaries and official reports and newspaper articles provide a stirring narrative of the week-and-a-half retreat.

The authors also discuss and analyze the controversies surrounding Meade’s pursuit and non-attack at Williamsport and Falling Waters. In analyzing why a battle was not fought, the authors fault Army of the Potomac cavalry chief Alfred Pleasonton for his failure to concentrate his cavalry force to cover the mountain passes due to his disbursement of his troopers.

While not all readers may not agree with the conclusions, One Continuous Fight is by far the best and most balanced account to date of the retreat and pursuit of Confederate forces during the Gettysburg Campaign.

That being said, it is unfortunate there are several inconsistencies and typo errors due to poor editing, but they do not detract from the overall effectiveness of the narrative. On page 80, for example, Army of the Potomac Sixth Corps commander John Sedgwick is termed “the army’s senior…subordinate,” yet further in the text Twelfth Corps chief Henry Slocum is correctly identified as the senior corps commander.

As I review this book I am gazing out upon the lush mountains of Vermont from the window of my upstate New York home. On five different occasions in the text the authors refer to members of Vermont units as “Granite State men.” Vermont in French suggests it name — Green Mountain. Vermont is the Green Mountain State, while the moniker for neighboring New Hampshire is “The Granite State.”

While Eric Wittenberg lives in Ohio, and David Petruzzi lives in Pennsylvania, perhaps it is understandable that they are unaware of this, but Michael Nugent lives in Mane, which shares a border with “The Granite State.”