Status
Available
Call number
Publication
New York : Ticknor & Fields, 1992.
Description
To the Gates of Richmond charts the Peninsula Campaign of 1862, General George McClellan’s grand scheme to march up the Virginia Peninsula and take the Confederate capital. For three months McClellan battled his way toward Richmond, but then Robert E. Lee took command of the Confederate forces. In seven days, Lee drove the cautious McClellan out, thereby changing the course of the war. Intelligent and well researched, To the Gates of Richmond vividly recounts one of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War.
User reviews
LibraryThing member Richard7920
Robert E. Lee's overly ambitious tactics, poorly drafted orders, and the Army of Northern Virginia's sloppy execution of his battle plans, are highlighted in Stephen W. Sears's history of the Peninsula Campaign in "To the Gates of Richmond." The problems which plagued Lee's army are compared with
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the arrogant bombasts and cowering timidity of "the young Napoleon," Gen. George B. McClellan. The author recounts McClellan's masterful strategy of making an amphibious landing on the lower Virginia peninsula, slowly and seemingly inexoribly advancing up that peninsula until his army was close enough to Richmond to hear the church bells and shows how Lee's ambitious and aggressive attacks caused McClellan to lose all nerve and to "snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Relying on personal accounts of both common soldiers and ranking officers, Sears illustrates the hapless incompetence of both armies in this early campaign, the largest in terms of numbers of troops that would occur during the Civil War. History tells us that the Army of Northern Virginia and its legendary campaign would learn from their mistakes and improve, while McClellan would not and would be cast aside by Lincoln and history. Sears is a gifted author and this is an excellent and balanced account of an important seminal campaign of the American Civil War. Show Less
Subjects
Language
Original publication date
1992
Physical description
xii, 468 p.; 24 cm
ISBN
0899197906 / 9780899197906