Additionally Grants siege of Petersburg, while not entirely planned that way pinned down troops that could have confronted Sherman’s March to the sea.
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Just finished Shelby Foote’s three volume History of the Civil War. It is an incredible example of scholarship and writing. Not only does he provide page after page of facts but he is a beautiful, even elegant, writer.
It ranks up there with Thucydides and the Age of Federalism on the greatness scale.
Anyone interested in the Civil War should look into it.
“Additionally Grants siege of Petersburg, while not entirely planned that way pinned down troops that could have confronted Sherman’s March to the sea.”
Grant’s plan was to get between Lee’s army and Richmond and in so doing, compel Lee to attack Grant on terms favorable to Grant. The defender almost always ‘won’ the engagement during the civil war. This is why the US Civil War is sometimes referred to as a dress rehearsal for The Great War (WW1).
Lee would have had to make a major blunder for that to have happened. Yet Grant knew he had to make the effort, and settled for pinning Lee’s forces in the trenches around Richmond & Petersburg. Grant’s biggest fear was that Lee would decide that Richmond couldn’t be defended and so give him the slip. Hence the frantic pursuit of Lee towards Appomattox Court House once the lines at Petersburg collapsed.