Reviews for Lee's Miserables: Life in the Army of Northern Virginia from the Wilderness to Appomattox

The average rating for Lee's Miserables: Life in the Army of Northern Virginia from the Wilderness to Appomattox based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2021-02-17 00:00:00 P J ASTA Lee's Miserables: Life in the Army of Northern Virginia from the Wilderness to Appomattox, by J. Tracy Power is one of the best books concerning the final year of the Civil War in the Eastern Theater that I have read thus far. Power masterfully traces the disintegration of the Army of Northern Virginia from the beginning of the Overland Campaign to Lee's ultimate surrender at Appomattox 11 months later. Utilizing soldiers and officers diaries and letters, Power concludes that Lee's army, once considered invincible, rapidly began to crumble after the battle of the Wilderness. Using these sources, Power determines that the unprecedented ferocity of the Overland Campaign and the Siege of Petersburg contributed to the disintegration of Lee's army. The ferociousness of these campaigns coupled with a lack of adequate supplies, Confederate defeats in other theaters, civilian anguish, lack of discipline, and the loss of competent officers rendered the Army of Northern Virginia unable to battle as it once been able to do. The enormity of these problems confronting Lee's army by the fall of 1864 resulted in mass desertion, which, in turn, culminated in the degeneration of the Army of Northern Virginia to the point of almost total ineffectiveness by the spring of 1865. The greatest aspect of Power's work is the breadth of sources he uses from the Army of Northern Virginia. Power states that most of the soldiers in Lee's Army were optimistic in the Spring of 1864, believing that it would be the final year of the conflict. But as Power exquisitely demonstrated, those voices from the Army of Northern Virginia gradually began to adopt a sense of hopelessness as their situation degraded with each setback. Ultimately, most soldiers who deserted from Lee's army in the final months of the war did so because of the rapidly degrading situation on the Confederate homefront and because the Confederate government was unable to provide adequate food, clothing, or shelter by the end of 1864. In addition to this, the numbers that Power provides concerning the desertion rate in the Army of Northern Virginia was equally as fascinating. By 1865, Lee's army was hemorrhaging. Hundreds of soldiers were deserting every week by February and March. Essentially, these desertions, coupled with Confederate losses elsewhere and a growing sense of despondency, rendered defending Petersburg and Richmond infeasible, forcing Lee to evacuate and eventually surrender his eroded force several days later.

Review # 2 was written on 2013-01-07 00:00:00 Larry Bushaw The book would appeal to probably the most ardent of Civil War buffs. Loads of 1st person accounts compiled from letters, and journals, from soldiers of the Army of Northern Virginia. Most of the letters and entries all were from soldiers fighting in Lee's Army in the last year of the Civil war.