Grant Comes East [Hardcover]

"Grant Comes East" is accurate as a title in that Ulysses S. Grant ordered East by President Abraham Lincoln to take command of all Union armies and to build a new army, the Army of the Susquehanna, to engage Lee in the Eastern Theater. However, Robert E. Lee and his Army of Northern Virginia are still on center stage. Having all but destroyed the Army of the Potomac at the Battle of Union Mills, the great Confederate victory south of Gettysburg on July 4, 1863, Lee has to move on Washington, D.C. and its immense fortifications. The Federal capital city may well prove too tough a nut to crack, but the Confederate general does not need President Jefferson Davis or anyone else to tell him that the Rebel army has to at least try.

It is really not fair to describe much of what happens after that point because obviously everything hinges on whether or not Lee's gambit succeeds (although I will say that I agree with how the Washington situation plays out). The military and political implications are enormous. What I can talk about is the military situation on both sides. Hood and Longstreet's divisions each have roughly 20,000 men, and Davis is sending Beauregard north to give Lee a third corps. Operating in Maryland also puts the Army of Northern Virginia near Baltimore, the Union's third largest city and one divided in its loyalties in the war and there is still the surviving corps of the Army of the Potomac to be destroyed. Meanwhile, Grant his moving most of this corps from the Army of the Tennessee to Harrisburg for his new Army of the Susquehanna, leaving William T. Sherman behind to cause havoc in Mississippi before joining the Army of the Cumberland in eastern Tennessee. Dan Sickles, the politician turned general, has showed up with his III Corps to stop the rioting in New York City and is angling for command of the Army of the Potomac, independent from Grant, not only to prove he can smash Lee but also as a stepping stone to the White House.

As is the case in the first book we see familiar faces in new contexts. In "Gettysburg" it was Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain not only protecting the Army of the Potomac's flank but being sacrificed as the rear guard to save the army from complete annihilation. It was when Chamberlain ordered the 20th Maine's battle flags to be cut to pieces so that they could not be captured that I completely bought into what Gingrich and Forstchen were doing. In "Grant Comes East" another famous Civil War colonel and his regiment are called upon at a pivotal moment to save the day and reverse their personal history. There is one indulgence in having history repeat itself that I thought went a bit far (some battlefield amputations are just too choice to ignore), but overall the authors are clearly charting new ground and maps are provided so we can have some appreciation for the new battlefields over which these armies are fighting.

As important as the battles fought in the "Grant Comes East" there are the political questions of foreign intervention (Napoleon III of France is being courted by Davis) and of arming colored troops. Not only do Lincoln and Grant see the pragmatics of allowing the Negroes a stake in securing the freedom of their race, but Lee has to consider the issue seriously as well. All of these matters will have a big impact on what happens in the final volume. Civil War buffs will enjoy debating the series "what ifs" that add up to these major changes (e.g., Longstreet is transformed into Lee's new Jackson) and will appreciate that the dice are not loaded in the Confederate's favor (e.g., generals on the line continue to make stupid mistakes). The portraits of the principle players are compelling, even if not up to the level of what Harry Turnbull did with Lee in "Guns of the South," and my favorite chapter in "Grant Comes East" is an encomium on the western troops of the Union army, who never received the honor and glory accorded those who clashed in all of the textbook battles in the east.

My suspicions with this trilogy is not that the authors are interested in having the Confederacy win the war but rather with offering an alternative history in which the horrors of Reconstruction are avoided. Towards that end the biggest change, of course, would be for Lincoln to avoid being assassinated and serve out a second term (which may or may not happen), but Gingrich and Forstchen have put another pivotal piece in to position because I think they are going to forgo Sherman's infamous March to the Sea (clearly the war will be over by the end of the Fall in 1983). If the Army of the Tennessee can avoid cutting a swath of destruction through the state of Georgia, then a major cause of Southern outrage would be eliminated. These are just speculations on my part, but they underscore the key idea of this trilogy, which is that we do not know how the end game will play out, which is just another reason why it is well worth reading.

GRANT COMES EAST begins a couple of weeks later. Grant, fresh off his capture of Vicksburg and promoted to Lieutenant General, arrives in Cairo, IL to take charge of all the Union armies, and shortly travels on to Harrisburg, PA, where he'll form the Army of the Susquehanna with three corps from his old Army of the Tennessee plus the 19th Corps from New Orleans. In the meantime, General Lee, soon to be reinforced by General Beauregard and twenty-thousand troops up from South Carolina, must make a choice. Does he assault heavily fortified Washington, D.C., or attempt the capture of relatively undefended Baltimore and take Maryland out of the Union camp?

The wild card is U.S. Major General Dan Sickles, promoted to command the remnants of the Army of the Potomac by Secretary of War Stanton before Grant had the requisite authority from Lincoln to veto the promotion. Sickles, a Democratic politician-general from New York, is feisty, brave, vain, ambitious and spoiling to take his smaller but reorganized and replenished force on a mission of vengeance against the Army of Northern Virginia regardless of Grant's strategic wishes. Besides, there's the 1864 Democratic presidential nomination to think of.

As with any work of "what if", the danger, as one drifts further and further from the historical record, is to ascribe to the main personae actions inconsistent with their known abilities and characters. Here, plot newcomers (Grant, U.S. Congressman Elihu Washburne, Lincoln, Sickles, Stanton, Confederate President Jefferson Davis) take center stage along with those (Lee, Longstreet, U.S. Major General Haupt) carried over from GETTYSBURG. Authors Newt Gingrich and William Forstchen continue their commendable practice of keeping the key players and events believable. I didn't doubt for a moment that the Battle of Gunpowder River could've happened as it unfolded. Maybe it did in a parallel universe.

I have the third book of the series, NEVER CALL RETREAT, on my shelf. I fully expect it to be as gripping and excellent as the previous two, and shall be sorely disappointed when I've finished the last page and have no more installments to savor. This is marvelous series, a must-read for all those even but mildly interested in the War Between the States.