Glory Enough for All: The Battle of the Crater : A Novel of the Civil War - Hardcover

Schultz, Duane

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312098170 ISBN 13: 9780312098179

Publisher: St Martins Pr, 1993

Synopsis

July 1864. The Army of the Potomac and the Army of Northern Virginia - U. S. Grant and Robert E. Lee - are locked in deadly trench warfare that neither side can break. Cemetery Hill is the key to the five-mile line of Confederate defenses. If Grant can take the Hill, his troops can walk into Petersburg, sever the railroad line to Richmond, and split Lee's army in two, bringing the Civil War to an end.
In the tradition of Michael Shaara's The Killer Angels, historian Duane Schultz brilliantly resurrects one of the most tragic events of the Civil War - the Battle of the Crater. Schultz recounts the efforts of Colonel Henry Pleasants and his regiment, the 48th Pennsylvania Volunteers, as they devise an ingenious plan to end the stalemate: dig a tunnel through five hundred feet of Virginia Clay beneath Cemetery Hill and blow up the hill, a job military experts say cannot be done. In a riveting account, Schultz relates their against-all-odds struggle as the unit fights cave-ins, floods, suffocation, and a bungling army bureaucracy.
The Union generals - Burnside, Meade, and Grant - foolishly allow the opportunity to end the war slip away. Concerned for their place in history, they let their rivalries, jealousies, and outright racism lead to the war's greatest tragedy - the massacre of the Fourth Division U.S. colored troops by both Union and Confederate soldiers.
From the highest councils of war to daily life in the trenches, Duane Schultz, author of the Over the Earth I Come (A 1992 New York Times Notable Book of the Year), recreates the people, events, and times with historical accuracy and vivid, suspenseful writing. In a stunning blend of fact and fiction, Glory Enough for All encompasses all that is heroic and tragic in the Civil War. It recounts a part of American history that should never be forgotten.

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Reviews

Accomplished nonfiction writer Schultz ( Month of the Freezing Moon: The Sand Creek Massacre November 1864 ) has written a powerful fictionalized account of a pivotal Civil War battle. In July of 1864, Union and Confederate forces are locked in trench warfare at Cemetery Hill on the outskirts of Petersburg, Va. Both sides have experienced dreadful losses, but Lee's army is much more debilitated, unable adequately to replace either men or equipment. A stalemate could prolong the war, damaging Lincoln's chances of re-election and possibly hastening a truce. Against the odds--and over the objections of fellow Union officers--Lt. Col. Henry Pleasants digs a 500-foot tunnel under the Southern fort and, filling it with 8000 pounds of powder, creates an enormous crater. But petty politicking by Grant, Meade, Burnside and other Union officers turns what should have been a war-ending Union triumph into a disaster. Most tragically, the Fourth Division U.S. Colored Troops, scheduled to lead the attack which follows the explosion and the one unit best prepared to win the day, are held back until the last moment and then sent in too late, to horrible slaughter. Authentically detailed and tightly paced, this is an absorbing novel.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From ace historian Schultz (Over the Earth I Come, 1992, etc.), a you-are-there Civil War novel, dripping in blood, guts, and irony, that details the tragic Battle of the Crater. It's July 1864 in the Union trenches outside Petersburg, Virginia. Both sides have so fortified their positions that to attack is suicide. Though stalemate prevails, an urgency exists. If Grant can't break through Lee's lines before the November elections, Lincoln could lose. Among the besiegers is Burnside's 48th Pennsylvania Volunteers. Led by Colonel Henry Pleasants, in civilian life a mining engineer, his men are mostly coal-miners. An idea is put to Burnside. Why not build a mine and blow up Cemetery Hill, high point and key to Confederate position? Then pour assault troops into the gap, take Petersburg, and the war will be over. Why not indeed? Because Burnside's boss, General Meade, resents him and doesn't want him to succeed. But his career in shambles, this his last chance, Burnside gives Pleasants the go-ahead. True militarists, Meade and Grant, learning of the mine's existence, don't order a halt. Failure will cost them nothing--the mine wasn't their idea. Much goes wrong. Meade's engineering expert does all he can to hinder the project. Rains arrive and water leaks on the powder, provided in insufficient quantity anyway. Instead of electrical wire and a battery needed for detonation, scrap fuse is supplied. The rebs learn of the tunnel and are searching for it. Hallelujah, the mine gets successfully dug. All is in readiness. Then at the 11th hour Meade orders that the men trained to spearhead the assault, coloreds, being not fit for real soldiering, be replaced with war-weary white troops. Schultz's histories read like fiction. Here, he takes the next step, metamorphosing history into exceedingly realistic and suspenseful fiction. Readers who prize good war stories won't be disappointed. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: St Martins Pr
• Publication date: 1993
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0312098170
• ISBN 13: 9780312098179
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 360