The Road to Appomattox

by Robert Hendrickson Narrated by Nelson Runger

Overview

Noted historian Robert Hendrickson has written more than 40 books and has earned critical acclaim for his meticulous historical research and highly readable style. In The Road to Appomattox, by weaving together passages from diaries, military reports, and newspapers, Hendrickson creates a vivid, firsthand account of the final year of the Civil War. Putting down their arms and flags, Lee's Confederate troops made a formal surrender at Appomattox on April 12, 1865. Leading up to that day, however, was a wide path of bloody battles that ultimately claimed the lives of one out of every 50 Americans. Bringing the Civil War to an end required extraordinary logic from Generals Grant, Sherman Sheridan, Lee, and others. Join Robert Hendrickson as he traces the military strategies and engagements that preceded that grey morning at Appomattox. As you walk beside both Northern and Southern fighting men and officers, their voices will ring in your ears.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

This book offers more than its title suggests. Henderson (Sumter: The First Day of the Civil War) presents Appomattox as the final act in a complex series of military and political events that began in early 1864. When Grant assumed command of the Union armies, his goal was a coordinated campaign to destroy the Confederacy by breaking its armed forces--particularly Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. Hendrickson's account will appeal to general readers through his use of well-known first-person accounts to convey the human dimension of the fighting: the ferocious hand-to-hand combat in the Wilderness, the doomed charge at Cold Harbor, the fiasco at the Battle of the Crater. Specialists, although unlikely to find significant new evidence in these pages, will appreciate Hendrickson's argument that Grant's pursuit of Lee and his army was the only way to defeat an opponent determined to keep the field at any price, even after Sheridan's Shenandoah Valley campaign and Sherman's "March to the Sea." By the spring of 1865, the Army of Northern Virginia was too hungry and too understrength to fight outside the entrenchments around Richmond and Petersburg. Having maneuvered into the open, it was a run to earth in a campaign whose speed and sophistication Hendrickson correctly praises for closing off the possibility of an extended guerrilla war that might have intensified the bitterness between the opponents. Instead, as Henderson demonstrates, the mutual respect demonstrated by victors and vanquished at Appomattox proved a significant element in the postwar healing process. (Sept.)

Library Journal

Hoping to capture the spirit and flavor of the four bloody years leading up to Gen. Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomattox Courthouse, popular historian Hendrickson (Sumter: The First Day of the Civil War, Scarborough House, 1990) traces the lives of the story's principal military and civilian leaders, often stressing character study over a consideration of wartime causes and effects and broad historical context. To be sure, the field commanders receive credit where it's due, but there is an inordinate emphasis on the foibles of well-known colorful personalities, and Hendrickson's popular history of battle fiascos frequently assumes an almost Keystone Kop quality. Grant, the failed civilian and unpromising peacetime soldier, bestrides the history as the savior of the Union cause, but what of Lee's responsibility in this tragic drama? "It had been argued that his decision [to join the Confederate cause] was the worst he made in his life and that, intentionally or not, he was to be responsible, ironically, for more bloodshed than Grant the Butcher." While not a landmark contribution to Civil War historiography, this book is definitely a page-turner that will appeal to the general reader and the Civil War enthusiast. Recommended for public and academic libraries.--John Carver Edwards, Univ. of Georgia Libs., Athens

Kirkus Reviews

A Civil War narrative about the final days in northern Virginia leading to the great surrender. Historian Hendrickson (The Firing on Fort Sumter and the Start of the Civil War, 1987, etc.) begins the story on March 9, 1864, when Lincoln appointed Grant, "the General who fights,þ as Supreme Federal Commander. Hendrickson gives a vivid account of what followed: Grant's relentless hammering of the vaunted Army of Northern Virginia; the horrors and vast bloodshed occurring during the battles of Spotsylvania, the Wilderness, and Cold Harbor that wore down Lee's outnumbered gallants in these fierce struggles of attrition; the long siege of Petersburg and the destruction and capture of Richmond. As Lee tried to escape south and west, he was attacked constantly by Grant's fiery generals, Sheridan, Custer, and Ord, until the great Rebel commander was checkmated on all sides with his surviving half-starved army, in danger of annihilation. Hendrickson also gives a graphic account of Sherman's March to the Sea and of the burning of Atlanta, which left a trail of devastation, looting, and pillage that broke the Southern ability to make war. Sherman justified the cruelty and barbarism of his warfare with his philosophy that he would thus end the war sooner and save lives, while warning that people would so loathe war that they would never again want to start one. The drastic tactics of both Grant and Sherman did finally end a long and bloody war. A lucid summary of this fateful period featuring profiles of the leading players together with colorful anecdotes.

DEC/JAN 00 - AudioFile

This could have been a deadly dull history, but Nelson Runger enlivens it with an expressive approach that is neither flamboyant nor dull. He reads calmly and deliberately but somehow injects a sense of wonder when needed, frustration where appropriate, annoyance and fear when present. The book offers a wide panorama within the confines of historical nonfiction. Great and lesser figures stride along in Runger's voice: Lincoln, Lee, Grant, Jackson, Sherman, Sheridan, and the soldiers in the horrific trenches. This is a solid and informative presentation about the last part of the American Civil War. D.R.W. © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

Product Details

BN ID:	2940170969449
Publisher:	Recorded Books, LLC
Publication date:	08/27/2009
Edition description:	Unabridged

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