And Keep Moving On: The Virginia Campaign, May-June 1864

Great Campaigns of the Civil War

by Mark Grimsley

And Keep Moving On is the first book to see the Virginia campaign of spring 1864 as Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee saw a single, massive operation stretching hundreds of miles. The story of the campaign is also the story of the demise of two great armies. The scale of casualties and human suffering that the campaign inflicted makes it unique in U.S. history. Mark Grimsley's study, however, is not just another battle book. Grimsley places the campaign in the political context of the 1864 presidential election; appraises the motivation of soldiers; appreciates the impact of the North’s sea power advantage; questions conventional interpretations; and examines the interconnections among the major battles, subsidiary offensives, and raids.
 

Genres: History, Civil War, Nonfiction, American Civil War, Military History

283 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2002

About the author

Areas of Expertise

US History to 1877
Military History
Human Conflict, Peace, and Diplomacy



Mark Grimsley is a faculty member and member of the history department at The Ohio State University.

Reviews

[Michael Lynch]

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[Elisa · Rating 2 out of 5]

Imagine my surprise when this book didn't end with Lee's surrender...

After I got over my disbelief, and wondered why the hell I had just read over 200 pages devoted to a stalemate campaign, I realized a few things: I find people enchanted with the Grant-Lee dual slightly strange, my professor could have made me read a book about a much more fruitful campaign of the end of the Civil War era (although I understand the losses and overall brutal nature of this one are significant), and I really really really don't like books about tactical stuff -PLEASE give me culture and a story any day of the week.

Thus, I didn't particularly enjoy this book. There were a number of things to learn that I did like, but the overall book did not make me happy. For one, the contents put me to sleep for the most part, which was annoying because Grimsley is a good writer (it was the never ending battle sequence descriptions that did it). For another, Grimsley writes for an American audience and with the assumption that the reader knows all the people and battles of the Civil War, and thus needs only a minor refresher. This was infuriating! Not only did I not really care about this Campaign from the outset (I knew nothing about it so how could I?) but Grimsley couldn't make me care (I did pity all the soldiers who fought bravely and seemed to die needlessly, I'm definitely not saying I don't care about that) -and that is his job as a writer.

So, unless you're American, an extremely knowledgeable Civil War buff, or someone who adores tactical military history I wouldn't recommend And Keep Moving On.

[Jedi Kitty · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the first Civil War book I've read start to finish, I think. I appreciated the analysis of Lee and Grant's generalship, and the discussion of the Overland operation's significance to the war. I also appreciated the segments on how the campaign was reported, about medical care and burials during the campaign (what little there was of those at the time).
I struggled through the chapters on the Wilderness, Spotsylvania and Cold Harbor, but this is hardly unique. I usually find it tough to read Civil War battle descriptions. Although the Mule Shoe is well described and helped me understand civil war tactics a little better. It is difficult to really understand a battle just by reading about the order of events and looking at maps. I need to see it from a few different angles to really get what is going on (YouTube, reading other narratives, visiting the battlefield if possible). Why was Cold Harbour so unexpectedly deadly for the Union? I need to read more to really get it.

[Joshua Horn · Rating 5 out of 5]

A really good one volume description of the Overland Campaign. It's a good level of detail. A few more anecdotes would have been nice, but it doesn't get bogged down in needless details. The maps were adequate, although there is room for improvement.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

A well-written, concise, but complete summary of a little-studied aspect of the civil war. Not as comprehensive as, say, Noah Andre Trudeau's "Bloody Roads South" but it packs a lot of information into a brief and readable format.