Petersburg Campaign (Great Campaigns)

The Petersburg campaign was a long siege operation of grueling trench warfare marked by bloody battles, incompetence, political maneuvering and cowardice. It was the type of campaign neither the Union nor the Confederacy wanted. The conflict around the Virginia town led to the decline of Lee's Army of Northern Virginia and the surrender of the Confederate capital at Richmond. After the fall of Petersburg, the end of the Civil War was only a matter of days. Special charts cover strengths and losses for both sides, Confederate desertion rates, and statistics for the Civil War's other sieges. Sidebars discuss styles of command, the Crater explosion, the role of snipers and sharpshooters, and the campaign's no-quarter encounters between Southern whites and Union men of color.