Books : ONE CONTINUOUS FIGHT: The Retreat from Gettysburg and the Pursuit of Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, July 4-14, 1863
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Type of bind: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 973.7349
EAN num: 9781932714432
ISBN number: 193271443X
Label: Savas Beatie
Manufacturer: Savas Beatie
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 576
Printing Date: 2008-06
Publishing house: Savas Beatie
Sale Popularity Level: 92905
Studio: Savas Beatie
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The titanic three-day battle of Gettysburg left 50,000 casualties in its wake, a battered Southern army far from its base of supplies, and a rich historiographic legacy. Thousands of books and articles cover nearly every aspect of the battle, but not a single volume focuses on the military aspects of the monumentally important movements of the armies to and across the Potomac River. One Continuous Fight: The Retreat from Gettysburg and the Pursuit of Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, July 4-14, 1863 is the very first detailed military history of Lee's retreat and the Union effort to catch and destroy the wounded Army of Northern Virginia. Against steep odds and encumbered with thousands of casualties, Confederate commander Robert E. Lee's post-battle task was to successfully withdraw his army across the Potomac River. Union commander George G. Meade's equally difficult assignment was to intercept the effort and destroy his enemy. The responsibility for defending the exposed Southern columns belonged to cavalry chieftain James Ewell Brown (Jeb) Stuart. If Stuart fumbled his famous ride north to Gettysburg, his generalship during the retreat more than redeemed his flagging reputation. The ten days of retreat triggered nearly two dozen skirmishes and major engagements, including fighting at Granite Hill, Monterey Pass, Hagerstown, Williamsport, Funkstown, Boonsboro, and Falling Waters. President Abraham Lincoln was thankful for the early July battlefield victory, but disappointed that General Meade was unable to surround and crush the Confederates before they found safety on the far side of the Potomac. Exactly what Meade did to try to intercept the fleeing Confederates, and how the Southerners managed to defend their army and ponderous 17-mile long wagon train of wounded until crossing into western Virginia on the early morning of July 14, is the subject of this study One Continuous Fight draws upon a massive array of documents, letters, diaries, newspaper accounts, and published primary and secondary sources. These long-ignored foundational sources allow the authors, each widely known for their expertise in Civil War cavalry operations, to describe carefully each engagement. The result is a rich and comprehensive study loaded with incisive tactical commentary, new perspectives on the strategic role of the Southern and Northern cavalry, and fresh insights on every engagement, large and small, fought during the retreat. The retreat from Gettysburg was so punctuated with fighting that a soldier felt compelled to describe it as 'One Continuous Fight.' Until now, few students fully realized the accuracy of that description. Complimented with 18 original maps, dozens of photos, and a complete driving tour with GPS coordinates of the entire retreat, One Continuous Fight is an essential book for every student of the American Civil War in general, and for the student of Gettysburg in particular. About the Authors: Eric J. Wittenberg has written widely on Civil War cavalry operations. His books include Glory Enough for All (2002), The Union Cavalry Comes of Age (2003), and The Battle of Monroe's Crossroads and the Civil War's Final Campaign (2005). He lives in Columbus, Ohio. J. David Petruzzi is the author of several magazine articles on Eastern Theater cavalry operations, conducts tours of cavalry sites of the Gettysburg Campaign, and is the author of the popular 'Buford's Boys' website at www.bufordsboys.com. Petruzzi lives in Brockway, Pennsylvania. A long time student of the Gettysburg Campaign, Michael Nugent is a retired US Army Armored Cavalry Officer and the descendant of a Civil War Cavalry soldier. He has previously written for several military publications. Nugent lives in Wells, Maine.
REVIEWS
'...Is there anything left unwritten about the Gettysburg Campaign? Absolutely, and this bookis but one example. It is a must have for any student of the Civil War, and especially for a student of the Gettysburg Campaign.'Civil War Notebook, 06/2008
'...most likely the definitive book covering the battles and skirmishes with all the major players associated with the time period... One can't help but enjoy the well done narrative with such fine, thorough detail.'Reviewer's Bookwatch, 08/2008
'..popular history at its best- simultaneously engaging and educating.'The Midwest Book Review 08/2008
'...text and primary sources smoothly fit together unlike some book which are just a collection of primary sources with no real transition language between them... deserves a spot in any Civil War historian's library because of the author's detailed account and analysis of the days following the battle of Gettysburg.' Collected Miscellany, 08/2008
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Rated by buyers 
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The authors have produced a fine work on the aftermath of the three-day Gettysburg battle and Lee's "escape" to Virginia. Their obvious area of specialization is the Union cavalry, and in this volume they take center stage although the Confederate units under Stuart and Imboden are prominent actors. I recommend this book without reservation as it adds a definitive treatise to this segment of the campaign.
The question as to whether Meade could have done more in attempting to bring Lee's army to bay before it crossed the Potomac is central to any presentation of this portion of the campaign, and the authors deal with this question comprehensively, but somewhat sympathetically to Meade. He had been very recently elevated to army command, and in many respects the Gettysburg battle was only nominally directed by him -- much was left to subordinates who generally performed well. Perhaps this newness was simply not to be overcome by a man of Meade's temperament and who strongly felt he could lose the war by an ill-advised action. One must note that Meade tended to call councils of war, and delayed a full day after the battle before taking positive action. The Confederates suffered greatly on July 3rd, whereas the Union Army did not, but one must remember that the Confederate batteries firing at Cemetery Ridge generally overshot the battle line and struck the rear area in and around Meade's headquarters. Others have pointed this out, and used it to excuse Meade's slow start to pursue Lee. The infantry did not close on the Confederate Army until it was entrenched in front of Falling Waters (too late), and the pursuit was primarily a cavalry action. Buford did well (as he did on the 1st day of Gettysburg), but Kilpatrick was his usual "loose cannon" self, and Pleasanton came a cropper in not being able to coordinate the cavalry movements. However, little effort was made to pursue Lee's left (northern) flank, which would have brought any Union units attacking from that direction into the rear of the Confederate position from Williamsport to Hagerstown. The assault at Williamsport, when it came, was poorly conducted, and repulsed by a makeshift Confederate force. All this is covered well by the authors. So was the failure to severely punish Lee by maintaining extreme vigilance on the Williamsport position and attacking when Lee began to withdraw from his trenches to cross the Potomac.
Meade constantly placed his forces between Lee and Washington instead of concentrating on Lee's army. Although the Signal Corps came into its own in aiding the cavalry, the reader cannot but wonder at why so little knowledge of the terrain was present in the Union Army when it had manuevered and fought over the same ground less than a year before. The Union cavalry constantly had to rely on local guides pressed into service, yet Lee's army was consistently able to chose the shortest and best routes. One might not fault the commander for these problems, but a year later Grant was rarely at a loss in manuevering Meade's army forwards into new territory. In partial answer to the questions concerning Meade's pursuit, I suggest the authors incorporate detail maps showing the routes taken by the Confederate and Federal infantry with daily (say 6:00 PM) positions of the various corps and divisions. I believe those graphics will illustrate Meade's pursuit (or lack thereof) better than any text. Then the cavalry units could be added to show Stuart's screening and Pleasanton's attempts to harass the retreating Confederates to put the campaign into context.
The reason I did not give this book five stars was due almost solely to the spelling and grammar errors, and also the repetitive sentences (apparently as a result of multiple authors) that restated facts already presented or discussed multiple times. I found the many repetitions tedious. Also, one should not describe a battle as being extremely hard fought for several hours with bodies littering the roads and fields when only 80 killed and wounded were reported. Sounds like a skirmish to me.
All that being said, I really enjoyed this book and wish to commend the authors. There are many, many books on Gettysburg, but few make a contribution so large as this one. The personal stories supplied many human interest details that significantly added to the authors' presentation. The scholarship was impressive, and when I read Kilpatrick's (rather a personal interest of mine since my great-grandfather was one of his cavalrymen) reports in the OR to clarify several descriptions by the authors, I found the authors' narratives to be thorough and excellent discussions, even when the OR reports seem inflated or contradictory. This is a problem all historians face, and the authors handled it well.
In short, if you are interested in the Battle of Gettysburg or the Civil War, buy and read ... Read More
Rated by buyers -
I have never understood why the public then at large, and the Lincoln Administration, thought George Gordon Meade should have immediately made the exact same mistake Robert E. Lee had just made: Attack across the open fields of Gettysburg and destroy the Union Army in the process, just as Lee had destroyed the Confederate Army's offensive capability one day earlier. All of the then arm chair quarterbacks and today's historians blame Meade, who had assumed command on the eve of the battle, for having let Bobby Lee escape. The fact that Meade was badly mauled and that the three day battle generated 50,000 casualties on both sides appears irrelevant to almost all observers. The fact that Meade refused to immediately annihilate his army and that Lee was hoping and more than ready for just such a chance seems to have escaped everyone who has ever written about or reported on the immediate aftermath of the battle.
Mr. Wittenberg has written a remarkably good account of not what should have happened in a perfect world, but what actually did happen in the immediate aftermath of Gettysburg and during Lee's arduous retreat into Virginia. Both armies had mountains to cross and/or move around. Lee's army possessed the interior lines we hear so much about; they had materially less distance to travel, less than half. The Union's cavalry was spread over 60 miles of countryside, on the battlefield and North, South and East of it, with no immediate point of convergence for resupply. Washington was issuing independent orders, moving around Meade, their brand new field commander. Communications were a shambles. Logistics were a mess. Commands were torn apart. Worse, the chain of command was compromised. But no one, as it is alleged, sat still.
The Union cavalry was in motion almost immediately doing its best to strike through mountain passes held by Confederate infantry and block Lee's escape. Buford's troops, recovering at Fredrick, Maryland, took to the field almost immediately. Custer's and Gregg's cavalry, who fought Jeb Stuart to a standstill 6 miles east of Gettysburg on July 3rd, were immediately engaged and so it goes. This is a masterful retelling of those events, one that puts the battlefield situation in a materially better light and gives the reader a materially better understanding of the terrain, the shattered commands on both sides and the very long distances that had to be marched on foot or ridden on horseback. It was, in fact, exactly what the title states: One Continuous Fight.
Rated by buyers -
Gettysburg is certainly a popular topic for people interested in the Civil War and for those looking for new books. The authors of "One Continuous Fight" do more than take advantage of this popularity: they *build* on it and they add to our knowledge of it, both very admirable qualities in any book on history.
The beginning of this book was very good...the end was just *terrific* and included an assessment of performances and faults in not bagging Lee's army from the perspectives of Union soldiers and officers, Confederate soldiers and officers, newspapermen, politicians, etc. ***The last chapter is worth the price of the book*** - that is not an exaggeration. The authors' conclusion is...just kidding...I won't spoil it by telling you their (the authors') conclusions, but they are well-reasoned, thoughtful, and interesting. Read the book.
For me, the middle of the book had to be slogged through. They describe more than twenty separate engagements they could identify in that week-plus time from July 4 to when Lee crosses back over the river...some in a few paragraphs, some in full chapters...most of them were cavalry engagements. I appreciate the work it must have taken to gather material and write on these various engagements...unfortunately for me (but probably not most folks), I'm just not interested in tactical descriptions of Civil War engagements. If you are a Gettysburg or Civil War cavalry aficionado, or particularly interested in particular personalities or regiments, the bulk of the book will be very good reading for you.
I *definitely* learned a lot of new things - it was obviously not a simple matter of Meade letting Lee get away with no fighting in the interim...in fact, the fighting was almost "continuous," indeed.
I know the authors take great pride in drawing on significant amounts of primary material and a look at the bibliography shows this to be true...a god amount of the sources are manuscript material drawn from many different archives, and they weave a lot of first-person accounts into the narrative, which I always enjoy.
Production Quality - I was amazed at the number of typos and editorial errors there were...the authors have commented on this themselves elsewhere and say that most have been/will be corrected in the 2nd edition
There are a lot of good maps and a lot of illustrations; the majority of the illustration material is photographs of people mentioned in the book, and - to me - really don't "illustrate" the story...the few engravings that actually do add to the story did not seem to be re-produced as well, which is unfortunate.
I certainly admire the sucess of Mssrs. Wittenberg, Petruzzi, and Nugent...they are justly well-respected cavalry historians with more than a dozen books to their credit among them. That expertise shines through here.
I would recommend this to someone who is pretty well-read/familiar w/ the Battle of Gettysburg but wants an in-depth look at the hard fighting over the subsequent two weeks and explanations for how/why Lee "got away." They do need to be prepared for detailed descriptions of more than twenty different engagements, which can be dizzying.
My two cents.
Rated by buyers 
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One could fill a room with the books published on the Gettysburg campaign. Until recently, however, no single volume examined the tactical maneuvering following the battle itself as both armies maneuvered toward the Potomac. In most coverage of the campaign, scarcely a page covers the events between the end of the battle and the arrival of both armies at the Rappahannock River near Culpeper. This groundbreaking book finally provides just such an examination.
One Continuous Fight covers the nearly two dozen different engagements that took place during Lee's retreat to the Potomac and Meade's pursuit. While all three authors are recognized Civil War cavalry experts, this is a work for the sake of the cavalry. Cavalry units are simply the medium through which the majority of the story is told, as they were the principal players in the majority of the fighting. It was Confederate General Jeb Stuart's task to protect the exposed columns of Lee's army as it maneuvered toward the Potomac. The majority of the effort to intercept and disrupt these columns was assigned to Union general Alfred Pleasanton's Cavalry Corps of the Army of the Potomac. The army itself hurried in pursuit to complete the destruction of Lee's army if brought to bay.
Many people think that Meade's pursuit was simply a footrace for the Potomac by both sides, marked by little actual fighting. The authors do an excellent job of illustrating the continuous and desperate fighting that occurred throughout the pursuit. Noah Andre Trudeau wrote an extremely thought provoking essay on Meade vs. Lee that is an excellent set up for the authors' narrative.
This book draws upon a truly massive array of sources, including letters, diaries, newspaper accounts, and published primary and secondary sources. Many of the primary sources are previously unpublished. These new resources enable the authors to carefully describe each engagement within the framework of the overall pursuit. While the tactical discussions are very detailed, they enhance rather than bog down the story. The authors do a masterful job of weaving primary sources and text into a captivating tapestry that is at once easy to read and nearly impossible to put down.
To my mind, this framework makes the book all the more valuable as a reference. Each engagement, analyzed in detail from both a tactical and strategic standpoint, is contained within in its own chapter. After reading the entire book, the reader is left in essence with an encyclopedia of the retreat and pursuit.
The authors were remarkably evenhanded in their treatment of the pursuit. Both Union and Confederate viewpoints and sources are utilized throughout the book. Both sides are equally praised and critiqued, as appropriate to the situation. Such objectivity is unfortunately rare.
The conclusions chapter is yet another illustration of this, and a major strength of the book. It provides a balanced look at the various controversies surrounding the retreat. They endeavor to break down the questions concerning each one and answer them in the context of the personalities and information available at the time. Each is answered in detail, with the same evenhanded consideration to opposing schools of thought that characterizes the rest of the book. In the end, my impression was that Lee was very fortunate to get away with his army intact, and that it was a much narrower escape than previous reading had led me to believe.
Unlike many works, this book is complimented by excellent work from start to finish. The book is well-constructed, with a wonderful jacket and great printing and binding. Savas-Beattie is to be commended for the quality of the work. Eighteen maps greatly enhance the reader's ability to visualize the engagements, and dozens of photos show the participants. Two comprehensive driving tours are included as appendices, including GPS coordinates for those who enjoy following the footsteps of those who fought. These are particularly important in this book, as many of the places mentioned are unmarked by historical markers. While there are some editing errors in the very first edition of the book, they don't detract from the overall excellence of the work and have reportedly been corrected in the second edition.
Overall, this is an excellent book, both as an entertaining read from the amateur, and a detailed study for the more discriminating historian. The authors have greatly enhanced the body of knowledge on Meade's pursuit of Lee following the battle. It will appeal to anyone interested in the Civil War, and deserves a place on the shelf of any civil War historian's library.
Rated by buyers -
First off I am not a professional reviewer or historian. I'm just a casual reader who loves learning about the Civil War.
I originally finished this book a few months ago and just finished re-reading and decided to review it. I enjoyed it very much. It made me look at the retreat (something I always took for granted) in a different light. Like a lot of people I originally
thought Meade just goofed by not chasing Lee. I also enjoyed the "smaller" stories like the Confederate soldiers who told the young girl not to worry we aren't going to hurt you we're just dusty and dirty! I'm also glad to see that J.E.B. Stuart re-deemed himself.
It's written in a style that is easy to read. Although we all know how the story ends for me it was an exciting adventure story that I didn't want to put down. I liked the tours at the end of the book with the GPS coordinates and can't wait to try them. Great job!
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