Bloody Spring: Forty Days that Sealed the Confederacy’s Fate

By 1864, in the formerly United States, both North and South were tiring of war. The Northern hopes for a quick victory had long ago been dashed by poor leadership and Confederate resolve, while the South’s supplies and manpower waned rapidly. As it turns out, years of war would be decided by forty fateful days and the tactical sparring of two legendary names: Grant and Lee.

Bloody Spring is the stunningly thorough examination of those forty days, as Grant’s Army of the Potomac battled Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. Not only does Bloody Spring make the war feel real in a way few books ever have – never shying from what war does both physically and psychologically, especially in successive, wearying days of combat – but it wipes the shine from “brilliant” military commanders by showing the roles that luck, perseverance, organization, and circumstance play in major historical events.

It’s an impressive juxtaposition, using such precise detail to explore the incredible chaos that ensued every time North and South collided. It makes war all the more horrific to consider, adding names and stories to so many of the men who died for a few miles’ worth of territory.