Book Reivew: The Maps of Spotsylvania Through Cold Harbor: An Atlas of the Fighting at Spotsylvania Court House Through Cold Harbor, Including all Cavalry Operations, May 7 through June 3, 1864

The Maps of Spotsylvania Through Cold Harbor: An Atlas of the Fighting at Spotsylvania Court House Through Cold Harbor, Including all Cavalry Operations, May 7 through June 3, 1864. By Bradley A. Gottfried. El Dorado Hills: Savas Beatie. Hardcover, 363 pp. $37.95.

 Reviewed by Zachery A. Fry

Bradley Gottfried’s work always merits attention for its high quality of research and command of the subject matter. The Maps of Spotsylvania is no exception. The ninth in Savas Beatie’s landmark series of battlefield atlases, this latest installment carries Grant and Lee from the burning forests of the Wilderness battle’s aftermath to the bloody assaults at Cold Harbor on June 3, 1864. Author and publisher have added another handsome volume to this important collection.

Gottfried presents 134 full-page color maps detailing the armies’ operational movements from the Wilderness to Spotsylvania Court House and beyond, as well as the minute tactical actions that brought the troops to savage blows along the way. The author breaks down this phase of the Overland Campaign into thirty-five map “sets,” with three focused on the May 8 march to Spotsylvania, twenty-two on the two weeks of fighting at Spotsylvania itself, four on the battles and skirmishes along the North Anna, and five on the final struggle at Cold Harbor. As usual with this impressive series, full-page narrative descriptions opposite each map provide valuable, well-researched commentary on the actions.

As the book’s title makes clear, the lion’s share of coverage focuses on Spotsylvania. This emphasis marks a significant contribution to the field, with the major previous map study by National Park Service historians for the Spotsylvania action being increasingly hard to come by these days. Gottfried devotes twenty maps alone, for example, to the death struggle at the Mule Shoe on May 12, providing probably the most detailed visual breakdown of this important action anywhere in print. Readers get a real sense through this procession of maps for just how protracted and exhausting the fighting that day must have been. The book also provides helpful detail on the earlier Union Second Corps fighting at the Po River, which rarely garners as much attention as it deserves from Civil War historians. And for cavalry aficionados, the dogged movements of Phil Sheridan and Jeb Stuart, including the combat at Yellow Tavern and Haw’s Shop, receive plenty of attention as well.

Readers expecting grand new theories or controversial interpretations of the May-June 1864 actions will leave unsatisfied; breaking new ground is specifically not Gottfried’s intention here. Instead, the book’s value lies in how meticulously such a seasoned scholar sifts through the many secondary works on the campaign to piece together reconstructions of key movements and maneuvers. In this role, Gottfried is in his element. The only drawback that can be noted—and it is a minor one—is that the scale of many of the maps precludes the sort of close-up, regimental-level detail that might be desirable for some. The May 12 maps, for instance, always retain the same wider perspective on the Mule Shoe without offering substantial insets. This detail could have been helpful for describing an action that notoriously focused on such a narrow stretch as the Bloody Angle. But this same drawback is also, to a great extent, a principal virtue of the author’s approach. Like Gordon Rhea before him, Gottfried never loses sight of the bigger picture. In fact, this method is helpful for appreciating the events from Spotsylvania to Cold Harbor as Grant himself understood them—a relentless campaign of actions and maneuvers where tactical defeat proved merely a temporary setback.

The Maps of Spotsylvania is a well-researched, beautifully-produced atlas that merits attention from anyone wanting to get the most out of studying and stomping the 1864 battlefields. The volumes in this series are a true service to the field of Civil War military history, and Gottfried and Savas Beatie are to be commended for their work.