In the Footsteps of Grant and Lee

In early May 1864, Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant initiated a drive through central Virginia to crush Robert E. Lee's Confederate Army of Northern Virginia. For forty days, the armies fought a grinding campaign from the Rapidan River to the James River that helped decide the course of the Civil War. Several of the war's bloodiest engagements occurred in this brief period: the Wilderness, Spotsylvania Court House, the North Anna River, Totopotomoy Creek, Bethesda Church, and Cold Harbor. Pitting Grant and Lee against one another for the first time in the war, the Overland Campaign, as this series of battles and maneuvers came to be called, represents military history at its most intense. In the Footsteps of Grant and Lee, a unique blend of narrative and photographic journalism from Gordon C. Rhea, the foremost authority on the Overland Campaign, and Chris E. Heisey, a leading photographer of Civil War battlefields, provides a stunning, stirring account of this deadly game of wits and will between the Civil War's foremost military commanders.

Gordon C. Rhea is the author of four books on the Overland Campaign: The Battle of the Wilderness, May 5--6, 1864; The Battles for Spotsylvania Court House and the Road to Yellow Tavern, May 7--12, 1864; To the North Anna River: Grant and Lee, May 13--25, 1864; and Cold Harbor: Grant and Lee, May 26--June 3, 1864. He is currently writing the fifth and concluding volume in the series. A frequent lecturer on military history and a practicing attorney, he lives in Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina, with his wife and two sons.

Chris E. Heisey is coauthor of Gettysburg: This Hallowed Ground. He is a photojournalist for the Roman Catholic Diocese in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and lives in Mechanicsburg with his wife and son.