And Keep Moving On

The Virginia Campaign, May-June 1864

Mark Grimsley

Narrated by Michael Piotrasch

Available from Audible

Book published by University of Nebraska Press

And Keep Moving On is the first book to see the Virginia campaign of spring 1864 as Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee saw it: a single, massive operation stretching hundreds of miles. The story of the campaign is also the story of the demise of two great armies. The scale of casualties and human suffering that the campaign inflicted makes it unique in U.S. history. Mark Grimsley's study, however, is not just another battle book. Grimsley places the campaign in the political context of the 1864 presidential election; appraises the motivation of soldiers; appreciates the impact of the North’s sea power advantage; questions conventional interpretations; and examines the interconnections among the major battles, subsidiary offensives, and raids.

Mark Grimsley is a professor of history at Ohio State University. His books include The Collapse of the Confederacy, Civilians in the Path of War and Gettysburg: A Battlefield Guide

REVIEWS:

“The six-week military campaign that began that May, energetically recounted in historian Mark Grimsley’s And Keep Moving On ... became a legendary duel. By focusing on the Wilderness, Grimsley also takes us into a moment when the Civil War battlefield – if not combat itself – was transformed.”

—Washington Post

“Engagingly written, thoroughly researched, and thought provoking, Grimsley's And Keep Moving On is the best single-volume history of the Overland Campaign yet published.”

—Gordon Rhea

“High quality of research, analysis, and storytelling.... An excellent synthesis of a sprawling military operation that extended well beyond the lines of Grant and Lee.”

—The Journal of Southern History

“This excellent book covers what is commonly referred to as Grant’s Overland Campaign.... I enjoyed this clearly written book very much. The clear maps are helpful to the reader.... This one provides more than enough information for the reader on each battle, as well as the overall Virginia campaign. Though a bit pricey, I recommend this interesting book to all Civil War readers.”

—Duane Benell, Civil War Courier

“Grimsley’s work is a synthesis that includes traditional and ‘new’ military history methodologies, typical of the Great Campaigns of the Civil War series of which is it is the latest volume. Yet Grimsley does not get bogged down with a traditional narrative.... Grimsley’s analysis and historiographical review of the generalship of Grant and Lee are thorough and fair.”

—Journal of American History

“An excellent job of coloring in the details of the severity of the hardships soldiers endured.... Grimsley has provided Civil War readers with a balanced, yet provocative study of the Virginia war in the spring of 1864.”

—The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography

“A superb overview of the 1864 Overland Campaign.... Grimsley has produced one of the finest operational Civil War histories in recent memory.”

—Military Review

“A first rate campaign study that gives appropriate attention to the wide range of peripheral operations that came under Grant’s and Lee’s purview away from the main front. His book is clearly, sometimes graphically, written.”

—War in History

“Grimsley skillfully analyses the campaign’s significance in his final chapter, an analysis that sets his work apart from others.... The series as a whole, and this title in particular, will stand the test for another hundred years.”

—North Carolina Historical Review

“What he achieves is an excellent narrative that explains theater operations against the political backdrop of the 1864 presidential election and the relationship between major battles, subsidiary offensives, diversionary raids, and naval operations that compose the overall campaign. This is the first book length work to examine the Virginia Campaign of May and June 1864 as a unified whole.”

—H-Net Reviews

“This particular book is very interesting, featuring long chapters with lots of quotes from primary sources, several photos from the Civil War period and several clear maps. Grimsley also supplies an annotated bibliography.... A good addition to any Civil War collection.”

—i>Rambles.net

“This is a fine interpretation that will be of interest to both general and scholarly audiences.”

—Civil War History

“This new paperback edition of Mark Grimsley’s highly acclaimed study of the Overland campaign of 1864, a volume in the Great Campaigns of the Civil War series, brings to students and teachers of the Civil War a military narrative of uncommon intelligence and lucidity.... Grimsley’s superb account should help bury the now-tired Lost Cause interpretation of Lee and Grant and their ‘duel’ and allow us all to keep moving on away from older readings that defined the campaign almost wholly in terms of casualties toward a fuller understanding of the way(s) the campaign presaged the Union’s modern strategy of multiple offensives that won the war.”

—Civil War History