Booknotes: A Grand Opening Squandered

New Arrival:

• A Grand Opening Squandered: The Battle for Petersburg, June 15-18, 1864 by Sean Michael Chick (Savas Beatie, 2025).

Originally published in 1988, Thomas Howe's The Petersburg Campaign: Wasted Valor, June 15-18, 1864 is the classic account of the bungled attempt by Union forces to seize the Cockade City during the opening stage of what would become the extended 1864-65 Petersburg Campaign. If Sean Michael Chick's new book, A Grand Opening Squandered: The Battle for Petersburg, June 15-18, 1864, sounds familiar, your memory is not deceiving you. Potomac Books published the author's full-length study of the very same topic, titled The Battle of Petersburg, June 15-18, 1864, back in 2015. So why a new version with a different publisher? As Chick writes, the new version represents "a chance for me to return to the topic, correct a few errors, provide better maps, and reassess things after more thought and research" (pg. 166). If things go right, a second edition of the earlier work might also be in the cards.

Even though it remains unquestionably the case that federal blundering played a principle role in their failure to carry the Petersburg defenses, recent scholarship gives the Confederates more credit for successfully defending the city during this period. In the judgment of some, the early stages of the Richmond-Petersburg Campaign were General P.G.T. Beauregard's finest hour as a Confederate commander.

From the description: "Petersburg’s small garrison was determined to hold the city. Its department commander, Gen. P. G. T. Beauregard, realized the danger and shifted as many men as he could spare into the defenses and took the field himself. North of the river, meanwhile, Lee remained unconvinced that Grant had stolen a march on him. The four days of fighting that followed (June 15–18) would determine if the war would end or drag on." "Somehow, the Confederates managed to hold on against the bungled Federal effort and fight them to a standstill. Lee’s army finally began arriving on June 18. Petersburg would hold—for now. Beauregard’s impressive achievement was one of the South’s last strategic victories."

Chick's updated work "provides fresh and renewed attention to one of the most important, fascinating, and yet oddly overlooked battles of the war. Inside are original maps, new research, and dozens of images—many published here for the first time." The book is part of the ECW series, so, of course, it contains a hefty appendix section addressing diverse topics worthy of further conversation. In addition to a driving tour of June 6-18 events, the section offers short pieces on the Battle of Piedmont (and how it affected the war in other parts of the state), the First Michigan Sharpshooters (who participated in the final attack against Petersburg on June 17), a biographical sketch of Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain's life and Civil War service, a short history of Petersburg National Battlefield, and a summary of Civil War memory narratives associated with the campaign.

It is also worthy of note that A Grand Opening Squandered "is the first in a series on the Petersburg operation, which will provide readers with a strong introduction to the war’s longest and most complex campaign."