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Not War But Murder: Cold Harbor 1864. By Ernest B. Furgurson. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000. Pp. xiv, 328. $28.50, ISBN 0-679-45517-5.)
Arguing that historians have reduced Cold Harbor to a brief, onedimensional, frontal attack, Ernest Furgurson suggests that the failure to understand the complexity and significance of the campaign began with Ulysses S. Grant himself. In both his official report and his later memoirs, Grant offered little insight into the battle. Cold Harbor has since become synonymous with mindless slaughter, its horrific memory frequently invoked as one of a series of rolling encounters between Spotsylvania and Petersburg-but its specific story, Furgurson maintains, merits fuller examination.
Furgurson's account traces Grant's arrival in the East as "General-inChief' and his fateful decision to join George G. Meade's Army of the Potomac in the field. Meade, already the target of some...