Glory Enough for All: The Battle of the Crater : A Novel of the Civil War [first edition]

July 1864. The Army of the Potomac and the Army of Northern Virginia - U. S. Grant and Robert E. Lee - are locked in deadly trench warfare that neither side can break. Cemetery Hill is the key to the five-mile line of Confederate defenses. If Grant can take the Hill, his troops can walk into Petersburg, sever the railroad line to Richmond, and split Lee's army in two, bringing the Civil War to an end.In the tradition of Michael Shaara's The Killer Angels, historian Duane Schultz brilliantly resurrects one of the most tragic events of the Civil War - the Battle of the Crater. Schultz recounts the efforts of Colonel Henry Pleasants and his regiment, the 48th Pennsylvania Volunteers, as they devise an ingenious plan to end the stalemate: dig a tunnel through five hundred feet of Virginia Clay beneath Cemetery Hill and blow up the hill, a job military experts say cannot be done. In a riveting account, Schultz relates their against-all-odds struggle as the unit fights cave-ins, floods, suffocation, and a bungling army bureaucracy.The Union generals - Burnside, Meade, and Grant - foolishly allow the opportunity to end the war slip away. Concerned for their place in history, they let their rivalries, jealousies, and outright racism lead to the war's greatest tragedy - the massacre of the Fourth Division U.S. colored troops by both Union and Confederate soldiers.From the highest councils of war to daily life in the trenches, Duane Schultz, author of the Over the Earth I Come (A 1992 New York Times Notable Book of the Year), recreates the people, events, and times with historical accuracy and vivid, suspenseful writing. In a stunning blend of fact and fiction, Glory Enough for All encompasses all that is heroic and tragic in the Civil War. It recounts a part of American history that should never be forgotten.