Richard J. Sommers - Richmond Redeemed: The Siege at Petersburg, The Battles of Chaffins Bluff and Poplar Spring Church, September 29--October 2, 1864

Redeemed: The Siege at Petersburg was first published as the featured selection of the History Book Club for Christmas of 1980. Doubleday released the trade edition the following month. The book was avidly received by readers and critically acclaimed by reviewers. Interest in it remains high. However, because of peculiar judicial interpretations of tax laws on inventories (originally inventories of plumbing pipes but now inventories of everything), the book was allowed to go out of print rather than remain in stock. For many years, only copies recirculating in the used-book market have been available.

A third of a century has elapsed since first publication. The 150th anniversary of the Siege of Petersburg is fast approaching. It is time to make Richmond Redeemed more readily available to new generations of readers and to old friends who may have read the original book.

This 150th Anniversary Edition does not simply reprint the original. Nor is it a total rewrite. Rather does it build upon that book: eliminating typos, confirming surmises (how gratifying), and correcting misunderstandings (yes, there were a few). The two fundamental appendices on Order of Battle and Casualties are retained. A new appendix provides a Timeline of significant dates from mid-September through mid-October 1864. Another new appendix provides Cross-References for over 200 senior officers by state, grade (or rank), and command. Both of those additions should help readers keep track of events and officers of the Fifth Offensive. Although new research is not as exhaustive as for the first edition, some 170 new manuscript and printed sources have been incorporated here. They add to over 1,200 manuscript and printed primary sources in the 1981 work. That earlier research remains the fundamental undergirding for this book.

The principal addition to this edition is new analysis of the Siege of Petersburg, its Fifth Offensive, and its generalship which I have developed over the intervening decades. Teaching future strategic leaders of our Armed Forces in the Army War College, conversing with fellow Civil War historians, speaking to Civil War organizations all around the nation, and simply rethinking the subject have afforded new insights and new focus. Some of that reinterpretation has already appeared in my other writings. Here it is presented much more elaborately and fully and is interwoven throughout the 150th Anniversary Edition.

This preface summarizes several of those reassessments and also builds upon the Preface to the original edition. The original Preface and Acknowledgments are reprinted below. All acknowledgments and most of the Preface deserve to be re-affirmed. Studying military history remains important and usefulas well as interesting and appealing. This includes the classical military history of wars, campaigns, battles, generals, units, and common soldiers. Then, too, the same terminology, usages, spellings, and numberings for designating units will be used as in the original book. And, of course, the sentiments of gratitude conveyed in those Acknowledgments have only grown after all these years.

Those sentiments, as expressed in the final paragraph of the original Acknowledgments, are especially strong toward my mentor, the late Dr. Frank E. Vandiver, long the Civil War Professor at Rice University, where I did my doctoral work, and later the President of North Texas State University and of Texas A&M University. Such sentiments, indeed, led me to dedicate the original book to him. They remain undiminished. If he were still with us, he would be the first to rejoice and understand why this 150th Anniversary Edition is dedicated to someone to whom my sentiments are even warmer: my lovely wife, Tracy.

A new Acknowledgments section in this edition thanks people who have helped since 1981. The new sources are added throughout the book and the bibliography. Several other, more major changes can be highlighted here.

For one thing, most gratifyingly, there is no longer a paucity of publications on Petersburg. William C. Davis, Noah Andre Trudeau, John Horn, Ron Field, Earl Hess, and the team of Edwin C. Bearss & Bryce Suderow have written important books on the entire Siege of Petersburg, and A. Wilson Greene is undertaking a three-volume work on those operations. In 1980-81, Richmond Redeemed proved the pioneering publication on Petersburg. In 2014, this expanded 150th Anniversary Edition is pleased to rejoin the rich array of literature which now graces that field.

The previous paragraph does not mention Glenn Robertsons important book on the Battle of the Ninth of June, simply because I have re-evaluated the place of that combat in the course of the conflict. That siege was waged by Ulysses S. Grant, not just as General-in-Chief or Eastern Theater commander but directly as army group commander. The siege thus began with Grants attacks on June 15-18. His First Offensive was the First Federal Offensive, and the respective numbers remain synchronized for the Second through Ninth Offensives during the ensuing nine and a half months. Indeed, there is no longer a need to speak of Federal Offensives since each of them was one of Grants Offensives.