Strike Them a Blow: Battle along the North Anna River, May21-25, 1864 (Chris Mackowski - CHC)

by Chris Mackowski Battle along the North Anna River, May 21-25, 1864.For sixteen days the armies had grappled?a grueling horror-show of nonstop battle, march, and maneuver that stretched through May of 1864. Federal commander Ulysses S. Grant had resolved to destroy his Confederate adversaries through attrition if by no other means. He would just keep at them until he used them up.Meanwhile, Grant’s Confederate counterpart, Robert E. Lee, looked for an opportunity to regain the offensive initiative. “We must strike them a blow,” he told his lieutenants.The toll on both armies was staggering.But Grant’s war of attrition began to take its toll in a more insidious way. Both army commanders?operating on the dark edge of exhaustion, fighting off illness, pressure-cooked by stress?began to feel the effects of that continuous, merciless grind in very personal ways. Punch-drunk tired, they began to second-guess themselves, began missing opportunities, began making mistakes.As a result, along