The Great Battle Never Fought: The Mine Run Campaign, November 26-December 2, 1863

Emerging Civil War Series

De: Chris Mackowski

Narrado por: Chris Mackowski

The stakes for George Gordon Meade could not have been higher.

After his stunning victory at Gettysburg in July of 1863, the Union commander spent the following months trying to bring the Army of Northern Virginia to battle once more and finish the job. The Confederate army, robbed of much of its offensive strength, nevertheless parried Meade’s moves time after time. Although the armies remained in constant contact during those long months of cavalry clashes, quick maneuvers, and sudden skirmishes, Lee continued to frustrate Meade’s efforts.

Meanwhile, in Washington, D.C., Meade’s political enemies launched an all-out assault against his reputation and generalship. Even the very credibility of his victory at Gettysburg came under assault. Pressure mounted for the army commander to score a decisive victory and prove himself once more.

Smaller victories, like those at Bristoe Station and Rappahannock Station, did little to quell the growing clamor - particularly because out west, in Chattanooga, another Union general, Ulysses S. Grant, was once again reversing Federal misfortunes. Meade needed a comparable victory in the east.

And so, on Thanksgiving Day, 1863, the Army of the Potomac rumbled into motion once more, intent on trying again to bring about the great battle that would end the war.

The Great Battle Never Fought: The Mine Run Campaign, November 26-December 2 1863 recounts the final chapter of the forgotten fall of 1863 - when George Gordon Meade made one final attempt to save the Union and, in doing so, save himself.

©2018 Savas Beatie (P)2019 Savas Beatie

Nice tour guide

For skirmishes and abortive campaigns like this one, there isn't likely to be a wealth of scholarship done when compared to the Big Ones that everyone knows, like Gettysburg, Fredericksburg, Vicksburg, Petersburg, and so on. So smaller volumes like this one are a nice supplement able to go into the same level of day by day, hour by hour detail that a book on Gettysburg or The Wilderness would skim over in a few paragraphs as epilogue or prologue.

Narrated by the author, they are as skilled as several other audiobook narrators I've encountered, The various accents applied for certain speakers oftentimes go wild into the realm of exaggerated parody, but they're never unintelligible. The briefness of the abortive campaign and the simplicity of movements means that consulting a map isn't a big concern.


At several moments, landscape and geography is gone into in some detail, including comparing the modern day geography with the 1863 setting, and after several repeated moments of "Please respect the private property of the people living there" that I realize this is essentially a tour guide. Its length is a bit much, especially as the majority of the land involved in the campaign is still privately owned.

A neat aside was with the epilogue detailing the author's history with the land and the battle, including his multiple visits to the various sites and interacting with people living there who gave permission to dig for bullets, and the eventual work done with the American Battlefield Trust to preserve some of the land.


Whether this is meant as a tour guide or a monograph, it's extremely well done and easily fits in as a bridge between major works on the Gettysburg campaign and the Overland campaign.