Attrition 101

Bloody Spring: Forty Days that Sealed the Confederacy's Fate, by Joseph Wheelan, is a history of Grant’s Overland Campaign in 1864.  Grant became the overall commander of the Union forces in 1864, and was finally a man who realized what a war of attrition could accomplish against Lee's Army of Northern Virginia.  The Union had an abundance of everything, whereas the Southern Insurrection was running on a tattered shoe string.   

Rather than fighting a single battle and retreating, win or lose, as all other Union generals had done before him, Grant continued to engage Lee not matter the cost.  Grant had the flexibility to replace his losses and absorb his mistakes while Lee could not.  Ultimately this is how the Union won the war.

Bloody Spring provides a shocking and riveting account of total war.