The Battle Of The Crater, by Newt Gingrich & William R. Forstchen

I must admit that I have not read anything by Newt Gingrich before, but this book was a pleasantly written book, albeit one that had a complicated view of the titular incident in the book, The Battle of the Crater, which was an attempt to break the siege of Petersburg through the use of mining explosive technology. As might be imagined from a work by Newt Gingrich, the work itself deeply involves politics on a variety of levels as well a somewhat complicated plot. There are a few people the story is told through, the main pov character is an Irish illustration artist for Harper’s Weekly who happens to be a protege of Abraham Lincoln, with rare personal access as a behind-the-scenes envoy asked to give an honest view of the front, as a way of circumventing the smokescreen coming from the headquarters staff. In many ways, this book dovetails nicely with the last book I read [1] about Lincoln’s voracious appetite for accurate information to better inform his own judgments.

The book itself is a tale told in several chapters, in a largely chronological fashion, the Battle of the Crater from the slaughter at Cold Harbor, which marked the breaking point of the Army of the Potomac when it came to frontal charges (in a fashion not unlike those faced by WWI armies in analogous trench warfare), through the plan and execution of a mine tunnel dug underneath a key fortress astride a key supply route for Petersburg that was the responsibility of a regiment of Pennsylvania coal miners, along with the efforts of a green regiment of black troops from Indiana that sought to prove themselves as worthy citizens through leading a charge that could bring about the capture of Richmond. These good elements are more than balanced out on the debit side by the excessive caution and timidity of Union commanders like Meade and Burnside, whose interpersonal drama leads to mistakes and hostility that leads to sabotage of the plan and to political recriminations in the resulting court of inquiry, where the Irish protagonist’s value as an emissary from Lincoln allows him to win the trust of others who figure out his identity and in turn trust him to bring the truth before Lincoln’s eyes about the mismanagement of military affairs because of personal politics.

As might be expected, this novel speaks with a heavy political angle, albeit a complicated and unconventional one. Lincoln is portrayed as being humane and deeply beleaguered by the pressure of trying to win the Civil War in the midst of an election campaign, deeply interested in the truth but also possessed of the political savvy to recognize when the verdict of history is relied upon to correct present wrongs. Lee, although briefly portrayed, is shown as kindly and honorable, without the sort of ruthlessness and killer instinct that he must have possessed to have behaved as he did in war, however wrapped as it was in the courtly politeness of an aristocratic Southern gentleman. Grant is portrayed as savvy in his own fashion, aware of the political feuds of his army even as he seeks to use it to gain victory. Nobility is seen in black and white, and south and north, in a rhetoric that obviously seeks for reconciliation through reunion, along with the righting of ancient wrongs. Most notably, the book points out at its close that there was at the time of the book’s publishing no marker at the site of the crater in honor of the 4,000 mostly freeborn black American citizens who made up the fourth division of the 9th corps of the Army of the Potomac who fought and died while their division commander was drunk behind the lines. This particular novel shows how the wisdom of ordinary people can be let down by the weakness of their leadership, which offers perhaps the most subtle and pervasive political point of the entire novel, albeit one that seems to inform much of the political career of Mr. Gingrich as well.

[1] https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2014/09/22/book-review-mr-lincolns-t-mails/