Meade, Mud, Mistakes, and Stalemate: The Mine Run Campaign

As many TOCWOC readers know, I am interested in the post-Gettysburg campaigns in the East and have commented on them in the past.  Andrew A. Humphreys, Army of the Potomac’s Chief of Staff at the time of Bristoe Station and Mine Run, did write a short campaign study in 1883 (available to read or for download at Google Books for anyone interested), but modern book-length studies of the Bristoe Station and Mine Run campaigns are long overdue.

It was with interest, then, that I stumbled onto an ongoing series of posts on the History Channel Civil War forum by forum regular “sfcdan” covering te Mine Run Campaign from the Union perspective.  For a map of the campaign prior to reading the information below, check out this page, which was found in the comments of part 2 of this series.

Mine Run – Part I – In this “Prelude”, Dan sets the stage for the Mine Run Campaign by covering the post-Gettysburg action in the East up to and including the action at Rappahannock Station on November 7, 1863.

Mine Run – Part 2 – Part 2 is titled “Meade considers his options”, and goes over what choices Meade could make in order to most effectively cross over the Rapidan River and force the Confederates from their formidable defenses.

Mine Run – Part 3 – Part 3 looks at the plan Meade finally settled on in detail and communicated to his Corps commanders on November 23, 1863.

Mine Run – Part 4 – As Meade’s plans were put into action, rain and mistakes by III Corps commander William French caused problems from the beginning.

Mine Run – Part 5 “Robertson’s Tavern” covers the preliminary action on November 27 and 28 east of Mine Run.

Mine Run Part 6 and beyond have not yet been written as of the morning of October 6.  I encourage TOCWOC’s readers to follow sfcdan’s posts to the conclusion of the campaign.  He has been doing these campaign studies of lesser known campaigns for awhile and these threads never cease to be interesting.  I’ll be following along and I will post updates here at TOCWOC if time permits.

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