Bruce Catton's "The Army of the Potomac Trilogy" combines a great novel's memorable characters with a classic history's understanding of politics and battles.
Recently released in one volume by the Library of America, Catton's "Mr. Lincoln's Army," "Glory Road" and "A Stillness at Appomattox" trace the main Union Army's perilous path to eventual victory over Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia.
First published from 1951 through 1954, Catton's books reveal the characters and motivations of a gallery of major and minor figures, from Union Gen. George McClellan and President Abraham Lincoln, to subsidiary generals, cabinet members, and meddling members of Congress.
Confederate generals Lee, Stonewall Jackson, Joseph Johnston and James Longstreet receive more cursory attention, focusing on their battlefield leadership, which for the war's first fraught years foiled the Union commanders.
The first volume looks at McClellan's organization of the Union Army after the disastrous losses at the first and second battles of Bull Run, also known as Manassas, and other debacles.
In an eerie foreshadowing of today's melodromatic political climate, accusations of treason were freely hurled about, even at McClellan, who when he first took command was urged by some of Lincoln's cabinet members to overthrow Lincoln's government and rule as a dictator.
"Mr. Lincoln's Army" ends with McClellan's victory at Antietam, which led to Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. While McClellan disappointed Lincoln by not pursuing Lee's retreating soldiers, the bloody battle was a turning point.
The second volume tells of McClellan's ouster and further devastating union losses at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, followed by the Union's decisive victory at Gettysburg. Once again, the Union Army upset Lincoln by letting Lee escape. This time, Gen. George Meade displayed the exasperating failure of nerve.
"A Stillness at Appomattox" details how U.S. Grant took over the Army of the Potomac. Unlike his predecessors, Grant displayed a willingness to engage Lee's army in a series of bloody battles. The Union Army suffered heavy losses, but outlasted Lee's decimated army, at last achieving the long-awaited Union victory.
A longtime editor at American Heritage after a newspaper career, Catton was a pioneering popular historian of the Civil War, winning a Pulitzer Prize in 1954 for "A Stillness at Appomattox." His trilogy helped generate the huge interest in the Civil War among a general readership, and set the stage for Ken Burns' popular PBS history of the war.
From a predominantly conversational, colloquial writing style, Catton rises to passages of eloquent power reminiscent of Proust or Tolstoy. He's a writer with a wide range, like an organist who can play different registers.
Catton displays a sense of an America moving from a rural to an urban nation at the dawn of a revolution in technology and commerce. He captures the speech and intellectual outlook of an era thrust into a bloody civil war and its wrenching changes.
"The Army of the Potomac Trilogy" reads like a historical novel as well as a consummate history.
Like other classics in the field, it holds up a mirror to our conflicted age.
Comments