Review: Catton, The Army of the Potomac (1951-53)

[truepenny]

The Army of the Potomac, 3 Vols by Bruce Catton

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Vol. 1: Mr. Lincoln's Army
Vol. 2: Glory Road
Vol. 3: A Stillness at Appomattox

I liked this trilogy of books SLIGHTLY less well than the Centennial History of the Civil War, and that mostly for a reason that Catton points out himself: the story of the Army of the Potomac is really the same story told over and over again: the best efforts of the soldiers doomed by bad generalship to failure (drink once if the bad general is McClellan, drink twice if the bad general is Burnside, chug if the bad general is Hooker). And then there's Grant, who was not at all a bad general, but who had a completely different idea of how you fought a war. In the Centennial History, Catton had a much broader canvas and a wider variety of incidents to work with.

But The Army of the Potomac Trilogy is still beautifully and thoughtfully written (a quick example: "Grant had a basilisk's gaze. He could sit, whittling and smoking, looking off beyond the immediate scene, and what he was looking at was likely to come down in blood and ashes and crashing sound a little later."); Catton uses his primary sources to excellent effect, and he is incredibly good at making a coherent narrative out of something that at the time was neither, without ever losing track of how bewildering and dispiriting events were for the men who lived through them (or didn't live through them, which is its own part of the story).



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