Glory Road

Army of the Potomac #2

by Bruce Catton

In those Critical months between the autumn of 1862 and midsummer of the following year, the eventual outcome of the Civil War was determined by the Army of the Potomac. After a bloddy massacre at Fredericksburg, an aimless and muddy match up and down the banks of the Rappahannock, and a catastrophe of confusion at Chancellorsville, this army took a firm stand on the hills to the west of a small Pennsylvania town called Gettysburg and finally turned the fortunes of war against the Confederacy.
This is the second volume of Mr. Catton's Civil War trilogy...The Army of the Potomac.

Genres: History, Civil War, Nonfiction, American Civil War, American History, War, Military History

389 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1952

About the author

Bruce Catton was a distinguished American historian and journalist, best known for his influential writings on the American Civil War. Renowned for his narrative style, Catton brought history to life through richly drawn characters, vivid battlefield descriptions, and a deep understanding of the political and emotional forces that shaped the era. His accessible yet meticulously researched books made him one of the most popular historians of the twentieth century.
Born in Petoskey, Michigan, and raised in the small town of Benzonia, Catton grew up surrounded by Civil War veterans whose personal stories sparked a lifelong fascination with the conflict. Though he briefly attended Oberlin College, Catton left during World War I and served in the U.S. Navy. He later began a career in journalism, working as a reporter, editor, and Washington correspondent. His experience in government service during World War II inspired his first book, The War Lords of Washington (1948).
Catton achieved national acclaim with his Army of the Potomac trilogy—Mr. Lincoln’s Army (1951), Glory Road (1952), and A Stillness at Appomattox (1953)—the last of which earned him the Pulitzer Prize for History and the National Book Award. He went on to publish a second trilogy, The Centennial History of the Civil War, and contributed two volumes to a biography of Ulysses S. Grant, begun by Lloyd Lewis. His other notable works include This Hallowed Ground, The American Heritage Picture History of the Civil War, and Waiting for the Morning Train, a memoir of his Michigan boyhood.
In 1954, Catton became the founding editor of American Heritage magazine, further shaping the public’s understanding of U.S. history. In 1977, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Catton’s legacy endures through his vivid portrayals of America’s most defining conflict and his enduring influence on historical writing.

Reviews

[Ted · Rating 5 out of 5]

Across the open field, shaken by the blast of many guns, there rose the high unearthly keen of the Rebel yell... A Federal surgeon wrote after the war, "I have never, since I was born, heard so fearful a noise as a Rebel yell. It is nothing like a hurrah, but rather a regular wildcat screech." ... Another veteran recalled, "There is nothing like it this side of the infernal region, and the peculiar corkscrew sensation that it sends down your backbone under these circumstances can never be told."



The second part to Bruce Catton's outstanding trilogy, covering the period from the autumn of 1862 to the battle of Gettysburg in July of '63.

To give an idea of the Catton's moving style, I will simply offer an extended quote. This is from chapter 3, "White Road in the Moonlight", at its very end, describing Colonel Strong Vincent leading a brigade of the V Corps up into Pennsylvania to reinforce Buford at Gettysburg. This was on June 30, the night before the full moon of July 1.

There was a bright moon that night, and most of the army kept to the road long after the sun had gone down ... there was a stir in the air, and the first faint tug had been felt from the line that had been thrown into Gettysburg, a quiet hint that something was apt to pull the whole army together on those long ridges and wooded hills ... Vincent ... took his men through a little town, where the moonlight lay bright in the street, and in every doorway there were girls waving flags and cheering ... as the colors went by (Vincent) took off his hat, and he sat there quietly, watching the flags moving on in the silver light ... To an aid ... the Colonel mused aloud: "There could be worse fates that to die fighting here in Pennsylvania, with that flag waving overhead". There was the long white road in the moonlight, with the small town girls laughing and crying in the shadows, and the swaying ranks of the young men waving to them and moving on past them. To these girls who had been nowhere and who had all their lives before them this was the first of all the roads of the earth, and to many of the young men who marched off under the moon it was the last of all the roads ...

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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[H (trying to keep up with GR friends) Balikov · Rating 5 out of 5]

Preface - Wars seem to be part of the human condition. I am not an “aficianado” of wars even though I have read some of the great battle storytellers from Homer through O’Brian and Cornwell. I have paid my respects when near a significant site such as Ground Zero or Hastings or Waterloo or in this case Gettysburg.

There has been plenty of praise and criticism heaped on Catton’s history of the Civil War; it has been one of the most widely read accounts. What is clear to me is that he is one of those rare historians who can both synthesize facts and write with both competence and flair. Here is the way he opens his recounting of the battle of Gettysburg, a pivotal point in this war.
"Returning to his regiment in the fall of 1862 after a furlough in his home city of York, the chaplain of the 102nd Pennsylvania Infantry looked at the ravaged Virginia countryside and noted in his diary that war was very mysterious. It destroyed and wasted, and wherever the armies had gone “the desolation has become almost complete,” but back home it was not like that at all. Pennsylvania had put 150,000 men into uniform, and by now a good many of them had gone under the sod, whether with or without appropriate graveside ceremonies. Yet what one actually saw in that state was the hustle and excitement of boom times. Never (to all appearances) had the country been so well off. “What a marvel is here!” wrote the chaplain. “Something new under the sun! A nation, from internal resources alone, carrying on for over eighteen months the most gigantic war of modern times, ever increasing in its magnitude, yet all this while growing richer and more prosperous!”

The city of York is what Pennsylvanians might term, “merely a stone’s throw from Gettysburg.” The contrast that Catton is beginning to draw is between perceptions and reality. Both armies suffered from poor intelligence and protracted communications. These and other themes are present and accounted for; however, the reason that Catton’s recounting rises to the stratosphere is because he is as good as a novelist in putting the reader in the midst of the action:
"A Wisconsin private grabbed for a Confederate flag, a Confederate shot him down, a comrade leaped forward swinging his musket like a ball bat and brained the man who had shot him, a corporal ran in and got the flag—and then, all along the line, the Federals were shouting: “Throw down your muskets! Throw down your muskets!” Hundreds of Southerners obeyed. Dawes shouted for the colonel of the nearest Southern regiment, and the dazed colonel came forward and handed over his sword. Six of his subordinate officers came up and did the same, and Dawes had an awkward moment, standing there with his arms full of swords, until his adjutant relieved him of them. Some of the Rebels escaped by running out at the western end of the cut, but hundreds surrendered, and the beleaguered New York regiment north of the cut was rescued. It had lost two thirds of its men in half an hour’s fight."

He does his research but that is only the foundation of his narrative. Wow!

While chronicling the people and events that shaped the Civil War, Catton is careful not to glorify the heroism by minimizing the devastation: "The air was all murderous iron; it seemed as if there couldn’t be room for any soldier upright and in motion.” Farther to the left, a veteran in the 1st Minnesota got the same impression, declaring that “it seemed that nothing four feet from the ground could live.” Infantry lying flat behind walls and barricades was nearly suffocated by the choking clouds of smoke."

"One day they would make a park there, with neat lawns and smooth black roadways, and there would be marble statues and bronze plaques to tell the story in bloodless prose. Silent cannon would rest behind grassy embankments, their wheels bolted down to concrete foundations, their malevolence wholly gone, and here and there birds would nest in the muzzles. In the museums and tourist-bait trinket shops old bullets and broken buckles and twisted bayonets would repose under glass, with a rusty musket or so on the wall and little illustrated booklets lying on top of the counter. There would be neat brick and timber cabins on the hillsides, and people would sleep soundly in houses built where the armies had stormed and cried at each other, as if to prove that men killed in battle send forth no restless ghosts to plague comfortable civilians at night. The town and the woods and the ridges and hills would become a national shrine, filled with romantic memories which are in themselves a kind of forgetting, and visitors would stand by the clump of trees and look off to the west and see nothing but the rolling fields and the quiet groves and the great blue bank of the mountains. But first there would have to be a great deal of tidying up."
This book is the second of three covering the whole conflict. I have read other accounts and had a multi-hour tour of the Gettysburg battlefield. Nothing comes close to Catton for the visceral feel of this devastating war. I have read Michael Shaara’s The Killer Angels and it is a fine dramatization of many aspects of this single battle and a deserved winner of the Pulitzer prize. But Catton is Shaara’s equal in almost every respect and it is 100 per cent history.


Some favorite descriptions:
"General Warren was still on hand, watching, and he saw this new disaster and once again rode madly off for help. The first regiment he met was the 140th New York, part of General Stephen Weed’s brigade in Sykes’s corps, and while he was still fifty yards away Warren began shouting to Colonel Patrick O’Rorke to bring his men up the hill as fast as they could run. O’Rorke protested that he was under orders to follow the rest of the brigade somewhere else, but Warren replied: “Never mind that, Paddy! Bring them up on the double-quick—don’t stop for aligning! I’ll take the responsibility!” And because Warren was known to be intimate with Meade, O’Rorke assumed that he could square things, so he took the 140th up on Little Round Top at a dead run. He had no time whatever to spare. The Rebels who had broken the Michigan regiment were coming up the hill. O’Rorke jumped off his horse, tossed the reins to his orderly, called out: “This way, boys!” and ran down the slope toward the enemy, his men at his heels. It was as strange a counterattack as the army ever saw. The men went in with unloaded weapons. They did not stop to fix bayonets, they did not even club their empty muskets: they simply ran straight at their foes, and the only weight their charge had was the weight of their running bodies. Perhaps the mere appearance of fresh troops was enough for the moment. The Confederates wavered and drew back, and the 140th went into line beside Vincent’s brigade, and in a few minutes the rest of Weed’s brigade was on the hill with them.
And
"Chamberlain had to space his men several paces apart to keep the Rebels from getting around his left, and when the first wild rush was beaten back the Rebels settled down among the logs and trees and rocks for the sharpest fire fight this Maine regiment was ever in. The reeking smoke filled the air, the Yankee line swayed and staggered as if the weight of the attack were a tangible force that shoved men off balance, and the valley rang with rifle fire, with the clang of metal ramrods in hot musket barrels, with the yells and cries of Northerners and Southerners caught up in a great fury of combat."
And
"These were Hall’s men, and men from Harrow’s brigade on the left—famous old regiments, 20th Massachusetts and 7th Michigan and “that shattered thunderbolt” (as an officer on Gibbon’s staff called it), the remnant of the 1st Minnesota. They were not “moving by the right flank” or “changing front forward” or executing any other recognized tactical maneuver, and they were not obeying the commands of any officers, although their officers were in their midst, yelling hoarsely and gesturing madly with their swords. No formal tactical move was possible in that jammed smoky confusion, and no shouted command could be heard in the everlasting din."
And
"Colonel de Trobriand looked around, found that he could learn nothing in this belfry that he did not already know, and came down, his jack boots clumping incongruously in the quiet halls. At a window he came upon a group of nuns peering shyly out at this invasion of soldiers. Being a Frenchman, he stopped for a word with them, and he chided them lightly for giving way to the venial sin of curiosity. “Permit me,” he said, “to make one request of you. Ask St. Joseph to keep the Rebel army away from here; for if they come before I get away I do not know what will become of your beautiful convent.” The nuns vanished and the colonel went on down"

A key insight

"The moral dominance of Robert E. Lee over the Federal commanders was all but complete. In a crisis like this they were bound to come up with the one idea: hold on if we can, wait and see what Lee is going to do, and then try to stop him."

A telling anecdote of Meade's character

"Somehow a civilian got in to see Meade that morning, a man who lived on the outskirts of town, coming in angrily to protest that the Federal troops were using his house for a hospital, were burying dead soldiers in his garden, and were strewing amputated arms and legs all over his lawn. He wanted damages, and he demanded that Meade give him a paper which he could use as a claim on the government. Short-tempered Meade blew up at him, told him that if this battle were lost he would have no government to apply to and no property that was worth anything, and hustled him out of there with the warning that if he heard any more from him he would give him a musket and put him in the ranks to fight."

[Paul Haspel · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Glory, glory, hallelujah!” the soldiers of the Army of the Potomac often sang on the march, after Julia Ward Howe gave the song “John Brown’s Body” an inspiring new set of lyrics partway through the first year of the American Civil War. Yet the Army of the Potomac experienced precious little glory in the first half of the war; led (or mis-led) by a succession of general officers who should have known better, the AOP suffered a series of disheartening defeats that were occasionally relieved by an incomplete victory.

Historian Bruce Catton, who as a young child heard old AOP veterans telling war stories in his Michigan hometown, set himself to the task of telling the stories of those brave soldiers and the hard-luck army in which they fought. And the result of his labours was a three-volume history titled simply The Army of the Potomac. The second volume in that history, Glory Road (1952), chronicles the middle years of the army’s often star-crossed career. It begins with the disastrous Union defeat at Fredericksburg; continues through the comparably devastating repulse of the Union armies at Chancellorsville; and concludes with Gettysburg, the Union victory that turned the tide of war and represented a permanent change in the army’s fortunes.

Glory Road begins where the first volume of The Army of the Potomac, with its title of Mr. Lincoln’s Army (1951), had left off – the aftermath of Antietam, with the army receiving a new commander, General Ambrose Burnside, who doubted his own fitness for the job. Those doubts were vindicated, only too clearly, when Burnside led his AOP soldiers into an impossible attack, across a river and up a high hill, against a well-entrenched and well-prepared enemy. The Battle of Fredericksburg (December 11-15, 1862) resulted in 12,000 Union casualties, and brought reunion of the divided nation not one step closer.

Catton is unsparing in his discussion of Burnside’s strategic and tactical failures at Fredericksburg, writing that in that battle “The Army of the Potomac was up against its old, old difficulty: visibly outnumbering its enemy, it nevertheless was put into action in such a way that where the actual fighting was going on, there were more Rebels present than Yankees” (p. 66). In his after-action report on the battle, however, Catton offers eloquent praise of the courage and determination of the Army of the Potomac soldiers who fought it:

The story of Fredericksburg comes down at last to a simple account of the bravery which men can display and the price that can be exacted of them because they do display it; and if the men gain anything at all by any part of it, there is a transcendental scale of values in operation somewhere which it would be nice to know about….For the significant thing about that endless succession of doomed assaults across the plain was not, after all, the fact that a stupid general ordered them, but the fact that the army which had to make them had never once faltered. (pp. 86-87)

Burnside hung on for a time after Fredericksburg, leading the AOP on a fruitless wintertime flanking maneuver that got so bogged down in Rappahannock River mud that it became known forever after as the “Mud March.” Catton writes, with a mix of sympathy and asperity, that Burnside’s “soldiers and the country might have been better off if Burnside had been more of a quitter, but that was one defect which he lacked. He had a responsibility which he knew was too big for him, but as long as he had it he would go ahead with it. The man seems to have felt the lonely isolation of his position very keenly” (p. 106).

While Burnside’s career as AOP commander ground toward its end, the Union Army was undergoing changes that reflected larger changes in U.S. society. Some of the most telling and informative passages of Glory Road reach beyond the battlefield, when Catton suggests that by the aftermath of Fredericksburg, the “Sovereignty of the states was dying, North as well as South, and going with it was the ancient belief that the government which governs least is the government which governs best” (p. 178). In a world where the term “United States” had once been a plural noun, emphasizing the agency of the individual states rather than the national government, “The war had begun as an effort by one coalition of states to impose its will on another coalition of states, and it could not be fought that way any longer” (p. 179).

Looking at how President Lincoln was trying to stop generals from interfering in national politics, Catton adds that “[W]hile the [Lincoln] administration moved to take the army away from the generals, it was also taking it away from the governors. The army would never again be an assemblage of troops contributed by the several states…..From now on, it would be a national army” (p. 183). Both the Army of the Potomac and the United States of America were entering a new era in which people would not say “the United States are,” but rather “the United States is.”

But Glory Road is a work of Civil War history, and therefore it is soon time to return to the battlefield. Burnside was soon out as AOP commander, replaced by General Joseph Hooker, who had his own plans for outflanking and destroying Lee’s army west of Fredericksburg. Generals are supposed to project confidence before their troops, but Catton clearly feels that Hooker went too far in that regard:

Now Hooker had the army, and he was chock-full of bubbling confidence. Over and over he repeated that this was the finest army on the planet. He told one caller that he would take the army across the [Rappahannock] river before long and seize the Rebels where the hair was short, and in a moment of extreme expansiveness he said that he hoped God Almighty would have mercy on the Confederates because he, Joe Hooker, would have none. (p. 206)

Yet all of Hooker’s confidence came to naught. Once again, the soldiers of the Army of the Potomac fought bravely; but Joe Hooker became befuddled when a shell crashed against his headquarters building, and Confederate generals Robert E. Lee and “Stonewall” Jackson devised an effective flank attack and executed it effectively. The Battle of Chancellorsville (April 30 – May 6, 1863) cost the Union Army more than 17,000 casualties; and once again, an end to the war seemed no nearer.

Yet there were signs that things were changing. With the beginning of 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation had taken effect; the United States’ war aims now included freedom for African Americans as well as restoration of the Union. And Confederate hopes for British intervention on the side of the South were proving to be illusory: “English factory hands were idle because Southern cotton could not be imported, and in Richmond men still believed that eventually this pressure would bring England in on the side of the Confederacy. What they overlooked was that while England could get along somehow without American cotton, it could not under any circumstances get along now without American wheat” (pp. 309-10).

And in the summer of 1863, Lee led the Army of Northern Virginia north toward Pennsylvania, gambling on a decisive all-out battlefield victory in the North. The Army of the Potomac followed, with Hooker being replaced en route by the famously irascible but unfailingly competent General George G. Meade. The two armies converged on the peaceful, bucolic seat of Adams County, Pennsylvania; there, “In the Gettysburg cemetery, quiet on a hilltop just south of the town, there was a wooden sign by the gatepost…announcing that the town would impose a five-dollar fine on anyone who discharged a firearm within the cemetery limits” (p. 346).

Of course, many guns were soon discharged in and around that cemetery, and the town of Gettysburg would have been rich beyond measure could it have collected all the fines that the Union Army theoretically incurred when it placed its main defensive line right along the appropriately named Cemetery Ridge, just south of town. Gettysburg has captured the imagination of countless Civil War students for many reasons – among them, its sheer scale and scope as a three-day battle, its status as the only major Civil War battle fought in the North, and the way in which it inspired President Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.

Catton is at his best when describing the Union Army’s successful defense of its long, fishhook-shaped line against repeated Confederate attacks. On the first day (July 1), the rebels hit the Union right around Culp’s Hill; on the second day (July 2), they struck the Union left, at and near Little Round Top – and both times, the Union line held. It was clear to everyone on both sides, therefore, that the Confederates would, on the third day (July 3), attack the Union center along Cemetery Ridge.

This was “Pickett’s Charge,” when three divisions under command of General George Pickett marched across more than a mile of open ground in a desperate effort to break the Union lines. The fighting became particularly intense around a copse of trees along the ridge, where the rebels briefly pierced a portion of the Union line. And Catton emphasizes the boldness and determination of ordinary AOP soldiers of the 20th Massachusetts, 7th Michigan, and 1st Minnesota, as they sealed that breach and drove the rebels back:

They were not “moving by the right flank” or “changing front forward” or executing any other recognized tactical maneuver, and they were not obeying the commands of any officers, although their officers were in their midst, yelling hoarsely and gesturing madly with their swords. No formal tactical move was possible in that jammed smoky confusion, and no shouted command could be heard in the everlasting din….This was not a controlled movement at all. It was simply a crowd of armed men running over spontaneously to get into the middle of an enormous fight, Yankee soldiers swarming in to get at their enemies, all regimental formations lost, every man going in on his own. (p. 413)

Indeed, Catton sometimes seems to minimize Meade’s generalship in favour of an emphasis on the soldiers of the AOP as essentially a self-governing and self-directing army:

The ranks were thinner and there was a new name on the regimental flags, and the men were wiser than they had been before. They were beginning to realize that while a great thing had been done, they had really done it themselves. Meade was “Old Four-Eyes,” a general who had won his battle chiefly because his men were incomparably good soldiers. They had fought at Gettysburg with the highest pitch of inspiration, but the inspiration had come from within themselves and had not been fired by anyone at the top….This army was a military instrument at last, and it could be used to the last full measure of its own inexpressible devotion, but from now on it would display enthusiasm for no generals. (pp. 425-26)

I appreciate Catton’s emphasis on the courage and determination of ordinary soldiers of the Army of the Potomac, even though I’m not sure he’s being entirely fair to Meade. After all, Meade was given a command he didn’t want, while on his way to the battlefield; and three days later, he was commanding the largest American army yet assembled, in the greatest battle ever fought in the Western Hemisphere. I can’t help feeling that General Meade deserves some credit for the Union victory at Gettysburg. General Meade, after all, accomplished what Generals McDowell and McClellan and Pope and Burnside and Hooker could not – whipping the main Confederate army of the East in fair fight.

But Catton is writing a history of the Army of the Potomac – that hard-luck fighting force that lost so many soldiers and so many battles, and yet was in at the finish when the rebels laid down their arms and surrendered. I do not doubt that many readers who finish Glory Road – particularly if they are part of that community of history enthusiasts known as “Civil War buffs” – go straight on to the final volume of Catton’s The Army of the Potomac. That volume, the best-known of the three, looks ahead to the peace that finally came to a war-ravaged nation, with its title of A Stillness at Appomattox.

[robin friedman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bruce Catton And The Army Of The Potomac

Bruce Catton's "Glory Road" was published in 1952 as the second volume of a trilogy on the Army of the Potomac. Unhappily, the book is now out-of-print, but it remains an outstanding, accessible study of the Civil War and of the Union's largest army.

"Glory Road" covers the period from the Battle of Fredericksburg in late 1862 through the Battle of Gettysburg in July, 1863 and concludes with President Lincoln's Gettysburg Address in November, 1863. The primary battles during this period were Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, and Gettysburg. The Army of the Potomac had a different commander in each battle, Burnside, Hooker, and Meade, to face Confederate general Robert E. Lee, who had already assumed almost legendary stature.

Catton captures these battles well, in a rhythmic and readable prose without getting bogged in the detail of many more minute battle accounts. He also does well in tying the courses of the battles together, something more specialized accounts frequently fail to do. The reader wanting a basic understanding of the battles will find it here.

But there is much more to this book than a description of combat. For me, Catton made the Army of the Potomac come alive. He tells the story of how the Army survived its many defeats and came through as a strong, tough fighting force lacking illusions. The Army survived a series of weak commanders and took control of itself.

Catton also does an excellent job of weaving the military course of the War with political and social history. He discusses the politics within the Lincoln administration and the activities of the Copperheads -- Northerners sympathetic to the Confederate War effort. He also gives a fine account of the origins of the United States Sanitary Commission -- a private organization which played a great role in improving medical care for the wounded of the Civil War. Catton's history shows how the United States kept growing almost in spite of itself during the war years, and he captures the transition from a government based on the states, in both North and South, to a strong national government.

The book is well-written, easy to follow, and has moments of real eloquence. I was moved by the discussion of Pickett's charge on the third day of Gettysburg and by the discussion of Lincoln's famous address. There is real feeling in this book for the war and for the troops that fought it, with a focus on the Union side of the line. Virtually everything covered in this book has been written about with more detail by others. But for a basic account of the Civil War and of the ebb and flow of its course, Catton's account remains a gem. I learned a great deal from it. I also enjoyed reading the comments of the other online reviewers who have discussed this book.

Robin Friedman

[Mike · Rating 5 out of 5]

In Glory Road, the Army of the Potomac is marching towards Fredericksburg. Catton's writing is so damn good. His "want of a nail" thread on the pontoon boats needed for Burnside's plan at Fredericksburg was so enlightening. The plan was good but depended on prompt execution, especially crossing the Rappahannock. The march into Virginia this time is accompanied by the destruction of war. Also the men have fewer compunctions about foraging:
If much foraging was done in defiance of officers, much of it also was done with their hearty encouragement. Some men of the 6th Wisconsin complained to their colonel that they were short of rations. The colonel pointed to a clump of farmhouses on a hill and said: “I’m going to take a short nap. Don’t let me see or hear of your foraging on this march. I think I see a smokehouse near that white residence.” The 5th New Hampshire raided a well-stocked hen house and its Colonel Cross scolded the men sharply—because they let one hen escape. Later, after a sheepfold had been raided, when General Hancock wanted to search the camp of the 5th for traces of stolen sheep, Cross stalled him off until his men were able to plant the bloody pelts in the adjacent camp of the 7th New York. That evening Cross enjoyed roast mutton with the rest of the regiment.

The terrible carnage below Marye's reads like the first day on the Somme. There are many stories in the book about the Rebs and Yanks conducting trade and discussions with each other. But they would go at each other brutally when required:
Before Burnside pulled his men back across the river there was a truce, and details from both armies went out to relieve such wounded as still lived and to bury the dead. In front of that stone wall, where all the dead men were Yankees, the lifeless bodies were nearly all naked. During the cold night needy Rebels had come out to help themselves to the warm coats and pants and the good Yankee shoes which the dead men would no longer need. An officer from the 48th Pennsylvania, supervising the work of one detail, fell into conversation with a Confederate officer, and the Confederate told him: “You Yankees don’t know how to hate—you don’t hate us near as much as we hate you.” The Confederate gestured toward the pitiful naked rows of despoiled corpses and asked in effect: Do you think we could ever treat your dead that way if we didn’t hate you?!

Whether that Confederate hatred was real or whether the casual stripping of Yankee corpses was simply one more manifestation of the brutally realistic American spirit may be a story in itself. The point is that others besides that one Rebel officer felt the Federals to be lacking in hatred…

Chancellorsville is another disaster pulled from the brink of success. Hooker finds his inner McClellan and pulls back from an excellent offensive position to a defensive mindset. Stonewall Jackson shows him who has the better idea. Terrible fighting and confusion reigns in The Wilderness from the first evening of the attack into the next day. In the midst of the carnage, a brave young lady shows up:
Annie Etheridge was a….. ”remarkably attractive girl,” that she was “modest, quiet, and industrious,” and that any soldier who dared to utter a disrespectful word to or about her had to fight the entire 3rd Michigan. Gallant Phil Kearny saw her, after a battle on the peninsula, caring for wounded men at a front-line dressing station, and he more or less adopted her into the division, providing her with a horse and saddle and a sergeant’s pay and detailing her officially as cook for the officers’ mess.

This morning, in the hottest of the fighting, Annie came riding forward with a sack of hardtack and a dozen canteens of hot coffee, and she trotted brightly up to a busy general and his staff and offered refreshments. The officers tried to shoo her back to safety, but she refused to budge until each one had had something to eat and drink. The Rebel bombardment was at its worst, and three horses in this mounted group were smashed by solid shot while she was about this business, but an admiring Pennsylvania soldier who watched it all wrote that “she never flinched or betrayed the slightest emotion of fear.” A bit later she appeared from nowhere beside an all but disabled Union battery which had lost all of its horses, several caissons, and a good many men. The gunners were about to abandon their pieces, but Annie talked them out of it. She smiled at them and cried, “That’s right, boys—now you’ve got good range, keep it up and you'll soon silence those guns.” The men raised a little cheer, made her go to the rear, and returned to the service of their guns. One sweaty cannoneer remarked that all the officers in the army could not have had as much influence with them just then as “that brave little sergeant in petticoats.”

Catton details the changes taking place in both the North and South. The Northern Army is becoming more professional and is getting rid of the amateurs through attrition on the battlefield, desertions and intentional demotions or dismissals. The industrial and population might of the North foreshadows the outcome of the war. The North could make as many rifles in a month as the South could in a year. The South could not replenish its losses in battle like the North.
Catton’s description of the Army of the Potomac on the meeting engagement at Gettysburg is simply some of the best writing you will come across. He gives you a great account of the confusion and serendipity of the day. The 24th Michigan felt they had something to prove to the rest of the Iron Brigade:
And here in the middle of it all was the 24th Michigan, with a county judge for a colonel and a county sheriff for lieutenant colonel and all the line officers carrying presentation swords; the regiment that had once been ostracized because its valor was unproven. Since Fredericksburg the regiment had been accepted, but in the unfathomable economics of army life the men seem to have felt that they still owed the rest of the brigade something, and here on Seminary Ridge the bill had come up for payment. Three times Colonel Morrow sent back word that the position was untenable, and each time General Wadsworth grimly ordered him to hold on anyway. Some of the survivors remembered forming line of battle six times that hot afternoon, with the rank battle fog lying low under the trees and unappeasable enemies coming in from all directions at once. Four color-bearers were killed, and the regiment sagged toward the rear, and Colonel Morrow ordered the fifth color-bearer to jab the flagstaff in the ground and stand beside it for a rally. The man was killed before he could obey, Morrow himself took up the flag and waved it, a private ran up and took it away from him, muttering that it wasn’t up to the colonel to carry the colors, and then this private was killed and another man took the staff. Then he too was shot, and Morrow got the flag after all, after which a bullet creased his skull and he himself went down.

Catton’s theme throughout this book is the Army of the Potomac is now a veteran unit that has gotten over its general worship. Even the animals are veterans in battle:
Howard had sent word that the guns were to make a last-ditch stand on Cemetery Hill, but Doubleday’s chief of artillery had understood him to say Seminary Hill and so he had plugged in a dozen guns, hub to hub, beside the half-moon barricade and they were firing canister as fast as the men could load. Over in the turnpike was one of the veteran artillery outfits, Battery B of the 4th Regulars, the battery General Gibbon used to command when he was a captain fighting Indians out West. It was led now by Lieutenant James Stewart, and he was on his horse amid his guns, facing always toward the enemy—partly because he was a brave man and partly because his horse was a veteran with certain fixed ideas about battle. In some previous action a shell fragment had cut off most of the horse’s tail, and ever since then this beast steadfastly refused to expose his rear to the foe when the shooting started. Stewart swung his guns around now and hit the charging Confederates in flank, and for the moment the assault was beaten back.

The terrible losses on the first day of Gettysburg suffered by the Union forces. But they held good ground to fight the Rebels:
The rest of the army pulled itself together on Cemetery Hill in the smoke-stained evening. Losses had been appalling. The I Corps had taken between 9,500 and 10,000 men into action and had approximately 2,400 left. Its divisions and brigades were mere remnants The Iron Brigade, which had had the worst of it, had lost almost exactly two thirds of its 1,800 effectives, and for the rest of the war it existed as a shadow, always a great name but never again a mighty force in battle. The 2nd Wisconsin had brought only 69 men back to the hill. As the 7th Wisconsin came up the slope a shell wounded Sergeant Daniel McDermott, who had carried the regimental flag in every battle of the war, and splintered the flagstaff. They laid McDermott on a caisson which lumbered along just ahead of the regiment, and he rode up onto the hill, still feebly waving the tattered flag on the broken staff. The 24th Michigan, largest regiment in the brigade, had had the most fearful loss: 399 of its 496 men had been shot, for a loss of 80 per cent, and whatever it was which the men had felt they owed the rest of the brigade, it would seem to have been paid by now. In a house in Gettysburg the Confederates had laid a number of the 24th’s wounded, and later that evening Colonel Morrow was carried in to share the quarters with them. As he was brought in the wounded men raised their heads and asked him if he was finally satisfied with his regiment.

Catton tells the story of how close the Confederates came to victory on the second day. How desperate do you have to be to set your shell to explode as soon as it leaves the barrel?:
It was an army axiom that guns unsupported by infantry could not hope to beat off a charge, but the gunners averaged pretty tough in this army and McGilvery proposed to see what they could do on their own. While he was organizing the line he sent word out to Captain John Bigelow, who had the 9th Massachusetts battery posted in the barnyard of a farmer named Trostle, a few rods west of Plum Run, informing Bigelow that no matter what happened the Rebels must be held off until this new rank of guns could be installed.

The Massachusetts boys had never been in action before this day but they were making up for it very fast. Several Confederate batteries had their range and were firing fast and accurately, but Rebel infantry was coming in so close that Bigelow told his men to forget about counter-battery fire and knock off the foot soldiers. For a time the gunners loaded their guns with canister all the way to the muzzles, firing at pistol range, and then they switched to shell with the fuses cut entirely off so that the projectiles would explode the instant they left the muzzles of the guns. Fighting thus, they gained just the time McGilvery needed, and when he finally called them in the battery had lost half of its men, sixty of its horses, four of its six guns, and all of its officers.

A 5 Star read from start to finish, you can’t go wrong with this introduction to some of the major battles of the war. Also a great explanation of the strengths and weaknesses of each side.

[Donna Davis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bruce Catton was known as a popular historian when he first published books about the American Civil War, because of his narrative nonfiction format. All of the books being released digitally now are ones previously published in a non-digital age. This reviewer hunted down Catton’s three volume Centennial History of the Civil War at a used bookstore some time back, and although they were among the best I have ever read by anyone on this topic, I was convinced that anything he had published earlier on the subject was probably repackaged in this trilogy, and so I stopped reading Catton, thinking I was done. Thank goodness Net Galley and Open Road Integrated Media posted the galley for this second volume of Catton’s Army of the Potomac trilogy. Now that I am disabused, I will have to find the first and third volumes also, because Catton is so eloquent that he can spin ordinarily dry-sounding military history into as good a read as the most compelling fiction.

Although his Civil War books are not written in academic format, there is no denying Catton’s research or his credentials. He was one of the founders of American Heritage Magazine, and served as its senior editor until his death. During World War II, he was the US government’s Director of Information for the War Production Board, then later worked in a similar capacity for the Department of the Interior and Department of Commerce.

Frankly, in order to spin the story of the three battles that comprise most of this volume out in such a conversational manner, dropping anecdotes in at just the right moments and then carrying on so as to make us feel as if he is a journalist traveling with the Union forces and we are concealed cleverly in his knapsack, bespeaks a remarkable amount of research. Only after reading the whole thing, spellbound, did it occur to me that for every vignette he included to make the telling more personal and more interesting, he must have edited out ten or twenty. The result is a masterpiece.

I came to this work as a former instructor in the field, and wished I had read his work in time to make use of it in the classroom. At the same time, it is sufficiently accessible that someone with no prior knowledge of the Civil War should be able to keep up just fine as long as they are able to read at the level of a high school senior or community college student. There is a definite bias toward the Union, which frankly is a requisite to my enjoyment of Civil War history. (Those that feel otherwise can go find Shelby Foote’s work.)

I never in a thousand years thought I would even consider rereading some of this war’s most painful battles—the battle of Fredericksburg being perhaps the most prominent in this regard—but Catton has some little-told things to say about these battles, and in particular about Burnside and that Tammany Hall political general, Sickles, that I hadn’t seen before. I had viewed Burnside as a failure from start to finish, but he makes a case that a lot of the mishandling of this situation was due to an ungainly Federal bureaucracy that wasn’t good at receiving information and passing it along in a prompt, useful manner. It gave me pause, and reminded me that we should never assume we know enough about something to call ourselves experts.

The Battle of Chancellorsville is likewise told in a manner fresh and readable, but the bulk of the text deals with that decisive, costly three day fight at Gettysburg. He gives an even-handed assessment of both Hooker and Meade, and again I learned some things I didn’t know before.

Catton’s writing is so engaging that it is destined to live for a long, long time after he is gone, educating subsequent generations. I found myself resolved, at the end of this volume, to look for other galleys of his work to read and review, and when there are no more left, to track down those still missing on my next pilgrimage to Powell’s City of Books.

For you, however, it is fortunate that Open Road is releasing this work digitally, so you won’t have to turn out the shelves of every used bookstore in the US in order to locate it. It will be available for purchase November 3, 2015 for your phone, computer, or e-reader, and is highly recommended to anyone with even a passing interest in the American Civil War.

Simply brilliant.

[Eric Byrd · Rating 4 out of 5]

This—

"Wendell Phillips, the gadfly of abolition, was on the rostrum that spring of 1863 crying out that the power which dwelt in [Emancipation] must be used as a telling weapon. He saw the war between North and South as something infinitely portentous, not confined to one continent: 'Wherever caste lives, wherever class power exists, whether it be on the Thames or on the Seine, whether on the Ganges or on the Danube, there the South has an ally…Never until we welcome the Negro, the foreigner, all races as equals, and melted together in a common nationality, hurl them against all despotism, will the North deserve triumph or earn it at the hands of a just God.'” (Glory Road, p. 220)

Made me think of this—

"But had the United States and its ability to project its power worldwide been critically weakened in the 1860s the twentieth century world would have been a very different and probably much nastier place. It is of course impossible to speak with any certainty of the long-range consequences of Confederate victory. But the emergence on North American soil of a nation rooted in populist racialism and ruled by an agrarian semi-aristocracy might well have changed the whole balance of geopolitical and ideological forces in the world. It might, for instance, have impeded the construction of the Anglo-American alliance. A consequence of Confederate independence could also easily have been an attempt by the North to seize Canada to make up for the loss of the Confederacy. Even without this, lasting Anglo-American enmity could have resulted from the manner in which Confederate independence was gained and internationally recognized, or indeed from the way in which the break-up of the Union encouraged London to pursue its traditional policy of trying to maintain a balance of power in North America rather than—as actually happened after 1865—accepting the hegemony of the United States in its hemisphere and appeasing American leaders. Since Anglo-American solidarity was crucial to the victory of democracy in the twentieth century, the possibility that it could have been compromised by the long-term consequences of the American Civil War is of great significance." (Dominic Lieven, Empire)

And this—

"It was not simply that Jim Crow undermined propaganda for the war against Germany and Japan. The war itself, and the revelation of what Nazi and Japanese racism were capable of, convinced [New Deal liberals] that putting an end to racialist ideology and Jim Crow practices was a moral necessity. One of the key elements in that transformation was the role of Hollywood, whose films would shape the myth of World War II as “the Good War,” in which multiracial American democracy defeated two evil empires based on racist fanaticism…

Since 1943 [and the release of Bataan] the “ethnic platoon” has become a cliché of American war movies, a standard formula for the representation of the nation and the American people. We see it not only in combat films, but in other genres that dramatize the activities of the state, ranging from police precinct dramas to science-fiction fantasies: a uniformed unit representing the significant racial, ethnic, class and now gender differences must put those differences aside to save the unit, and the nation it represents, from an enemy who threatens annihilation or enslavement. But in 1943 it was a radical innovation in the way war movies were conceived and in the way American society was to be represented." (Richard Slotkin, Lost Battalions: The Great War and the Crisis of American Nationality)

[Lami Daja]

This Civil War trilogy covers the history of just one of the Union armies - the Army of the Potomac, to which Robert E. Lee would eventually surrender - and Volume Two, The Glory Road, covers just seven months, from Fredericksburg to Gettysburg.

So the coverage is unusually detailed, revealing many aspects of the war that we would normally miss. For example, we always knew that Burnside was defeated at Fredericksburg because his pontoons had gone astray, preventing him from crossing the Rappahannock. But here we get the whole miserable story, a freak conjunction of errors, misunderstandings, rivalries, bureaucratic apathy and sheer ill fortune, as though the fates had decided to curse the entire venture. Through Catton’s vivid prose, we can almost feel the whole clumsy system congealing into inertia, and sympathise heartily with the luckless Burnside. We also knew that he was planning to lead a second attack, supposedly a mark of bravery, until talked out of it by his colleagues. But Catton suggests that it may actually have been a suicide plan by this highly conscientious leader, troubled by survivor guilt.

Joe Hooker’s sudden loss of nerve at Chancellorsville is something else that we know about, but have never heard explained. It is illuminating to follow the various stages of shock and confusion, interspersed with vain attempts to show signs of his old optimism.

Again, we knew that front-line pickets would swap more than just insults with their opposite-numbers in the enemy lines on a dull night. Small consignments of coffee or rice would be (illegally) exchanged across narrow rivers on paper boats. So would little gems of wisdom. A Confederate sentry explained “You don’t hate us, the way we hate you” - a possible rationale for how the war lasted so long, after the south should logically have given up.

There is just one drawback to this vast quantity of detail. It makes it hard to maintain an overview of the battles, especially if your download is text-only (no maps), as mine is. But on balance, I’ll willingly settle for this.

[Casey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent writing and research! Despite loving history, I never cared much for battle scenes until I encountered this author. He makes the scenes come alive with rich details and personal drama--the weather, the colors of the sky, the misery of the freezing rain, the slogging through miles and miles of thick mud, the burning heat and the thirst. The unbelievable suffering. The wounded men calling out. The cowards and the heroes. Real life.

More officers' names than I can remember, but that's okay.

The first trilogy I read was "Centennial History of the Civil War." This is the second book in Catton's trilogy "The Army of the Potomac." Now on to the third: "A Stillness at Appomattox."

Both trilogies are highly recommended for those who want rich details of the Civil War.

[Babbs · Rating 3 out of 5]

My least favorite in the trilogy so far, but still worth a read for anyone who fancies American history.

[Riannon · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was, to my great excitement, finally able to obtain this book on loan from another library (for some reason it was really hard to find a copy), and I have to say, it did not disappoint.

Catton's writing is superb as ever. The book is filled with interesting and funny anecdotes, but despite the human interest side notes Catton never loses sight of the main story, and Glory Road keeps moving at a consistent enjoyable pace.

Historically, this book extends from the disastrous battle at Fredericksburg to what was possibly the most grilling, and most famous fight of the war: the battle of Gettysburg. There is plenty of interesting material, and Catton does it full justice.

I'm not certain why Catton's writing, and in particular Glory Road, are so difficult to find at the library and at bookstores. They are well worth reading; I would easily consider them among the best ten books I have ever read. This is history at its most interesting and I recommend Glory Road, as well as the two accompanying books, to anyone who is able to get their hands on a copy.

[Sean Chick · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful narrative of an army going from the shame of defeat to the great triumph at Gettysburg.

[Straw · Rating 4 out of 5]

i mean it is Catton, so you can't lose. Poetic writing that doesn't focus on the battle details. That is for other books.

[Spectre · Rating 4 out of 5]

Volume 2 of Bruce Catton’s trilogy follows the Army of the Potomac through the disaster at Fredericksburg, the embarrassment of the infamous“Mud March”, the snatching of defeat from near victory at Chancellorsville, and finally to the successful defensive stand at Gettysburg while under the command of three different generals - Burnside, Hooker, and Meade. Catton describes the rise of the individual soldiers into capable fighting units despite poor leadership at the highest military levels as President Lincoln searched for the right man to lead the Army as the nation felt the burden of heavy losses, the rise of anti-war movements, an unpopular draft, and the realization that the war was about slavery after all when the president issued the Emancipation Proclamation after Antietam. As the Army gained experience at a high cost, it slowly evolved into a competent fighting force capable of defeating the vaunted and unequaled Army of Northern Virginia led by Robert E Lee. This potion of the war produced an army of the Potomac with a capable cavalry a dependable artillery force, a battle tested infantry, and an unequaled industrial base all waiting for effective leadership that would defeat the Confederate military. Catton describes all of this in a very readable history combining the strategies and tactical measures of the army along with individual successes and failures. Catton is a must reader those interested in the war that moved the country into the “United” States.

[Malachy Morehead · Rating 4 out of 5]

If I could give it 4and a half I would because it is certainly better than the first book in this series. I think he gets some of his more interesting big ideas out on the meaning of the civil war in this one. His idea as the war being a painful transition into a completely new era is something that I agree with. It seems that sometimes a lot of people need to kill each other for that to happen. He gets the emotion across well of the confusion that fact causes for the soldiers and the readers alike. He has an interesting idea snuck into this book on the American psyche that I found new. He compared America at the time to a teenage boy with newly found strength and learning how to use that strength. He acknowledges the disgrace of the acts committed against the native Americans and he attributes these acts to this idea. I don’t know if I agree with him but it is an interesting thought. Personally, I think he spurns away from giving Meade due credit after the battle of Gettysburg. From the book “Gettysburg” it seems that Meade could be credited for a lot more than what Catton calls multiple times as “avoiding defeat” even if he did just avoid defeat it is certainly far better than what the previous general’s accomplished. Either way he does a great job of making it feel like you’re along for the march with the soldiers and you can understand their emotions throughout the book through his descriptions and use of quotes from diarys and regimental histories.

[Bob Mayer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Second book in the travails of the Army of the Potomac. From Maryes Heights at Fredericksburg to victory at Gettysburg. I've walked both those places. In the first you can see the insanity of trying to charge upward into defended lines. In the latter, that wide open plain in front of the Union lines is where those troops exacted their revenge.

[Josh Madden · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is volume two of the Army of the Potomac Trilogy. It picks up post Antietam and McClellan’s removal and takes us to the Gettysburg Address. As a whole, this book is much better than Mr. Lincoln’s Army, as it reads chronologically, without the back and forth we saw in the first book.

[Dylan Jones · Rating 5 out of 5]

Can't get enough Catton

[Timons Esaias · Rating 5 out of 5]

Glory Road, the second volume of Bruce Catton's Army of the Potomac Trilogy covers the period from the replacement of McClellan to the delivery of the Gettysburg Address. This means it covers Burnside's disasters (including the Mud March), Hooker's inability to capitalize on success, and Meade's impossible task: taking over a dispersed army on the move, and in the face of the enemy.
He does a good job describing the strengths and weaknesses of the commanders, but the interesting part of this volume is that he also describes how the army is behaving, independent of the commanders. What Catton sees in history is that the Army kept getting tougher, and more skilled, despite the vagaries of command.
He insists that Gettysburg was a soldiers' battle on the Union side, and there is a lot to that. There was no unified commander on the first day, and the senior commander present was killed. (He gives Buford his due, probably the most important figure on either side.) He notes occasions when it is units that lack command structure who dig their heels in at key locations.
He does quote Meade as predicting that Lee would hit the center on the third day, but doesn't mention that Meade's dispositions were based on that belief, which proved to be crucial. Most Union commanders were expecting more work on the flanks. I was particularly struck by his descriptions of the Mud March, and by his descriptions of the aftermath of Gettysburg, and what the area looked like as the Army moved out. Excellent writing.
Indeed, it was a great temptation to go on and read the third volume again, immediately, even though I read it only five years ago.
Each of the books in this trilogy stands alone, and all are highly recommended. Is it a sin that they are out of print? Yes.

[Grant · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting history of the Union army prior to Grant. Starting right after McCelland and taking in the failed generals. Very good discussion of the un-unioned part of the northern union. Indiana in particular. Good mind expanding book.

The description of the major battles is detailed, and I learned a LOT regarding the tactics and sometimes the lack of them. The book ends with Lincoln's Gettysberg Address just about to be given, but doesn't actually contain the text of the address. I wish that was included as it would have been a fitting end to 60 pages of detailed battle and body counts.

I see why this series is considered the definitive Civil War description.

[Robert M. Roth MD · Rating 4 out of 5]

Army of the Potomac

This historical work deals with the Army of the Potomac between the battles of Fredericksburg to Gettysburg. It deals primarily with the inept Union generals but there are glimpses of the view of the common soldier. Easily readable, the Kindle edition suffers from a complete lack of maps which seriously detracts from one’s ability to understand the battle as it unfolds.

[Erik Graff · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reviewed under the rubric of The Army of the Potomac of which this is the second of three volumes.

[Rgroves · Rating 4 out of 5]

Prose is fabulous. One of the best final several paragraphs of any book I have read in a very long time.

[Mark Ely · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful.

Wonderful. So many personal stories, discussions of motives and results, put together to make understanding deeper. History as it should be done.

[Carol Storm · Rating 5 out of 5]

The second of three classic volumes. The best Civil War history ever!

[Nathan Albright · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is the second part of a trilogy (at least) of works relating to the Army of the Potomac, covering the period between the aftermath of Antietam and the aftermath of Gettysburg.  As one can say with reading any of Catton's books, this particular work is one that shows Catton's skill as a historian and one that also portrays the humanity of the Army of the Potomac, that much maligned instrument of Union policy in the Civil War's Eastern theater.  While the Union troops of the Western and Trans-Mississippi fronts generally were able to succeed against troops with pretty bad leadership, it was the misfortune of the Army of the Potomac to suffer from its own poor leaders and to be opposed to the Confederacy's A team of Lee, Stonewall Jackson, Longstreet, Stuart, and so on.  As someone who has a fairly typical American support of "underdog causes," this book certainly appealed to me given its author's desire to address the justice of an army's reputation and how proud soldiers dealt with an army whose leaders led them into failure time over the dark days of 1862 and 1863, at least until the tide of war turned.

This book of about 350 pages is divided into six chapters, many of them with three or four sections.  Catton begins with a discussion of the disastrous battle of Fredericksburg and its shattering effect on certain regiments, including a green regiment that had been added to the Iron Brigade with other Midwestern ones (1).  After that comes a discussion of the "mud march" and the mutinous attitude of the Army of the Potomac as it reached its nadir (2).  This is followed by a discussion of the revival of the army's fortunes and its reorganization under Hooker, who showed himself a very good logistical commander and helped the Union cavalry to reach new heights (3).  After this comes the downbeat account of the Battle of Chancellorsville and how Hooker failed when it came to combat, leading to a great many soldiers losing a battle in which few of them even fought (4).  The period between Chancellorsville and Gettysburg is then discussed, where the army had preserved its morale (5), before the book ends with a discussion of the battle of Gettysburg, and what a near-run thing it ended up being (6).  After notes and a bibliography there are some maps of the three battles discussed in this book.

Although this book is still great, largely because it is written by Bruce Catton, in many ways this book is clearly a middle part of a larger work and suffers accordingly for its transitional nature.  As this is not the fault of the author, it is a flaw that is comparatively minor in terms of how this work (or any other middle work in a trilogy) is to be evaluated.  At the beginning of the book the Army of the Potomac is portrayed as still trying to find its way under incompetent leaders who lacked the sort of aggression that was required by Lincoln and the demands of victory in the Civil War.  Throughout the course of the novel logistics are dealt with and the army shows itself able to win a battle where the involvement of the higher command was relatively minor and where the commanding officer at least did not sabotage the chance for victory because of disastrous errors.  In showing an army of growing resolve, even as it finds itself continually struggling with political matters, this book does a great job at reminding the reader that armies cannot only be judged by the quality of their leading generals, but on much more complete grounds.

[Michael Elkon · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Catton books are fantastic. Bless Kevin Levin for recommending them. Here's what's covered in this second volume, which starts in the aftermath of Antietam and ends with Gettysburg:

After McClellan is deposed as the head of the Army of the Potomac because of his failure to exploit a favorable situation after winning at Antietam and then he tried to lecture Lincoln on being soft towards the Confederates, Ambrose Burnside becomes the head of the Army and knows that he's not up to the job. His plan is that he is going to cross the Rappahannock to attack the Army of Northern Virginia. This is a disaster because the Union's logistical support is inept and it takes them forever to get the bridging equipment in place. The Confederates are dug in and waiting on Marye's Heights, which the AotP attacks with absolutely no useful effect. The only good thing that comes of this engagement for the Union is that the soldiers keep coming even into a terrible situation, which indicates that they have become a proper fighting force. Burnside then proceeds to blame everyone in the Army other than himself and wants to fire a pile of subordinates. Lincoln demotes Burnside, who will spend the rest of the war imprisoning Confederate sympathizers in the Midwest (Lincoln has to intervene to dump Clement van Landingham into Canada so he doesn't become a martyr) and then doing a poor job of exploiting the hole in the lines caused by the mine explosion in Petersburg.

Joseph Hooker becomes the next leader of the AotP and he has a better idea for attacking Lee. Instead of coming right at him, he's going to get the Army around the back by bridging the Rappahannock farther up the river. This is good in concept but the units don't move as fast as they should and when the Army gets across, they are vulnerable. The Confederates attack them at Chancellorsville and score a big victory, embarrassing the XI Corps in the process. Lee divides his forces and relies on the Union to be inert, which is what happens because Sedgwick does not exploit the fact that he is facing a denuded front. The Union forces consolidate their lines after the setback at Chancellorsville and make an orderly retreat but this is another failure. Catton hammers home the point that the units of the Army are brave and increasingly well trained but they are led by generals who don't know what they are doing and/or have to deal with constant political interference.

Hooker gets pushed out of the picture because of this failed campaign and Meade is now in charge for the Gettysburg campaign, which comes from Lee's decision after Chancellorsville to take the fight into the North to secure foreign support and allow his army to forage from the enemy. The two sides end up at Gettysburg by accident, the Confederates don't take the heights on day one when they are in the ascendancy, they make a series of failed attacks on day two, especially at Little Round Top, and then an inexplicably desperate Lee orders Pickett's Charge on day three. Meade does not pursue the Confederates after the victory but Catton argues that the two armies were so tired that pursuit wasn't a viable option. He ends the book by describing the extended period of burying bodies and taking care of wounded soldiers, finishing with Lincoln taking the stage at the dedication of the battlefield cemetery.

[Fred M · Rating 4 out of 5]

Army of the Potomac (book 2 of 3): from Fredericksburg to Gettysburg

Author Bruce Catton wrote a 3-book set on the Army of the Potomac. This second book covers three main battles: Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville and Gettysburg. Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville were failed invasions of the South by Union forces. Gettysburg was a failed invasion of the North by Confederate forces.

Fredericksburg resulted in huge Union loses due to the Confederate forces’ superior (and entrenched) position – and because General Burnside kept sending fresh Union troops up to assault the Confederate’s essentially unassailable position.

After Burnside was removed, Chancellorsville was then Generate Hooker’s attempt to attack Lee’s Army of Virginia. But Hooker’s caution (or timidity) in generalship did not result in victory either. But this battle is where the Confederate’s General Stonewall Jackson was killed – accidentally shot by one of his own men.

By the time Lee’s army reached Gettysburg, General Meade was now head of the Army of the Potomac. Clearly, finding the right Union army leadership was still a work in progress.

For each battle, there is one (yes, only one) map at the end of the book. So 3 maps total. None particularly detailed. So the main thing to know about this book is that it isn’t really about the battles. It’s about the army itself. It’s about their encampments, with its muddy grounds, poor provisioning and unsanitary conditions – and so also about the many Union troops dying from camp-induced illnesses. And about their poor military commanders, often found wanting. And about the problems with army desertion. About the change from volunteer recruitment to individual state-sponsored military drafts to (ultimately) a Federal draft. And more.

Bottom Line: The focus is more on the army itself than on the army’s battles. At this point in the Civil War, there were still many problems facing the troops in the Army of the Potomac. And, in that regard, this book was sometimes a fairly depressing read.

[Mark Blanchard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Book two of the classic Civil War trilogy by Catton examine the Army of the Potomac, this volume picks up with the aftermath of Antietam and the decision to replace McClellan. The story continues with the AoP at Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, and finally Gettysburg, each fought with a different commanding general at the helm.

As with the first volume, Catton’s special ability is in creating a narrative account of both the battles but also the infinite space that lies between the major engagements. Especially prominent in this volume are the political machinations working not only in D.C. but also in the camps with the generals. Catton describes the nature of the rise and fall of Burnside and Hooker with both the what and just enough of the why to interact both casual reader and the more interested student.

Catton’s second special gift is his use of the common soldier’s own words to give depth and dimension to his narrative. In each battle, as well as the weeks and months in between, the reader sees and hears much more than simply the perspective of the politicians and generals who (understandably) see the chess board of war more often than the chess pieces.

Reading Civil War history published nearly 70 years ago has been a good exercise in both seeing a perspective from a different period in country’s history as well as seeing how recent scholarship might be reshaping opinions (Meade after Gettysburg being an example). This is good for reflection and a reason why limiting oneself to only books published recently can impose unnecessary limits on learning.

[Karen Boblett · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book, Number 2 in the series of 3 books, contains information about the three battles of the Civil War: Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville and Gettysburg. Of the three battles, only one: Gettysburg could be called a victory for the Union army.

It was a novel of how the battles were won and lost because of first General Burnside sending Union troops to fight a position that couldn't be won. Burnside is removed and in the battle of Chancellorsville, General Hooker was so over cautious that the battle was lost.

Now, it is on to Gettysburg to fight Lee's Army. The next General in charge is General Meade. The union couldn't seem to get its act together. Thus, finding a General who would take charge to achieve victory for the Union, was becoming a problem.

I found this second book in the series written by Bruce Catton not so much about the battles, but about the Union Army and their many problems. There was poor provisioning and very unsanitary conditions throughout the camps. This was causing problems with the troops and also the military commanders didn't seem to have their act together. The death rate of Union troops was becoming higher and higher.

If you are a Civil War buff or interested in what really happened with the Army of the Potomac, you should read this book along with the two others in this series. Bruce Catton wrote in regards to what happened to the Army of the Potomac. Bruce Catton is a great historian and turns the facts into a very readable novel.