Book Review:  Mr. Lincoln’s Army (The Army Of The Potomac #1), by Bruce Catton

While I am familiar with novels and even biographies beginning in media res in order to keep interest up on the part of the reader, I must admit I was thrown a bit for a loop when Catton did so at the beginning of this book.  After all, this volume is the first of a trilogy that the author wrote on the Union Army of the Potomac from its beginnings in late 1861 with the efforts of McClellan to train an army in the aftermath of First Bull Run.  Yet for some time the book spends a great deal of time in those dramatic days in late August and early September 1862 with Second Bull Run and its aftermath, leading to a sort of strange time shift that the reader should probably be prepared for.  Given the general familiarity of the course of the Civil War to many readers, perhaps it is a good thing that Catton throws the reader for a loop here, because it provides at least something that is out of the ordinary, something that does not follow the relentless chronological sweep of a war where the course of battle is generally known and followed to a slavish degree.

This volume of more than 300 pages is divided into six different parts and focuses on the Virginia front of the Civil War between late 1861 and fall 1862.  We begin with the picture-book war of the Second Bull Run Campaign, where Pope found himself in trouble and where it was whispered that there was treason, and where generals encouraged soldiers never to be frightened (I).  After that we return to 1861 when, in the aftermath of a brief and successful campaign in West Virginia, McClellan is promoted to be in charge of the Union armies and seeks to raise an army while simultaneously failing to understand the political demands of his office and finds himself unable to graciously deal with Lincoln and civilian oversight (II).  After that comes a discussion of Balls Bluff and the irrational but persistent suspicion that was to fall on the Army of the Potomac during its entire time, something that destroyed most of the men who were called upon to lead it in battle over the course of the Civil War, including the Peninsula Campaign (III).  After this comes a look at Lee’s march and the trial of various generals after campaign failures (IV).  McClellan’s massive opportunity to defeat in detail the fragments of Lee’s army then follows, a story of futility because of McClellan’s inability to move with alacrity (V) before the book ends with a discussion of the bloody day at Antietam and its aftermath with McClellan’s dismissal in the face of his slow pursuit of Lee’s mangled army (VI).

Catton certainly manages to show his strengths as a historian here.  If he is not a scholarly historian of the kind that would be most regarded now, he is a narrative historian of the first order, well acquainted with regimental histories and casualty lists and the stories of those men who survived war, often not fully intact.  Moreover, the author manages to demonstrate the strain that the Union was under and the way in which the relationship between the civil and military aspects of the Union were often greatly in tension, and where there were simply far too many leaders in the Union army at the beginning of the war that were not committed to fighting with everything that they had, something that would only happen as the war progressed and as the logistical advantages the North faced became more and more decisive.  Sadly, a great many men died because their leaders were too timid and too lacking in judgment.