A Stillness At Appomattox – Bruce Catton, 1953 ★★★½

A Somber Last Waltz

The third and final volume of Bruce Catton’s “Army Of The Potomac” series winds up the story of Abraham Lincoln’s greatest fighting force as it struggled to its ultimate victory. Like nearly all such grand culminations, it can’t help but be at least a little disappointing.

Part of that is due to the natural deflation of finding oneself at the end of a long journey, wondering if all the toil and pain was worth it. Part of it is because the last year of the American Civil War, at least in Northern Virginia, was as dull as it was deadly, mired in an early form of trench warfare which put an end to dashing assaults and quick successes.

The author is also at fault. Catton, for all his factual command, his poetic turns of phrase, and his masterful word portraits, comes across somewhat more the way critics have painted him, moralizing and windy. The book is still good, very good in places, but a modest comedown from the fantastic first two volumes.

Glory Road – Bruce Catton, 1952 ★★★★★

Death Before Victory

War is hell, a fact even honest combat histories often sidestep. Not to deny its ugliness, but rather to craft a narrative palatable to a broader audience. Bitter reality is acknowledged, but details not dwelt upon.

Glory Road is different. It is the Saving Private Ryan of American Civil War histories, a blow-by-blow account of the terrors of war not for the squeamish. In his depiction of the Battle of Gettysburg, the war’s turning point, Bruce Catton describes a Bosch-like canvas where eyes are shot out, maddened horses gallop on three legs, and men duck bullets behind the bodies of dead comrades.

One soldier is so horribly maimed that he is described putting a gun to his head and blowing out his brains. Meanwhile, others are directed to throw themselves into an exposed position, just to buy a few precious minutes after one general had put his part of the line too far out.

Mr. Lincoln’s Army – Bruce Catton, 1951 ★★★★½

Dying to Learn

Many books about the American Civil War begin with the Battle of Bull Run. Mr. Lincoln’s Army does, too, but not the normal way. It opens with the Second Battle of Bull Run, a contest which settled nothing except the plain fact the Northern Army was being run by idiots.

Ineptitude is a common theme of this first volume of a famous trilogy focused on the Army of the Potomac, specifically its painful struggle to find its feet and strike the decisive blow against the Confederacy.

It was all a question of leadership. “There would have been unqualified disaster if the generals had not been commanding men better than themselves,” Bruce Catton writes.

To The Gates Of Richmond: The Peninsula Campaign – Stephen W. Sears, 1992 ★★★½

An Overlooked Bloodbath

Even for many American Civil War buffs, the Peninsula Campaign and its climactic Seven Days Battles are undiscovered country.

For concentrated blood and fury stretched out over an entire week, the Seven Days’ intensity is unrivaled. The Peninsula Campaign saw the first armored engagement – between the Merrimack and the Monitor – and the origin of “Taps,” yet people know the name “Bull Run” more than “Malvern Hill,” despite the latter’s higher body count and import.

Perhaps the campaign eludes easy comprehension because there wasn’t a clear winner. The North lost most of the battles, but the South lost most of the men. Fear trumped opportunity, while leaders of varying abilities all to varying degrees wilted under the spotlight.

Gettysburg it was not.

George B. McClellan: The Young Napoleon – Stephen W. Sears, 1988 ★★½

General Delay

Terrible military leaders grab history’s attention like a car wreck on the highway, albeit with a much higher body count. Whether as monuments of supreme idiocy or just poor luck, they live on in a way only the best of the good leaders do.

Think of Custer or Crassus or Conrad von Hötzendorf, who all married bad judgment and wanton disregard for life to leave us eternal reminders of the folly of war. There are others not as spectacular but every bit as deadly.

Take, for example, George McClellan, whose leadership can be blamed for extending the U. S. Civil War. This at least is the impression left by Stephen W. Sears in this biography of McClellan.

Landscape Turned Red: The Battle Of Antietam – Stephen W. Sears, 1983 ★★★★½

Playing Rope-A-Dope with “Tardy George”

Sometimes it takes a setback to produce victory, a nasty punch in the nose that restores focus and the will to win. It can even be a simple matter of attaining purity of purpose through suffering.

Still, if sounds unpleasant, that’s because it is. Such was the American Civil War’s bloodiest single day, the Battle of Antietam, presented here in a book that is equal parts morality play and combat story.

Wilkes Booth Came To Washington – Larry Starkey, 1976 ★★

Killing Lincoln: The 'Blame Canada Theory

Mystery still surrounds the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. It’s not about who did it; but why.

This 1976 account suggests Lincoln’s murder was a kind of Hail Mary pass by the Confederacy, designed to trigger an outsized reaction from the North that would force Great Britain into the U. S. Civil War. 

To this end, author Larry Starkey challenges the conventional view of Lincoln’s assassination. Why did John Wilkes Booth, a nationally-famous tragedian, affect such a rage-inducing scheme without any discernable escape plan? Why did he make sure people recognized him after he shot the President, both at Ford’s Theatre and later on when he crossed a bridge to escape Washington, D. C.?

The Lincoln Conspiracy – Timothy L. O'Brien, 2012 [No Stars]

Other Than That, Mrs. Lincoln...

Historical fiction is one of my favorite literary genres, when it’s done well. The spinning nature of time is never better appreciated than when one sees a page from our past come into focus as if for the first time.

A thoughtful fictional treatment can lend a fresh and divergent perspective on what has become well-trod ground.

But when historical fiction is done badly, it makes for a rough trudge. Take this story set in the United States after the Civil War, centering on the mystery surrounding the country’s first presidential assassination. As fiction, as history, as action-adventure, the novel fails so badly as to defy reason.

Killing Lincoln – Bill O'Reilly & Martin Dugard, 2011 ★★½

Sic Semper Something-or-other

Does a work of popular history actually impede one's deeper understanding of the past? One might think so from the hoopla surrounding the original release of Killing Lincoln.

Across America, historians blasted Killing Lincoln for being a poorly-researched font of disinformation. Museum gift shops that sell Honest Abe coloring books determined it to be beneath their standards. The deputy superintendent of the Ford's Theatre National Historic Site in Washington, D. C. cited numerous errors and a lack of footnotes in recommending Killing Lincoln be kept off its book store shelves as a disservice to Lincoln's memory.

Meanwhile, the actual murder weapon used for killing Lincoln is on display at Ford's Theatre, under glass.