Lincoln’s Lieutenants – Stephen W. Sears, 2017 ★★★★

Epic Battles Led by Petty Minds

They were eventual victors in the highest-stakes battles their country ever fought, enduring gut-wrenching reversals and hellish casualties all the way. They were also whiny, bratty, narcissistic headcases easily triggered into launching dramas behind the front.

With such leaders was the Union saved.

The main takeaway from this book, the first by Civil War historian Stephen Sears to cover the entire war rather than a specific campaign, is just how brutal a spectacle it was not just during specific battles but all the way through. Yet the prima donna aspect hits home, too.

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.