Bruce Catton's Civil War

Bruce Catton's Civil War collects the author's three outstanding works on the Civil War into one volume. Mr. Lincoln's Army discusses the early stages of the war, tracing Abraham Lincoln's famous command of the dashing General George Be. McClellan. McClellan was convinced - as were his troops and the rest of the country - that he was divinely chosen as the instrument of the Republic's salvation. However, he made two great mistakes: he failed to understand the President's problems with respect to the Army, and he gave weight to a caution, born of real love for his men, which finally and tragically ended his military career. Glory Road chronicles the critical months between the Autumn of 1862 and midsummer of the following year. After a bloody massacre at Fredericksburg, an aimless and muddy march up and down banks of the Rappahannock, and a catastrophe of confusion at Chancellorsville, the Army of the Potomac took a firm stand at Gettysburg and finally turned the fortunes of war against the Confederacy. The story also covers the three generals in command during this period: Burnside, "who meant so well and did so badly"; Hooker, a soldier's soldier who improved food rations but was surprised into a disastrous defeat; and Meade, who took charge three days before the decisive battle at Gettysburg. The story told in the last desperate and cruel year of the Civil War is told in A Stillness at Appomattox, for which Bruce Catton won the Pulitzer Prize. In the winter of 1864 the Army of the Potomac stood at a crossroads. The old army fired with the spirit of men who had joined out of love of country and who had long since become disillusioned, was gone. The new army, composed of mercenaries, bounty hunters, and a core of seasoned and embittered veterans, had lost its original idealism. Its leader was General Ulysses S. Grant, a man who instilled no enthusiasm in his followers and little respect in his enemies. Opposing Grant was Robert E. Lee, the last great knight of battle and a scourge to his antagonists. Catton discusses the events and personalities that eventually led to Lee's surrender to Grant at the courthouse at Appomattox. Bruce Catton's Civil War offers in one volume, Catton's excellent Civil War trilogy, a sensitive recounting of that bloody struggle filled with immediate detail, written with human warmth and careful historical research and writing.