I learned about this book from reading the Collected Letters of Ralph Ellison in which he reads and reviews this book and finds it to be excellent. It is excellent. It’s easily one of the best histories of the Civil War I’ve ever read in part because of the narrow focus, but also because of the narrative drive. This is among the most interesting parts of the war for me, and I think in part it’s because it’s so little talked about in the minutiae this gets into. Th3 1864 and 1865 campaigns are so chaotic and wild, but also so much of the history of the war focuses on the big battles like Bull Run, Antietam, and Gettysburg. Here, because we’re only focused on the Army of the Potomac (meaning we’re not dealing with Kansas or Tennessee or even Sherman), the tighter focus on 1864 means a much closer look at places like Spotsylvania, the Wilderness, Petersburg, the Crater, and the final push to Appomattox. Even in Shelby Foote and Grant’s account there’s such a speeding to the end, that the wild details of these get lost sometimes.
The other side of it that Catton gets into that are important is the shape and structure of the army, with three year stints among many of the regiments coming to a close, so that the army we end up with here is so different from how it began. For one thing, overall command is much stronger, but often at the cost of the best among the smaller command earlier in the war who were more willing to take the risks necessary to bring them to this point. The sheer number of just mistakes that happen or advantages that are failed is staggering.
The most important part throughout all of this is that Bruce Catton is just a good writer who can narrate history to be interesting. It should not be lost how important that is here.