A Stillness at Appomattox With Connections (The Army of the Potomac)

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Summary: Bruce Catton on the final year of the Army of the Potomac
Review: Bruce Catton received the Pulitzer Prize for this final volume in his celebrated three-part History of the Army of the Potomac. Catton's greatness was that he combined historical accuracy with poetic insight, writing from the perspective of the citizen-soldiers who fought the Civil War and whom he had come to know and respect growing up in Michigan. In other words, he was able to write a history book with the same sort of literary style you would expect to find in a novel. "A Stillness at Appomattox" covers the last cruel year of the war, when the Army of the Potomac had become an engine of war under the leadership of Ulysses S. Grant. Although on paper the Army still belonged to George Gordon Meade, it was Grant who was the head of all the Union forces and who ran his command in the field. In this final volume Catton traces the Army's inevitable progress towards its grim victory, through the battles of the Wilderness, the Bloody Angle, Cold Harbor, the Crater, and on through the last months of the war to the moment at the MacLean house when the nation was made whole again.

Like its predecessors, "A Stillness at Appomattox" is divided into six sections: (1) "Glory Is Out of Date" follows Grant as he arrives from the West to check out the Army that needs to whip Bobbie Lee; (2) "Roads Leading South" relates the horrors of the Battle of the Wilderness and the new mood as the Army relentless pushes South towards Richmond; (3) "One More River to Cross" covers the bloody mess of the final assault on Cold Harbor; (4) "White Iron on the Anvil" details the final hemming in of the Army of Northern Virginia into a defensive position around Richmond, including the Battle of the Crater: (5) "Away, You Rolling River" deals with both the Siege of Richmond and Sheridan's efforts in the Shenandoah Valley; and (6) "Endless Road Ahead" finally brings us to the Fall of Richmond and Lee's surrender to Grant. Catton's History of the Army of the Potomac was unique because it insisted on telling the story of the Civil War from the perspective of the fighting soldiers, creating for an entire Union army what regimental historians and the memoirs of individual soldiers had done on smaller levels. His success is due to his ability to create a spellbinding narrative that is more reminiscent of literature than what we would expect to find in a history book.