In those critical months between the autumn of 1862 and midsummer of the following year, the eventual outcome of the Civil War was determined by the Army of the Potomac. After a bloody massacre at Fredericksburg, an aimless and muddy march up and down the banks of the Rappahannock, and a catastrophe of confusion at Chancellorsville, this army took a firm stand on the hills to the west of a small Pennsylvania town called Gettysburg and finally turned the fortunes of war against the Confederacy.
Here is the exciting story of this Army of the Potomac, of the people in it, and of the nation it defended. Of enlistees, volunteers and bounty men alike, who fought like fiends during each engagement but swapped coffee and tobacco with the Rebels between skirmishes. And of three generals in command during this crucial period: Burnside, "who meant so well and did so badly"; Hooker, a soldier's soldier who improved rations but was surprised into a disastrous defeat; and Meade, who took over only three days before the decisive battle of Gettysburg.
Full of human details which bring history to vivid life, this panorama of an army and of a nation at war introduces such unheralded notables as the New York businessman turned soldier who invented "Taps"; Vallandigham, copperhead candidate for governor of Ohio, who was one of President Lincoln's "hottest potatoes"; the army laundress, Annie Etheridge, who brought hot coffee and hardtack to men on the firing line; John C. Robinson, "the hairiest officer in a much bearded army"; and Private Patrick Maloney, who bodily seized and captured a Confederate general.
Bruce Catton has written history in its most exciting form, a veritable cinematic account of one desperate phase in one desperate war, the bloody, muddy, tortuous route that the Army of the Potomac plodded to victory.
—from the dust jacket
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