George B. McClellan is easily one of the most misunderstood and maligned people in history. Though not a McClellan apologist, Russel H. Beatie, in his second of three so far published volumes (of what is sure to be a massive multivolume work) on the history of The Army Of The Potomac, demonstrates what many people have come to believe about McClellan isn't a true and accurate portrait of the man that was. A lawyer by profession and an historian by avocation, Mr. Beatie slowly builds his case against misconceptions of the perceived historical McClellan. As if pealing an onion, he removes layer after layer of historical half truths and misinformation, he shows the reader the mechanizations of politicians intent on pointing their fingers, placing the blame and passing the buck, and he explains the "why" of McClellan's actions in regards to Winfield Scott, Edwin Stanton, the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the war and, most of all, President Abraham Lincoln.

Picking up were volume one left off, Winfield Scott's resignation has been accepted by Lincoln and McClellan appointed the General-In-Chief of all the Union forces. Though not a battle book, a considerable portion of the book does involve The Battle of Ball's Bluff, where Senator, General and close friend of Abraham Lincoln, Edward Baker is killed in action. Though paled in comparison to later battles of the war to follow, Ball's Bluff is not important tactically to the story, but politically, having given Congress (and more notably the Radical Republicans) an excuse to form The Joint Committee On The Conduct Of The War.

In another large portion of the book, Mr. Beatie discusses in depth the various pools of men from which the Federal Army drew its generals: The Bull Run Officer Pool, The West Point and Regular Army Pools, Foreigner and Politician Pools and the Gubernatorial Pool, pointing out the strengths and weaknesses of the various men who came out of those pools, but most notably he notes the bias against officers from the West Point Pool, being viewed as largely sympathetic to the Confederacy.

The last major portion of this book covers the McClellan-Lincoln relationship. Mr. Beatie shows us that McClellan did not trust the President or members of his cabinet and therefore kept his plans largely to himself. When McClellan was struck down by the effects of typhoid fever, Lincoln was confronted with politicians who were demanding military action. With the General-In-Chief confined to his bed and refusing to share his plans, Lincoln had no other option than to borrow the army for a while and begin to make plans of his own. McClellan, alerted by friends of the President's actions, rose from his sick bed before Lincoln had the chance to put his plans into action. The book finishes with McClellan in the planning stages for what will become known as The Peninsula Campaign.

Mr. Beatie's research is exemplary. He has unearthed many first hand accounts that until now have never been published anywhere. Though his narrative is at times dry and sometimes strays a bit from the path, much of the material between the covers of Russel H. Beatie's Army of the Potomac, Volume II: McClellan Takes Command, September 1861-February 1862 has not previously been covered, nor found in any other published works on the topic, and Mr. Beatie provides a fresh look and new interpretations on many of the historical controversies surrounding George B. McClellan and the army he commanded.

This book needs both an editor and a proofreader. I picked it up mostly to see what Mr. Beatie said about the late 1861 period that covers Ball's Bluff, the one Civil War topic about which, having authored the most recent book on that battle, I can claim some expertise.

Here are a few examples of the problems in Beatie's book, problems both of fact and of interpretation, that I've found in the first 200 pages:

He buys the old, discredited story that Ball's Bluff came out of a deliberate Union attempt to take Leesburg. That is simply wrong.

He has a bad habit of citing dialogue in quotation marks but not footnoting it. Beatie noted in his volume 1 that he sometimes changed "indirect discourse" to "direct discourse;" in other words, he makes up conversations. He does this in vol. 2 as well.

He consistently confuses the sequence of events during the Ball's Bluff period. For example, he says that Gen. George McCall's advance from Langley to Dranesville was done in order to try to force the Confederates out of Leesburg. In fact, it was done IN RESPONSE TO the temporary Confederate withdrawal from Leesburg a couple of days before. Another small but typical example: he has the two Union mountain howitzers being captured by the rebs much earlier in the fight than they actually were. There are numerous other examples.

He several times refers to the California Regiment as the California Battalion, an entirely different entity which didn't even exist at the time of Ball's Bluff.

He speaks of a Federal diversion at Conrad's Ferry. There was no such thing.

He repeats the old idea that the Confederates had an "overwhelming force" against the yanks when it has long been known that the numbers at Ball's Bluff were virtually equal with each side putting right at 1700 men on the field.

He at least twice refers to Col. Edward Dickinson Baker as Edward Donald Baker.

He has Lt. Col. Walter Jenifer in command of the 8th Virginia Cavalry at Ball's Bluff. The 8th Virginia INFANTRY was at Ball's Bluff. Jenifer did command the 8th Va Cav later in the war, but not then.

He say that the bullet that hit Lt. Oliver Wendell Holmes lodged in his lungs (it did not), then he reverses himself later in the text with no explanation.

He says that Union Gen. Charles Stone was at First Manassas, though Stone was then part of Gen. Patterson's little army and nowhere near Manassas.

He cites a McClellan-to-Stone telegram from the O.R. in which the names of Darnestown, Maryland, and Dranesville, Virginia got morphed into "Darnesville." This caused some confusion at the time. Somehow, Beatie turns the non-existent "Darnesville" into an equally non-existent "Dranestown."

He claims that Union colonels William R. Lee (20 Mass) and Milton Cogswell (42 NY) were captured as they tried to make their way to Edwards Ferry. In fact, Lee was captured while moving in the other direction, toward Conrad's Ferry. Cogswell was captured while trying to organize troops on the Federal left. Neither man was attempting to get to Edwards Ferry.

I'll continue to read this book and hope that the sloppy writing and weird little mistakes in the first 200 pages don't carry over to the rest of it. At this point, however, I'd have to say that John Hennessy's scathing review of Beatie's volume 1 written some time ago could easily be rewritten to encompass volume 2.