Most of our Civil War history more or less concentrates on the Confederates, and spends only limited time on their Northern opponents. When you balance Lee's Lieutenants, for instance, against Catton's Army of the Potomac trilogy, the latter is perhaps a bit more readable, but considerably shorter and not nearly as detailed, as a result. Russel Beatie has apparently decided to try and reconstruct Lee's Lieutenants, but concentrate on the Army of the Potomac instead of that of Northern Virginia, and see what he can do to right the balance. This book is the first volume in what will undoubtedly be six or seven volumes on the subject, at a minimum. The third volume was released in 2007, and only covers a period up through the latter part of 1862.

So Beatie starts out noticeably imitating Freeman, who wrote Lee's Lieutenants. He mentions him in his forward, and then begins the book by giving you thumbnail sketches of the participants. This is in direct imitation of Lee's Lieutenants, and the book is essentially constructed pretty much in the same way. For the most part, it's a detailed and informed account of the campaigns of the early part of the war, including the securing of the rail lines into Washington from the rest of the North, the capture of Harper's Ferry, and the battle of Bull Run.

There are difficulties, however. One of my chief objections is that the author inserts those thumbnail biographies at the front of the book and then assumes you skipped them. As a result, he repeats, pretty close to verbatim, everything he wrote in those sketches in the narrative of the book. Since some of them are pretty much a page long, it's pretty tedious when you just read this same stuff a bit ago. It also feels like he was padding or didn't know what else to say.

Other than that relatively minor complaint, the book is well-done and intelligently constructed, and I'd recommend it to Civil War buffs. I look forward to further volumes in the series.

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.

I was excited to purchase and start reading this book. Bruce Catton's Army of the Potomac trilogy had been my introduction to Civil War literature and I was looking forward to what I thought would be a modern complement to Douglas Southall Freeman's "Lee's Lieutenant's". Unfortunately this volume falls woefully short of the heights attained for and achieved by it's predecessors.
Quite frankly this book is boring and poorly written. The author cannot distinguish the interesting tidbit that sheds light on a man or situation from arcane trivia that would best be relegated to footnotes. Like an attorney piling on argument after argument to make their case, Beattie piles on detail after detail until the reader is left numbed, dazed and confused, with no true revelation after all the data has been assimilated.
I make it a point to try and finish every book I purchase, but I nearly gave up on this volume several times. The Army of the Potomac deserves it's own Freeman, but it has not found him in Beattie. I would hope that a truly gifted author like Gary Gallagher, Robert Krick or Joseph Glatthaar would take up the task and complete the job begun by Bruce Catton many years ago.

I was skeptical at the beginning. By using D. S. Freedman as his model, he set an impossibly high standard. Well, he is no Freedman, as far as I can tell, but who is? He is an attorney for whom this is a labor of love. He must be a very good lawyer because he collects his facts exhaustively, assembles them intelligently, and then puts it all into a narrative the "jury" -- the reader -- can understand.

One particular technique, which a professional historian probably could not use, is very effective. He takes records that are in indirect discourse and puts them in direct discourse. So "Jones said that Smith told Robinson that it is all over and that Robinson said that it was not yet over," yawn, becomes the more gripping: Smith: "It's all over." Robinson: "Not yet."

So it is replete with wonderful details, some of which fill in blanks you had always wondered about, for the Civil War buff who gets tired of reading the same old thing over and over. In spite of, or perhaps because of, the details, this is a real page-turner. I use it for bedtime reading and, instead of lulling me to sleep, I have trouble turning the light off.

This is not a story-teller book, like Foote or Catton, though he tells many good stories. But what I like most is his knowledgeable analysis of the pros and cons of decisions made in the formation of conduct of this great army. Highly recommended.

Russel Beatie develops a history of the origins of the Army of the Potomac. He notes that (page xv): "This is the story of a group of men during a short but extraordinary period in their lives." He also observes that his role model is D. S. Freeman, who focused on the development and actions of the Army of Northern Virginia.

This is a nice detailed work of the personalities at the beginning, the crucible of battle, the various components of the Army. There is a nice, brief Appendix on battlefield maneuvers.

The book itself begins at the beginning, with Winfield Scott as the head of the Army. Although a southerner, he remained loyal to the Union as its army's Commander-in-Chief after the breaking out of the Civil War. There is a segment entitled "Dramatis Personae" at the outset of the book, providing brief biographical sketches of key figures in the early days of the Army of the Potomac, including such figures as Scott, Charles Stone, Robert Patterson, Fitz-John Porter to George McClellan. These sketches provide nice context for what follows.

The Army begins to emerge as volunteers and regulars from throughout the North wended their way to Washington, D. C. Irvin McDowell was the first head of the Army. The book traces the organizing of the Army and its first foray into Virginia, culminating with the Union near victory but, in the end, chaotic defeat at Bull Run/Manassas. The antiquated Robert Patterson's failure to pin down Confederate General Joseph Johnston in the Shenandoah Valley was a key factor in the Union defeat.

Once the Army returned to the area of Washington, D. C, after the defeat, General George McClellan entered the picture. A wonderful organizer, he would prove wanting as a field commander in battle. However, he was the person to take a mob and make it into a finely honed instrument of battle--the Army of the Potomac.

The text goes on to note the conflict between McClellan and Scott, contentiousness between McClellan and Abraham Lincoln, and so on. Discussion also notes the headquarters staff as it developed, the evolution of the cavalry and artillery in the army. Finally, a chapter on the engineers completes the volume.

This book is very nice in that it lays the stage for understanding how the Army of the Potomac developed in all its detail. It is not a compellingly written book, and one can almost drown in some details. Nonetheless, Beatie does a real service by providing a detailed examination of the early months of this fighting vehicle.

I was somewhat disappointed in this book. Mr. Beatie is a fine researcher, but not a great writer. I didn't like that he quoted verbatim long conversations as they appeared in memoirs many years later. That got a bit old. More paraphrasing would have been preferable.

Also, although the examples of history are sometimes useful, I didn't like many of the "off message" moments where Beatie talked in detail about how the ancients or Napoleon addressed a particular issue germane to the development of the Army of the Potomac.

Also, there are a lot of choppy sentences. The book needed a better edit job.

I'm hoping for better from Volume II. The main redemning aspect of Vol. I is that it covers a period rarely examined in this detail. It's good to break some new ground. I just don't think this book did so in a highly effective manner.

The AOP is one of the storied armies in American history. This book is the first, of a series, that fully tells that story. Very detailed, fully documented but reads like a novel giving information and fun at the same time.

The advantage of this treatment is that we see things as they saw them. Rumor has to be considered and we understand why it was thought that 100,000 men were marching on Washington. Ed Beares is another author that has mastered a detailed redaable history. This compares very well with his work.

I was skeptical of this book when I first picked it up. I mean the book only covers the Army of the Potomac from November 1860 to September 1861 and yet is a good 600 pages long by a writer for all intensive purposes is an unknown. I was half expecting a very dry read but boy was I wrong. Instead I got one of the best Civil War books I've read in a while.

The book is intended to be the first in a series of books covering the history of the Army of the Potomac. This volume covers the formation of the army in the early days of the war.

I think one of the things I really enjoyed about this book is it dealt with areas, details and people that few other books deal with. How does one create an army? How do you get these regiments from the north down to Washington which is almost cut off due to the city of Baltimore? The problems were immense.

Attempting to solve these problems were men whom we have seldom heard much about or if we have we have heard about them it's mostly from later in the war for other things. This book deals with men like Benjamin Butler, Charles Stone, Robert Patterson and Elmer Ellsworth. Footnotes in many other books, here they take center stage alongside more familiar names like Fitz-John Porter, Irvin McDowell, Winfield Scott and of course George McClellan as they do their part in securing Washington DC and helping in the early creation of what would become the Army of the Potomac.

Russel Beatie definately has written a great book here that I think most Civil War enthusiasts will greatly enjoy. It has wonderful detail and yet is never slow or dry. I really can't wait to read the other volumes in the series. I think once completed it will be an important part of anyone's Civil War book collection.

Russel Beatie has done an excellent job with his first volume on the long and storied history of the Army of the Potomac! In this first volume he seeks to do for the greatest of the Union armies what Douglas Southall Freeman did for the fabled Army of Northern Virginia.
It is probable that Beatie's book will sell far fewer copies than did Dr. Freeman's classic work. However, the book is well worth pouring over its detailed pages as lawyer Beatie sketches the first confusing months of the Civil War from the Union viewpoint.
As someone who has read Civil War literature for many years I confess that my knowledge of the Army of the Potomac is vastly inferior to what I know of Lee's legions. Beatie is strong on character sketches of such men as Winfield Scott, Irvin McDowell and the engimatic and controversial George Brinton McClellan.
For these sketches alone the book is valuable. His battle descriptions are succint but well done. The maps are helpful to the text and easy to read.
I noticed a few typos and factual errors but am much impressed by the long years of Beatie's resources. His bibliograpy of first person eyewitness acocunts and unit histories is vast.
I look forward to volume two which will pick up the story from September, 1861. I am in awe of his research and dedication to getting this book published!

I was surprised to see so many 5 star ratings for this volume. Sections of it were very good, and there was a nice use of unusual sources within text. What was disappointing however was the unevenness of the structure, with chapters jumping between straight narrative and more technical discussions. This did not work for me, and some of the last few chapters detailing the bureau heads, cavalry etc were just plain dreary. Beatie drew attention to his wish to emulate Freeman's Lees Lieutenants, but he needed a tougher editor to keep him focussed on the wood and not the trees.