The events described in the books changed the course of life in America. His books have good dialog and are full of interesting characters. The author is an excellent writer who I am sure if he had wanted to could have written very good fiction.

I have enjoyed reading all three of the books very much. And it ended with the Emancipation Proclamation that would deprive the Confederacy of potential allies, since no democratic nation wanted to be seen fighting for slavery.This is the second volume of the Centennial History of the Civil War. It saw the ascendancy of George McClellan, who talked big but dodged the action to an extraordinary degree (supposedly not through timidity, but through extreme reluctance to sacrifice the men to whom he was so devoted) before resigning in order to run against Lincoln for president.

The period in question (July 1861 – October 1862) saw the opening-up of the war in the west, with sickening corruption out in the wild places with nobody watching, and slow chaos dogging the Union agenda for many months. As always with Catton, the battles are vividly described, especially the naval operations, which seem to bring out a special enthusiasm in the author (he had once served briefly in the navy, so perhaps there was still a sailor in him somewhere.) And he provides an interesting Greek chorus in the form of Charles Francis Adams, the US ambassador in London, who played a useful role in keeping Britain out of the war. This change in the whole nature of the conflict is well-handled - both governments slowly grasping that they did not control the war, because the war was increasingly controlling them. Middle volume of Catton’s war trilogy - starting with Lincoln in shock after losing the first set-piece battle, and ending with the narrow win that gave him the authority to ‘proclaim’ (though not procure) the freedom of all southern slaves, turning the war into an abolitionist crusade. Urn:oclc:244122531 Republisher_date 20171104155541 Republisher_operator Republisher_time 877 Scandate 20171104061345 Scanner Scanningcenter hongkong Tts_version v1.54-12-g6b48a9c Worldcat (source edition) Urn:lcp:phoenixterribles00bruc:epub:1f78a1a0-4cfe-41fc-a83c-f25777176b3f Foldoutcount 0 Identifier phoenixterribles00bruc Identifier-ark ark:/13960/t3032xz5j Invoice 1213 Isbn 1842122932ĩ781842124055 Ocr ABBYY FineReader 11.0 (Extended OCR) Ocr_converted abbyy-to-hocr 1.1.11 Ocr_module_version 0.0.14 Openlibrary OL8924117M Openlibrary_edition Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 16:03:31.215787 Bookplateleaf 0008 Boxid IA1159310 City London Donor

Terrible Swift Sword by Bruce Catton