Russel “Cap” Beatie’s Army of the Potomac Volume 3

I’ve been eagerly awaiting the third installment of Cap Beatie’s monumental Army of the Potomac, a study of the leadership of that famous Northern fighting unit. Mr. Beatie had previously been working with Da Capo, but it looks like Savas Beatie LLC will handle the third (and most likely future) volumes. This latest book is entitled McClellan’s First Campaign, March 1862 – May 1862, and will presumably cover the period of McClellan’s Peninsula Campaign up to the Battle of Williamsburg in early May. The information page for McClellan’s First Campaign, March 1862 – May 1862 contains the following description:

ARMY OF THE POTOMAC. Vol. 3 McClellan’s First Campaign

Russel H. Beatie

ISBN: 1-932714-25-1; photos, 30 original maps by George Skoch, extensive notes, bibliography, index. Hardcover, dust jacket, 864 pages.

$45.00

McClellan


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One response to “Russel “Cap” Beatie’s Army of the Potomac Volume 3

  1. Harry Avatar
    Harry

    I think Rowena Reed, author of 1978’s “Combined Operations in the Civil War” would be surprised to learn that Beatie is the first “to deeply investigate and expose the role of the Navy in the Yorktown episode.” The first chapter in Part Two, “The Collapse of Combined Strategy” is titled “Yorktown”. In the chapter on the James River Line, she says the following (page 188):

    “Had McClellan commanded Rodgers’ flotilla as Johnston commanded the combined Confederate land and naval forces in eastern Virginia, or had Goldsborough pushed the flotilla up the James immediately after Yorktown fell, as McCellan had requested, the Navy would have taken Richmond just as Farragut took New Orleans. By the time Goldsborough was ready to cooperate with the Army, McClellan had lost his freedom of movement.

    “The Federal Government’s almost total failure to comprehend the most elementary principles of war, or to trust generals who did understand them, consistently ruined the soundest plans and disrupted the most careful arrangements. Washington’s amateur strategists, suspicious of the professional military mind, blundered into the business of war with the usual overconfidence of ignorance. That they did not intentionally ruin McClellan’s operations, as is frequently claimed, made no difference in the result.”

    Harry