Never Call Retreat
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Never Call Retreat Customer Reviews
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♥♥♥♥♥
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The Civil War: The Final Fury
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"Never Call Retreat" is the third and final volume of Bruce Catton's classic Centennial History of the Civil War. This volume was published in 1965. Although the details may have been improved upon by later scholarship, "Never Call Retreat" endures as a superb reading experience based on Catton's matchless presentation of history as dramatic literature.
Catton picks up the narrative in December of 1862, with the bloody slaughter of Burnside's failed assault at Fredericksburg. Whatever chance for moderation might have ever been possible, the Emancipation Proclamation and the rising casualties create an remorseless tide toward total war.
In the West, Grant will grapple with the Confederate Fortress of Vicksburg, enduring a series of failures before finally and dramatically laying successful siege to that city. In the wake of Vicksburg, Grant will be directed to retrieve the failure of Chickamauga by breaking the Siege of Chattanooga. His success there will cause Lincoln to summon him to command of the Union Armies. Sherman will be left in the West to take Atlanta before marching to the sea through Georgia.
In the East, Burnside and Hooker will each have a turn as commander of the Union Army of the Potomac, and each will be badly beaten by Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. George Meade, summoned to the command of the Army of the Potomac as Lee invades the North, will be just good enough to hang on and win at the three day trial of Gettysburg. The arrival of Grant as supreme commander will presage a bloody year long struggle between the two great Eastern armies, ending in the Siege of Petersburg, where Lee's Army will slowly bleed nearly to death before finally surrendering at Appomattox in April 1865.
Catton does not neglect the politics, North and South, behind the fighting. In the South, Jefferson Davis struggles to forge a unified war effort with a Confederate Government too decentralized to marshal the necessary resources. Abraham Lincoln, his Union counterpart, struggles to bring the Union's superior resources to bear while maintaining a democracy and holding off a defeatist opposition. Linconl will win reelection in 1864 after surviving the darkest hours of the nation's will to reunite the country.
Catton's narrative moves easily between theaters of war, detailing the struggles of very human leaders in the face of great challenges while placing those struggles in the context of the great themes of the war. Catton's superb narrative captures the uniqueness of an American Civil War.
This book is highly recommended to the student of the Civil War and to the casual reader, both of whom will enjoy this volume and series. |
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