I have primacy bias when I shop for books. More recent is better, "new and improved." The book carriers reinforce this. They stock, prominently display, and promote the newest thing. When I bought my first book on the Civil War I bought the most recently published major work by a distinguished scholar, Battle Cry of Freedom by James McPherson. It was a serious book and serious-looking at 900 pages, published on the 125th anniversary of the outbreak of war. McPherson acknowledged those who had come before him, principally, as I remember, Bruce Catton and Shelby Foote, more, it seemed to me, to justify why yet another book on the subject was needed. Catton was, McPherson wrote, too Northern in his sympathies, Foote too Southern. He, McPherson, would strike the balance.

Battle Cry was a very good book but I didn't know what I was missing. I still don't understand the relevance of McPherson's anecdote about meeting President Kennedy in the introduction and more importantly I have always been confused by McPherson's charge that his predecessors had violated the iron law of historiography by succumbing to the evil "fallacy of reversibility". After doing research I could not find the iron tablet on which that law was recorded except in Battle Cry. As explained by McPherson the fallacy is in indulging in "what ifs". If this battle had gone that way rather than how it went, the outcome of the war would have been different. If Stonewall hadn't lost his left arm and Lee thereby his right arm; if Longstreet had got up; if Chamberlain had not made his unarmed charge. If, if, if. Indulging in such counterfactual speculation is navel contemplation, to be sure, irresistible and intriguing certainly, but ultimately mindless distraction. Had previous scholars though drunk so deeply of it that they became inebriated and missed the point? I found that hard to accept.

And McPherson's own money shot at the reason the North won, "contingency,"...what? Yes, what all other scholars had missed is how the outcome of the war was determined by the outcome of certain "turning point" battles or campaigns where if the other side had won rather than the side that did win, well I might be singing Dixie right now in Florida. But wait a minute, isn't contingency the fallacy of reversibility in one word? It is, actually. 

Northern victory was inevitable because of numerical population superiority, more advanced infrastructure and greater industrial capacity. Yeah, yeah, yeah, then why did the war last so long is McPherson's dismissal of that explanation. The Southerners fought more determinedly and bravely, that's why the war lasted four years. If they had given up after the first few reverses...McPherson: If that's the explanation then why didn't the South win the war? Those are different questions, the previous answers thereto McPherson rejects with rejoinders applicable to the opposite. That is, the length of the war is one question. Halfway through Catton's trilogy (still in the spring of 1862 though) I have penned that same wondering in the margin a few times already. The outcome of the war is an entirely different question to which the South's fighting spirit is inapposite, apposite only to the length of time it took the North to finally, inevitably, win. No, (McPherson) it was neither of those, or any of the others previous: it was Contingency. The outcome of the war was dictated by the evanescent, fallaciously reversible law written in sand, Contingency.

No, and hell no. The North won the Civil War because of the answer previously provided, the insurmountable advantage of the northern states in the number of people capable of being put under arms; because its people worked harder than those in the South ("most of the rank and file had never done a day's work in their lives" Catton, Terrible Swift Sword 217); because the North was far wealthier; because it was much further along in the Industrial Revolution than was the planters society in the South: thus it was wealthier, its infrastructure, in this context synonymous with its raid network, was vastly superior to the South's; because it had more advanced and could produce infinitely greater war materiel (the South had one armory, at Richmond); and because it better provisioned its soldiers. 

No, much the superior history of the Civil War is found in Bruce Catton's trilogy, written on the 100th anniversary of the commencement of the war. It is the only history that should be read. There are no tortured arguments, the history writing is far superior and the writing is lovely. Catton's work is nonpareil. I regret the day I picked Battle Cry of Freedom off the shelf at Barnes and Noble and I award my daughter First Prize in Daughters for picking Catton up for me at a flea market as a birthday gift.

This post was not conceived as stinging critique of McPherson but as extol of Bruce Catton's facility with the pen of literature, and, of history. Catton paints vivid word pictures like a novelist and turns an exquisite phrase. If the undersigned had kept to task this here post wouldn't be so goddamned long but the thing is done. 

One cardinal criterion I use in judging a work of literature is whether a passage "transports"--that's the word I use, transports--me to the scene. I think of Dickens' description of the carriage ride up Shooter's Hill in A Tale of Two Cities or Fenimore Cooper's description of the sleigh ride that brings Bess home to Templeton down the mountain in The Pioneers, and I am transported to the time and place described, I can see what the characters see, smell what they smell, feel as they do. Bruce Catton transported me to the Union position on the shores of the Elizabeth River in Virginia on March 8, 1862:

The spring sky this morning held neither wind nor clouds...crews indolently busy with odd jobs. On Cumberland the men had been doing their washing, and they hoisted long fore-and-aft lines of scrubbed clothing to add a homely touch to this naval  picture. ...

 So Cumberland and Congress rode the tide, on a morning so still that Cumberland loosed her sails and let them hang for a thorough drying. The morning was warm, and inshore some soldiers from the 20th Indiana infantry stripped off their uniforms and went splashing about in the shallows: it was not every year that an Indiana boy could go swimming as early as the eighth of March. Noon came, and the warships piped their crews to dinner: roast beef and potatoes, and very good, too, an old salt on Cumberland remembered.

While the men ate, lookouts scanned the horizon, for routine, and just as the messcloths were being put away they saw something: a businesslike pillar of black smoke going skyward...[The] officers studied this development carefully with their telescopes. The pillar of smoke looked stationary, at first, but at last it could be seen that it was moving north...and the base of the pillar rested on a black hull. Cumberland's dangling sails were brailed up and the lines of washing came down, the small boats were dropped astern and the booms were rigged in. The drummers beat to quarters, and the officers passed the word along the decks: Merrimack is coming out!...

...flag hoists blossomed at the yardarms of every Federal warship withing sight. The Indiana swimmers hurried back to camp to get their clothing and their muskets, and the gunners in the batteries on the mainland prepared to open fire.

The reader is there. We can feel the unseasonable, indolent warmth of a morning in the South, the stillness, the exhilaration of joyful "splashing", like small children, in March; we can taste the roast beef, feel the mood with the laundry hanging on the masts. We can see that "businesslike", unmoving black "pillar" in the sky, feel the studiousness of the officers examining it and the alarmed adrenaline rush when it is recognized for what it is; we can hear the drummers beating all-hands-on-deck. "Businesslike" is a superb adjective to use given the Merrimack's mission and "pillar" recalls the stillness in the air. "Flag hoists blossomed", Ah! (which I actually wrote in the margin), is a beautiful turn of phrase for a warm spring day and Catton does not leave a detail hanging for the sake of detail. The Indiana swimmers reappear presently, hurrying out of the water into their clothes and to battle stations.

Virginia [The Merrimack had been sunk previous to this engagement, had been raised, refitted as an ironclad, and rechristened the Virginia.] came on, inexorably, in slow motion, ignoring...fire from the shore batteries; drew abreast of Cumberland...and opening fire. ...Virginia's gunport blinked shut, and the big steamer came on; then the port-lid went up again, the black muzzle of the rifle reappeared, and a second shell was fired.

Making inanimate objects animate is a literary technique that makes the scene come alive for the reader.
...
Closer and closer came Virginia, ugly and black and irresistible, coming in for collision; and at last, with a jarring, splintering crash she struck Cumberland in the starboard bow, breaking a huge hole below the waterline. For a moment the two ships hung together; then they broke apart, Virginia's iron beak was wrenched off, and water came surging into Cumberland's orlop deck in a torrent. 

Virginia moves with the day, lazily, inevitably. We feel the slow-building terror of this hideous, black thing slowly coming "closer and closer" to the men on the Cumberland. Catton uses technical terms with facility and unobtrusively. I have no idea what the hell the "orlop" deck is but the term does not distract, unlike, for instance, in show-off, literary manque Cormack McCarthy's use of archaic Southwest terminology in Blood Meridian. Catton is easy on the reader giving her a comfort that he is well-acquainted with these technical terms but not displaying them ostentatiously. Catton transports the reader there as in fine literature yet does not let his literary talent obscure his historian's mission. To end, Bruce Catton's trilogy is the defining history of the American Civil War and is written with the artist's brush. A masterpiece, it is the only work on the subject that should be read.