HistoryNet. 2017:
"Through his pioneering histories of the Civil War, it was said, Bruce Catton “made us hear the sounds of battle and cherish peace.' ”
. . . "Soon Catton went east to try his hand with the Boston American. But the experiment didn’t last long, as the American was a Hearst paper, and Catton quickly acquired an aversion for “this business of nagging some poor family for pictures of the victim.” He retraced his steps and joined the staff of the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Catton would later credit his editors there for demanding accuracy and clarity in his writing, just as covering Cleveland’s ethnic communities gave him an insight into human nature and values.". . .
"After leaving government service, Catton turned his attention to the conflict that had been on his mind since childhood. His first attempt at a book on the Civil War took the form of fiction—an effort ultimately abandoned as a false start. He later destroyed all his attempts at fiction, saying that he didn’t want to embarrass his descendants.
"Newspaper work is not good training for novelists,” he told an interviewer, “but it’s very good training for historians.” The reporter and the historian, he pointed out, gathered information by similar methods: talking to eyewitnesses, reading their letters and diaries, and digging tenaciously for facts. He found those regimental histories to be good sources for the experiences of the men who did the fighting as opposed to those of the generals behind the lines.
"With his first Civil War history manuscript in hand, Catton faced the problem of getting it published. “Finding a publisher when you’re unknown is one of the most hopeless jobs in the world,” he recalled. Everywhere he was met by the same refrain: Civil War books didn’t sell. Finally, though, at the urging of George Braziller, an influential independent publisher, Doubleday agreed to take it on.
"PUBLISHED IN 1951, MR. LINCOLN’S ARMY OPENED with a description of the return of the Army of the Potomac from Major General George B. McClellan’s unsuccessful Peninsular Campaign. Early in the narrative, Catton observed:
"Through his pioneering histories of the Civil War, it was said, Bruce Catton “made us hear the sounds of battle and cherish peace.' ”
. . . "Soon Catton went east to try his hand with the Boston American. But the experiment didn’t last long, as the American was a Hearst paper, and Catton quickly acquired an aversion for “this business of nagging some poor family for pictures of the victim.” He retraced his steps and joined the staff of the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Catton would later credit his editors there for demanding accuracy and clarity in his writing, just as covering Cleveland’s ethnic communities gave him an insight into human nature and values.". . .
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| Catton |
"After leaving government service, Catton turned his attention to the conflict that had been on his mind since childhood. His first attempt at a book on the Civil War took the form of fiction—an effort ultimately abandoned as a false start. He later destroyed all his attempts at fiction, saying that he didn’t want to embarrass his descendants.
"Newspaper work is not good training for novelists,” he told an interviewer, “but it’s very good training for historians.” The reporter and the historian, he pointed out, gathered information by similar methods: talking to eyewitnesses, reading their letters and diaries, and digging tenaciously for facts. He found those regimental histories to be good sources for the experiences of the men who did the fighting as opposed to those of the generals behind the lines.
"With his first Civil War history manuscript in hand, Catton faced the problem of getting it published. “Finding a publisher when you’re unknown is one of the most hopeless jobs in the world,” he recalled. Everywhere he was met by the same refrain: Civil War books didn’t sell. Finally, though, at the urging of George Braziller, an influential independent publisher, Doubleday agreed to take it on.
"PUBLISHED IN 1951, MR. LINCOLN’S ARMY OPENED with a description of the return of the Army of the Potomac from Major General George B. McClellan’s unsuccessful Peninsular Campaign. Early in the narrative, Catton observed:
From first to last the Army of the Potomac was unlucky. It fought for four years, and it took more killing, proportionately, than any army in American history, and its luck was always out; it did its level best and lost; when it won the victory was always clouded by a might-have-been, and when at last the triumph came at Appomattox there were so very, very many of its men who weren’t there to see it. . . .
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| Union Soldier Service Records |
