Commanding the Army of the Potomac

Finally, historians of the Civil War are moving out of the grand shadows cast by Bruce Catton and his protégé, Stephen W. Sears, and undertaking long overdue reexaminations of the Army of the Potomac. In just the past few years, John Hennessy, Russel Beatie, Jeffry Wert, and others have published studies that offer useful insights into the men who belonged to that hard-luck army, their four years of bitter struggle with their political masters in Washington and with the Army of Northern Virginia, and their final triumph at Appomattox. Here, Stephen R. Taaffe adds to that literature with a study of the men who achieved corps command in the Army of the Potomac. Taaffe's research is impressive. He has consulted a wide range of primary and secondary sources in crafting his narrative and analysis of events. There were, he cogently argues, four overlapping categories into which the men who achieved corps command in either the Army of the Potomac or Army of the James fell. The first, the McClellanites, who shared the political and military outlook of the army's first commander, George McClellan, were dominant. Another group was composed of men who owed their elevation to corps command directly to the political needs of the Abraham Lincoln administration. The third category consisted of those officers Taaffe labels “opportunists,” who eagerly cultivated political patrons by criticizing and holding themselves out as an alternative to the McClellanites in order to promote their own fortunes (p. 5). The final group was made up of those officers who, according to Taaffe, achieved corps command mainly on the basis of merit

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