This was an unforgettable book, a meticulous recounting of the events and decisions that led to the Civil War

Wonderful, enjoyable read. Very informative, and it is very exciting. Definitely looking forward to the second of the trilogy

This is my first read of a Bruce Catton book on the Civil War. It won't be the last.

The men who marched were full of state pride and they bragged about the fine deeds which this day would be done by Massachusetts or New York or Ohio. Like the Southern boys whom they were about to meet, their feelings of loyalty and patriotism were translated ultimately in the homely terms of what a man could see from his own attic window. In each soldier’s heart the nation was very small and intimate…big enough to be worth dying for, but familiar enough to be loved personally.
—Bruce Catton, The Coming Fury

The first volume of Bruce Catton’s U.S. Civil War centennial trilogy, covering the period from the Democratic National Convention in April 1860 to the First Battle of Bull Run in July 1861, is required reading for any student of history seeking a better understanding of the events that immediately preceded the outbreak of hostilities between the states. Catton’s writing is both lyrical and clear, and manages to condense a convoluted tangle of events down to a succinct narration. What Catton does better than perhaps any historian is to lay bare the fundamental absurdity of the war.

In 1860, the United States was an aspiring continental empire that was relatively isolated from the outside world. Its military apparatus—almost entirely focused on westward expansion and the Indian Wars—was meager and graying. Case in point: Winfield Scott, Commanding General of the United States Army, was a 74-year-old veteran of the War of 1812. Once civil strife erupted, the volunteer armies called up by both sides were green and untrained, and never was this more obvious than in the Union’s first chaotic advance into Virginia at Bull Run, which serves as the finale to this volume.

Both Unionists and Confederates alike lacked strategic and physical fitness, and there was little sense of sobriety in the face of the calamity toward which all parties were marching with wide-eyed, patriotic vigor. While both sides clamored for war, it was as if neither truly believed that once hostilities began, men of the other side would kill their countrymen (or at least men who until very recently had been their countrymen). The whole spectacle of the Confederates setting up their government with pomp and circumstance in Montgomery has the air of very puffed up men playing at a game. To “Gods and Generals” I would counter “Farce and Folly.”

While his analysis is generally disinterested, Catton does flirt with the Lost Cause-ism that was still very much in vogue at the time he was writing. That said, his romantic overtures to the valor and courage of the fallen South are tempered by his condemnation of the rampant xenophobia and white supremacism that fueled their cause. Catton writes that

...although [Negroes] were among the most peaceful, easygoing, and uncomplaining people the world has ever seen, their mere presence frightened native Americans almost beyond endurance ... The Negro had to remain what he was and as he was, his mere presence a mocking denial of the nation’s basic belief in freedom and the advancement of the human spirit.

Despite such enlightened commentary (especially by the standards of 1961), Catton shows hints of his generation’s sympathy to the South by suggesting that slavery was a “comparatively benign” institution by the mid-19th century. Still, he does not shy away from the central role that slavery played in the war, nor the almost apoplectic outrage inspired in whites on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line by the mere thought of racial equality.

What Catton also makes clear in this first volume is that the South had already lost the war from the outset. The Confederacy was founded upon the premise that few powers should be granted to central government, and Jefferson Davis hewed that line while Abraham Lincoln did not demure when it came to the assumption of near dictatorial authority (e.g., the suspension of habeas corpus, the effective annexation of Maryland into the Union, and the ouster of the popularly-elected government in Missouri). Moreover, the regional divisions of the country at that time were not simply ideological but economical. When the states divided, two nations of starkly different composition were formed: one outmoded and agrarian, the other relentlessly industrial.

Inflation in the South began before the first battle of the war was fought, and while the Rebels were hopeful that King Cotton would grant them the leverage necessary to extort alliances with Britain and France, the principals of the Confederacy never seem to have considered the impracticality of their position: export of cotton had been almost entirely dependent upon vessels built in the North. Moreover, cotton stores were in such surplus across the Atlantic that textile mills in the North were able to import cotton from Europe in the early days of the war.

To compound matters, there was no easy flow of freight traffic within the South. The railways were mostly composed of feeder lines meant to convey cotton between short distances, and no interchange of cars was possible. This made the transport of military supplies and artillery slow and inefficient. The North faced similar problems but recognized and addressed these pitfalls early on, aided to that end by the fact that almost all of the ironworks were in the North. Catton opines that the leaders of the South were not so much unseeing of these problems as they were uncomprehending—that is, American manufacturing forces were so entirely concentrated in the North that perils which could be easily spotted by industrialists and bankers did not even enter into the Southern mind.

Catton quotes the historian Francis Parkman Jr., who surveyed the war two years after its outset and declared that the struggle between Confederacy and Union was a battle of “strong head and weak body against strong body and weak head.” Catton—again, hints of the Lost Cause—concurs, and waxes poetic upon the intellectual and spiritual heft of men like Robert E. Lee, the Johnstons (Albert Sidney and Joseph Eggleston), and Matthew Fontaine Maury. But, in the end, Catton hones in on the fatal flaw of the South: the naive assumption that “courage and dedication, because they burned so brightly, would make up for all the other deficiencies.”

Thus, the South of 1861 was beset by the same crippling weaknesses of 2017—primary among them, a way of viewing the world that is at once anachronistic and absurdly hostile to the uncompromising encroachment of modernity. As Catton rightly sums up the matter: “The head so full of fire could make an inadequate body surpass its limitations only for a time.” The succession of the Southern states was the ultimate flight from reality, and even after a catastrophic defeat, Confederate descendants down to the present day would prefer false narratives, putrid nostalgia, and a Jim Crow "Redemption" over anything resembling the real world.

I have owned this book and the two volumes that follow for probably over 40 years. What took me so long is probably the fact that I always found many other Civil War books to read in their place. Lord knows there are enough of them.
The set of three was written to commemorate the centennial of the American Civil War in 1961 by the foremost historian of his time on the subject, Bruce Catton. Mr. Catton's first volume is an in-depth study of the catastrophic events of late 1859 to early 1861 that led up to the start of the Civil War. It gave a very insightful view of the situation over all areas of the country and I learned more from this book than I could from the multitude of other books that I have read on the subject.
If you want to know precisely what happened during those fateful years, this trilogy would be the best place to start, I'm sure. "Terrible Swift Sword" and "Never Call Retreat" complete the history.
Highly recommended. Now on to book two.

This masterful narrative begins renowned historian Bruce Catton's Civil War centennial series of three books covering the entire war. Although this series was released in 1961, its coverage of the war is not just limited to battles and commanders, but instead includes thoughtful discussions of politics and life on the home front; the life of enslaved people; and various social, cultural, and economic concerns at different levels in both the North and South. While not as detailed as current scholarship on these topics, the fact Mr. Catton is discussing them as important considerations for understanding the war in 1961 is both academically and socially ground-breaking. The competing work of Civil War scholarship to this book and series, "The Civil War: A Narrative" by Shelby Foote, does contain a lot of details "The Coming Fury" lacks, but cannot compete with Mr. Catton's clear and insightful narrative that makes some very nuanced topics of Civil War scholarship accessible to readers with little to no background on the war. Mr. Foote's works, on the other hand, weave a poor, choppy narrative that virtually requires readers to have a healthy amount of Civil War background knowledge to gain any insights from his books. I highly recommend this book and series for every adult American and anyone interested in the American Civil War.

Good history written by a master of language. Well worth the time to read; even if historiography has moved forward some, Catton chose episodes and details I'd not read about before. Read it and enjoy!

An education to say the least. Written in early 60's so sometimes heavy reading, and having an old copy, the font was small. Funny I thought I was so dang smart and knew about the civil war! I don't know jack! Cool to hear perspective of dr catton and views/research of late 50's/ early 60's. Book ends at first major battle- first manassas/ bull run. A confederate victory that taught the north that this wasn't gonna be a one day drop the plow kick confederate ass then return. No, this overhauled Washington to strategize, plan, and execute a long term strangulation. It was the beginning of wisdom. The end if disillusionment. Too many men had supposed that the war war would be won by the ninety day recruit. Out of bull run would come an effort so huge that simply to make it would change America forever. In the dust and smoke around manassas an innocent era had come to an end.

This book is one I read somewhat out of order, it being the third book I read in the series after having read the second and the third ones before.  And intriguingly, this book would have been a very worthwhile setup for the other two, even if it only covers the area between the Democratic convention of 1860 and the immediate aftermath of Bull Run.  Reading this book is akin to reading the first part of a Greek tragedy, where the reader is aware that things do not turn out well and where the people themselves warn others of the disaster that is looming but where the people in charge of events cannot be stopped no matter how many sound omens they receive.  Far more than the other two books in the series, this one offers a granular look at what happened between the Spring of 1860 and the summer of the year following, when the United States first faced divided political parties struggling over power and then faced the gradual buildup and sudden release of tension that led to brutal and all-out warfare between the North and the South over issues of Union and slavery.

The nearly 500 pages of text in this book are divided into seven chapters with various subjects.  Catton begins by looking at the spring of 1860 and how it was that the Democratic convention of that year, held disastrously in Charleston, ended in disaster because a majority of delegates from the North would accept no other nominee than Stephen Douglas but a blocking minority would not accept him under any circumstances, while the Republicans went for availability and cast aside the favorite Seward for the more unknown and thus less objectionable Lincoln.  After that the author moves to a discussion of the further division of the Democratic party and its split into northern and southern wings and the campaign of 1860 and its eventual election of Lincoln and the immediate reality of coercion.  The third chapter looks at the long farewell of Buchanan and the way that Union was ripped apart by separatist pressures in the winter of 1861.  The fourth chapter compares Lincoln and Davis as they prepared to take office in their respective republics along with the final efforts at compromise and Lee's travel from Texas to Washington DC.  The fifth chapter looks at the attack on Ft. Sumter and the way that it pointed the nation into the unknown, after which the author discusses the revolutionary beginning of the war in Maryland and efforts at diplomacy in Kentucky in the sixth chapter.  Finally, Catton concludes with a discussion of the war in West Virginia as well as the failure at Bull Run and the way that the death of the minute man led to Union resolve to fight even harder.

What is it that made the Civil War so inevitable?  Demographic patterns meant that the North was able to elect a sectional candidate who had no appeal to the South and who was hostile to slavery.  The fragility of slavery led those who wanted the system to continue, not least because they were elites who profited from their ownership of others and the resulting wealth and influence that gave them in their society, to undertake revolutionary behavior that would destroy the fragile social system they were trying to protect.  Yet there was really no choice between a consent to a slow destruction of the slave power through the demise of slavery first in the border regions and then further south and the rapid destruction that came about because of the Civil War.  The south's romantic belief in an elan vital that would overcome their obvious logistical difficulties also led to disaster, which was perhaps inevitable but was no less destructive for all that.  Catton does a great job here at pointing out the early stages of that disaster as a nation long divided by rhetoric decided that words were going to be replaced or at least supplemented by deeds of violence.  Let it be a lesson to us all.

This was exactly the book I was hoping it to be. For all the millions of pages of Civil War literature extant, there seems to be a shortage of well-known, scholarly writing about the events leading up to its outbreak. We are taught in school that "the South seceded" in December 1860, that Fort Sumter was fired upon the following April and that the first major battle happened in July. From a modern perspective, this seems ludicrous. Wars have been fought and finished in less time!

Bruce Catton expertly fills in the gaps. We learn of the politicking that led to Lincoln's upset nomination and the fracturing of the Democratic party. We learn of the rhetoric that culminated in secession after the election. I was captivated by the four month dance around Fort Sumter, an antebellum precurser to the Cuban Missile Crisis in which both sides are daring the other to strike first and so be the aggressor. Amazingly, it is lost on the lay public that Fort Sumter produced not a single casualty and was thus a political symbol rather than the true start of the war. The last amazing fact I learned from this book was about the formation of West Virginia and General McClellan's early successes in that campaign, before his caricatured ineptitude on the peninsula.

Having never read extensively about it, I consider myself representative of the public conception of what the Civil War was all about, and the basic sequence of events we're all taught in school. While I'm still no expert, I feel I know so much more about the subject now that I've read this book. I've always been more interested in what led up to the war, why it broke out when it did, and what life was like in various sections of the country at that time, than the battle schedule and cast of romantic hero characters. If you feel the same, this is a must read.

Bruce Canton could write the phone book in such a narrative as one loves it! His death handling of the build-up to the civil war as possibly the best I have read. William c Davis also does a great job of this though

Volume One of Bruce Catton’s trilogy (of which he authored two). Excellent background and insights in the lead-up to war, ending after First Bull Run. I had already read Volume Two, purchased first, used, at a Civil War Symposium. Volume Three is next and it should not disappoint. Mr. Catton keeps his chapters in the 6-16 page range, making them readable in the right doses. Extensive end notes and bibliography. A scholarly work.