ARMY OF AMATEURS - General Benjamin F. Butler and the Army of the James 1863-1865 by Longacre, Edward G

Mechanicsburg , Stackpole Books 1997,BOMC EDITION, hard bound in dust jacket, FINE/FINE CONDITION, 6 1/2 x 9 1/2 , xii, 388 pages, illus, maps, notes, bibliog............................................................... The first detailed account of Butler's ARMY OF THE JAMES, which campaigned in S.E. Virginia south of the Kanes River. It campaigned against Richmond incl Drewry's Bluff and Petersburg. Although it never achieved the status of other armies, it pioneered in several areas of weaponry and medical care. THE ARMY OF THE JAMES HAS LONG BEEN relegated to a footnote in the chronicles of our most important war. Although it gained few battlefield victories during its year and a half of existence, the army contributed to Union triumph a Petersburg, Virginia, and Fort Fisher, North Carolina. It seized and occupied the Confederate capital at Richmond, and it forced the surrender o Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia.In some ways, the army's political and social significance overshadowed its military contributions Thanks to its many civilians in uniform, it was the most highly politicized fighting force in American history. Its first and longest-tenured commander, Major General Benjamin E Butler, was an active if unannounced presidential candidate, a rival to the man who had appointed him, Abraham Lincoln.-------------------------------------------------- The general staff-including the contentious William "Baldy" Smith, the paranoid Edward A. Wild the excitable Charles A. Heckman, and the inept August V. Kautz-was often awash in personality conflicts. These clashes among Butler's officers led repeatedly to what could be considered laughable bumblings, had it not been for the serious consequences of their actions.But the army's innovative approach to weapons, medical care, and other support programs offers food for thought to students of technological, administrative, and institutional history. And its status as the Civil War's largest repository of African American troops-the only army in U.S. history to field a corps composed exclusively of black units-makes it a social experiment worthy of scrutiny 130 years after its dissolution.