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Home Town Petoskey, Michigan
Last Address Buried in Benzonia's township cemetery, Frankfort, Michigan
Date of Passing Aug 28, 1978
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(Charles) Bruce Catton Historian, 1899–1978
American journalist and notable historian of the American Civil War.
He won a Pulitzer Prize for history in 1954 for A Stillness at Appomattox,
his study of the final campaign of the war in Virginia.
He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977 from Gerald R. Ford.
Gunnersmate, U.S. Navy, WWI.
His service with the War Production Board during World War II
led to his first major book, The War Lords of Washington (1948).
A former Cleveland newspaperman turned historian, Bruce Catton produced some of the most readable and compelling books about the American Civil War ever written. Combining "a scholar's appreciation of the Grand Design with a newsman's keenness for meaningful vignette," wrote Newsweek on the author's death in 1978, "Catton created an 'enlisted man's-eye view' of the war that treated humanely the errors on both sides."
As a boy growing up in Petoskey, Michigan, in the first decade of the 20th century, Catton had listened to the stories of old men who had actually fought in that bitter conflict. (His engaging 1972 autobiography, Waiting for the Morning Train: An American Boyhood, captures both the wonder and nostalgia of those years, when vivid memories of a simpler and—more heroic—time still lived lightly on the evening air in an unbroken continuity with the past.) The accounts of those desperate battles he was later to read as a student at Oberlin College near Cleveland were pallid in comparison with those gripping accounts. But it may have been his own stint in the Navy during World War I, as a gunner’s mate, along with his own talent for storytelling, that led him to seek out the more down-to-earth world of journalism.
In 1920 Catton got a job with the old Cleveland News, and worked briefly for the Boston American before landing a position with the Cleveland Plain Dealer, where his first published work on the Civil War—a series on local veterans who had fought in it—appeared in 1923. From 1925 to 1939, he worked for the Cleveland office of the Scripps-Howard Newspaper Enterprise Association (NEA), turning out news stories, features, editorials, and book reviews for papers around the U.S. before moving to NEA's Washington office.
He was 50 when he began the first of his 13 books on the War Between the States, winning both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize for the final volume of his great trilogy on the Army of the Potomac, A Stillness at Appomattox (1953), the story of the last cruel and desperate year of America's most painful episode. For this book and the first two parts of the series, Mr. Lincoln's Army (1951) and Glory Road (1952), Catton drew on a wide range of primary materials including the diaries, letters, and reports filed by soldiers, which enabled him to reconstruct events and their aftermath with telling detail and immediacy. The New York Times praised his "rare gift." The Chicago Tribune called it "military history...at its best."
Catton's love of history and the distinctive character of the American adventure led him to spend the next five years as the first editor of an ambitious new experiment in popular history, the hardbound American Heritage: A Magazine of History. He remained senior editor from 1959 until his death, while continuing to write books about his favorite subject.
"No one ever wrote American history with more easy grace, beauty and emotional power, or greater understanding of its meaning, than Bruce Catton," wrote Oliver Jensen, who succeeded him at the magazine. "There is a near-magic power of imagination in Catton's work [that] almost seemed to project him physically onto the battlefields, along the dusty roads and to the campfires of another age."
Other Comments:
(1899-1978), U.S. journalist, historian, and writer. Born Charles Bruce Catton on Oct. 9, 1899, in Petoskey, Mich., he served in the Navy during World War I before becoming a newspaper journalist. Catton worked in journalism until 1941, after which he worked for the federal government. Catton’s hobby, writing about the American Civil War, became his full-time occupation in 1952. The final entry of his three-volume history of the war, which comprised ’Mr. Lincoln’s Army’, ’Glory Road’, and ’A Stillness at Appomattox’, won a National Book award and a Pulitzer prize for history in 1954. He wrote a number of other works on the subject, including ’This Hallowed Ground’, ’Grant Moves South’, ’The Picture History of the Civil War’, and ’The Centennial History of the Civil War’. He also served as editor (1954-59) and senior editor (1959-78) of American Heritage magazine. Other honors
Catton received an award for "meritorious service in the field of Civil War history" in 1959, presented by Harry S. Truman. He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977 from Gerald R. Ford. Catton received 26 honorary degrees in his career from colleges and universities across the United States, including one in 1956 from Oberlin College.
World War I
From Month/Year
April / 1917
To Month/Year
November / 1918
Description The United States of America declared war on the German Empire on April 6, 1917. The U.S. was an independent power and did not officially join the Allies. It closely cooperated with them militarily but acted alone in diplomacy. The U.S. made its major contributions in terms of supplies, raw material and money, starting in 1917. American soldiers under General John J. Pershing, commander of the American Expeditionary Force (AEF), arrived in large numbers on the Western Front in the summer of 1918. They played a major role until victory was achieved on November 11, 1918. Before entering the war, the U.S had remained neutral, though it had been an important supplier to Great Britain and the other Allied powers. During the war, the U.S mobilized over 4 million military personnel and suffered 110,000 deaths, including 43,000 due to the influenza pandemic. The war saw a dramatic expansion of the United States government in an effort to harness the war effort and a significant increase in the size of the U.S. military. After a slow start in mobilising the economy and labour force, by spring 1918 the nation was poised to play a role in the conflict. Under the leadership of President Woodrow Wilson, the war represented the climax of the Progressive Era as it sought to bring reform and democracy to the world, although there was substantial public opposition to United States entry into the war.
Although the United States declared war on Germany on April 6, 1917, it did not initially declare war on the other Central Powers, a state of affairs that Woodrow Wilson described as an "embarrassing obstacle" in his State of the Union speech. Congress declared war on the Austro-Hungarian Empire on December 17, 1917, but never made declarations of war against the other Central Powers, Bulgaria, the Ottoman Empire or the various Co-belligerents allied with the central powers, thus the United States remained uninvolved in the military campaigns in central, eastern and southern Europe, the Middle East, the Caucasus, North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia and the Pacific.
The United States as late as 1917 maintained only a small army, smaller than thirteen of the nations and empires already active in the war. After the passage of the Selective Service Act in 1917, it drafted 2.8 million men into military service. By the summer of 1918 about a million U.S. soldiers had arrived in France, about half of whom eventually saw front-line service; by the Armistice of November 11 approximately 10,000 fresh soldiers were arriving in France daily. In 1917 Congress gave U.S. citizenship to Puerto Ricans when they were drafted to participate in World War I, as part of the Jones Act. In the end Germany miscalculated the United States' influence on the outcome of the conflict, believing it would be many more months before U.S. troops would arrive and overestimating the effectiveness of U-boats in slowing the American buildup.
The United States Navy sent a battleship group to Scapa Flow to join with the British Grand Fleet, destroyers to Queenstown, Ireland and submarines to help guard convoys. Several regiments of Marines were also dispatched to France. The British and French wanted U.S. units used to reinforce their troops already on the battle lines and not to waste scarce shipping on bringing over supplies. The U.S. rejected the first proposition and accepted the second. General John J. Pershing, American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) commander, refused to break up U.S. units to serve as mere reinforcements for British Empire and French units. As an exception, he did allow African-American combat regiments to fight in French divisions. The Harlem Hellfighters fought as part of the French 16th Division, earning a unit Croix de Guerre for their actions at Château-Thierry, Belleau Wood, and Séchault.
Impact of US forces on the war
On the battlefields of France in spring 1918, the war-weary Allied armies enthusiastically welcomed the fresh American troops. They arrived at the rate of 10,000 a day, at a time when the Germans were unable to replace their losses. After British Empire, French and Portuguese forces had defeated and turned back the powerful final German offensive (Spring Offensive of March to July, 1918), the Americans played a role in the Allied final offensive (Hundred Days Offensive of August to November). However, many American commanders used the same flawed tactics which the British, French, Germans and others had abandoned early in the war, and so many American offensives were not particularly effective. Pershing continued to commit troops to these full- frontal attacks, resulting in high casualties against experienced veteran German and Austrian-Hungarian units. Nevertheless, the infusion of new and fresh U.S. troops greatly strengthened the Allies' strategic position and boosted morale. The Allies achieved victory over Germany on November 11, 1918 after German morale had collapsed both at home and on the battlefield.
My Participation in This Battle or Operation
From Month/Year
April / 1917
To Month/Year
November / 1918
Last Updated: Mar 16, 2020
Personal Memories
Memories His life was suddenly interrupted by World War I with service as a gunner's mate in the Navy. It may have been his own stint in the Navy during World War I, along with his own talent for storytelling, that led him to seek out the more down-to-earth world of journalism.
