For more than fifty years the journal Civil War History has presented the best original scholarship in the study of America's greatest struggle. In commemoration of the war's sesquicentennial, the Kent State University Press is pleased to present a multivolume series reintroducing the most influential of the more than 500 articles published in the journal. From military command, strategy, and tactics, to political leadership, abolitionism, the draft, and women s issues, from the war s causes to its aftermath and Reconstruction, Civil War History has published pioneering and provocative analyses of the determining aspects of the Middle Period.

In this inaugural volume historian John T. Hubbell, editor of Civil War History for thirty-five years until 2000, has selected fifteen ground breaking essays from Albert Castel, Gary Gallagher, Mark Neely, and others that treat military matters in a variety of contexts, including leadership, strategy, tactics, execution, and outcomes. He begins the volume with a general introduction that assesses the enduring contribution of each article to our understanding. Those with an interest in the officers and men, logistics and planning, and execution and outcomes of the battles in America s bloodiest conflict will welcome this essential collection.