This is the first study of Civil War command since Douglas Southall Freeman's Lee's Lieutenants (1944) that has focused solely and directly with the problems and methods of operational command ; in so doing, the author has dealt with the tactical and strategical problems that threatened to overwhelm untried Civil War generals at the very onset of hostilities. The failure of antebellum American military thought to come to grips with outdated linear tactics and inapplicable strategic principles resulted in commanders on both sides in the Civil War having to lead mass armies of untried civilian soldiers into a war for which neither the led nor the leader had been prepared to fight.

Ch. 1.The American Civil War in Western History -- Ch. 2. Pre-Civil War American Military Thought -- Ch. 3. "Lessons" from Napoleonic Warfare -- Ch. 4. Defining an Art of Command -- Ch. 5. Stonewall Jackson Plans and Conducts His Campaign -- Ch. 6. Nathaniel Banks and the Advance to Cedar Mountain -- Ch. 7. The Battle of Cedar Mountain -- Ch. 8. What Happened at Cedar Mountain? -- Ch. 9. Rosecrans and His Chickamauga Campaign -- Ch. 10. Braxton Bragg, Confederate Strategy, and the Tactical Offensive -- Ch. 11. The Battle of Chickamauga -- Ch. 12. The Two Perspectives of Chickamauga -- Ch. 13. John B. Hood and Certain Differences in Confederate Strategy -- Ch. 14. The "Rock of Chickamauga" Prepares a New Kind of Battle