"For the leaders included in this volume, the Civil War constituted the major event of their lives. For most of them, their participation in that war was also the major activity and accomplishment of their busy and important careers. ... Each of them, in the many different kinds of service needed in modern warfare, made a major impact on his or her respective side's war effort. All forty-seven, it will be shown, deserve to be called important leaders of the Civil War."--Preface, p. [xi].

Introduction: The Making and Meaning of Greatness -- Joseph Reid Anderson -- Clara Barton -- Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard -- Henry Ward Beecher -- Judah Philip Benjamin -- Thomas Stanley Bocock -- Braxton Bragg -- Joseph Emerson Brown -- Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain -- Salmon Portland Chase -- Jay Cooke --Charles Anderson Dana -- Jefferson Finis Davis -- Varina Howell Davis -- Dorothea Lynde Dix -- Frederick Douglass -- Josiah Gorgas -- Ulysses Simpson Grant -- Henry Wager Halleck -- John Bell Hood -- Robert Mercer Taliaferro Hunter -- Thomas Jonathan Jackson -- Andrew Johnson -- Joseph Eggleston Johnston -- Robert Edward Lee -- Abraham Lincoln -- James Longstreet -- George Brinton McClellan -- Stephen Russell Mallory.