When Union General George McClellan marched toward the Confederate capital of Richmond in 1862, he encountered the Warwick River "where it wasn't supposed to be." McClellan was following a map created by an esteemed topographer, but the map was wrong! "The Cram Map" that McClellan was using is one of the removable maps in Great maps of the Civil War. So is the map Union General James B. McPherson was carrying when he was killed on July 22, 1864, just east of Atlanta. "Commanders moving their armies...often had to advance slowly, groping their way blindly," says William Miller. "They used what maps they could find, but most contained serious errors...Studies of Civil War maps usually focus on handsome, post battle maps of battlefields...While these maps explain how a battle was fought, they do nothing to help us answer the questions about why a battle or campaign was conducted as it was." The maps here are the ones the commanders actually used or were likely to have been available to them. -- From the back cover.

Maps included are for the following areas of interest : Capitals of the Civil War -- On the banks of Bull Run -- The war in the west -- On to Richmond -- Lee moves north -- Bloody December -- A test of nerves at Chancellorsville -- Fortress Vicksburg -- Grant versus Lee -- To Atlanta -- Petersburg, Lee at bay -- Retreat from Richmond -- Mapmakers : forgotten heroes. Removable maps are -- Richmond, Va.,1875 -- Washington, D.C., 1851 -- Fairfax County, Va., June 1961 -- Bull Run, July, 1861 -- Confederate fortifications on the Mississippi River at Island No. 10 -- Roads between Corinth and Pittsburg Landing, April, 1862 -- Approaches to Richmond, prepared for McClellan, 1862 -- "The Cram Map" of the area south of Yorktown, 1862 -- J.E.B. Stuart's personal pocket map -- Washington County, Md., 1861-- Battle of Fredericksburg, 1862 -- Spotsylvania County, Va., 1862 -- The Rapahannock near Fredericksburg, 1863 -- Route to Chancellorsville, 1863 -- Southern portions of Franklin and Adams Counties, Pa. -- Commercial map of Adams County, Pa., 1858 -- Confederate Army's route into Pennsylvania -- Confederate defenses at Vicksburg, 1863 -- Madison and Tensas parishes, La. -- "Hains Map" of defenses of Jackson, Ms. -- Brown's Ferry, Tennessee area, 1863 -- "Black map" of Chattanooga -- Confederate map of eastern Virginia, 1864 -- Gen. Lunsford Lomax's map of the lower Shenandoah Valley -- General James B. McPerson's field map -- Sherman's map of northern Georgia -- Richmond and Petersburg defenses -- Dinwiddie County, Va., 1864 -- Confederate defenses of Danville, Va., 1865 -- Hoen & Co. map of Appomattox -- Map of the military operations that accompanies The Lost Cause, 1867 -- Operations of the Army of the Cumberland.