| List of Maps | p. vii |
| Introduction | p. xi |
| North and South Divide | p. 3 |
| Will There Be a War? | p. 24 |
| Improvised Armies | p. 38 |
| Plans | p. 82 |
| McClellan Takes Command | p. 113 |
| The War in Middle America | p. 153 |
| Lee's War in the East, Grant's War in the West | p. 163 |
| The Overland Campaign and the Fall of Richmond | p. 237 |
| Breaking into the South | p. 259 |
| The Battle off Cherbourg and the Civil War at Sea | p. 280 |
| The Home Fronts | p. 302 |
| Walt Whitman and Wounds | p. 313 |
| Civil War Generalship | p. 321 |
| Running the War | p. 58 |
| The Military Geography of the Civil War | p. 67 |
| Vicksburg | p. 204 |
| The Life of the Soldier | p. 74 |
| Cutting the Chattanooga-Atlanta Link | p. 221 |
| Chancellorsville and Gettysburg | p. 179 |
| Black Soldiers | p. 289 |
| Civil War Battle | p. 333 |
| Could the South Have Survived? | p. 344 |
| The End of the War | p. 348 |
| Notes | p. 367 |
| Bibliography | p. 371 |
| Acknowledgements | p. 375 |
| Index | p. 377 |