"This book offers nine essays that explore questions regarding high command, strategy and tactics, the effects of the fighting upon politics and society both North and South, and the ways in which emancipation figured in the campaign.

The authors, all well-known Civil War historians, have consulted previously untapped manuscript sources and reinterpreted more familiar evidence, sometimes focusing closely on the fighting around Richmond and sometimes looking more broadly at the background and consequences of the campaign.".

"The book includes an analysis of the Richmond campaign's place in the broader sweep of the war in 1862, assessments of George B. McClellan's generalship and Stonewall Jackson's flawed performance, and an examination of the campaign's impact on white and black civilians in the region. It also covers the role of engineers in the Union effort, the conduct of W. H. C.

Whiting's Confederate division in the battle of Gaines's Mill, the role of artillery in the battle of Malvern Hill, and the efforts of Radical Republicans in the North to use the Richmond campaign to rally support for emancipation."--BOOK JACKET.