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There have been many studies of the generals who commanded the Union’s ultimately victorious Army of the Potomac, but none has considered the corps, division, and brigade commanders (and their all-important staff officers) through the entire war—until now.

Placing their actions in the social, political, military, and economic context of the day, this original and thought-provoking series examines in meticulous detail the command and performance of the brave and controversial officers of the Union's main fighting force.

Russel Beatie’s magisterial Army of the Potomac is the first multi-volume work on this subject. It is based nearly entirely on manuscript sources, many of which have never before been examined. As a result, the narrative and conclusions about the actions of many of the Union’s prominent generals differ—often significantly—from traditional historical thinking. What emerges is a much different picture of these men and how their personalities influenced their command decisions and the political atmosphere that influenced and determined their military careers. The Army of the Potomac is about the leaders as men--their successes and failures commanding the Union's largest army.

This series, then, is not a tactical blow by blow account of specific battles. Rather, it is about the men in command--their knowledge, intentions, successes and failures. In order to follow in their footsteps Beatie employs a narrative history with the “fog of war” technique, which puts the reader in shoes of the men who had to make real-time decision without the benefit of hindsight or aerial photography. Confederate adversaries are always present but often only in shadowy forms that achieve firm reality when we meet them face-to-face on the battlefield.

Beatie rewrites, without being revisionist, major portions of the history of the Civil War in the East. He eschews secondary sources as much as possible and allows the original record to speak for itself. And the story it tells is often dramatically different than the one most readers have experienced.

This series is the first objective and scholarly effort to write the history of the most prominent Union army of the Civil War. And it is long overdue.