On the eve of the Civil War, the Regular Army of the United States was small, dispersed, untrained for large-scale operations, and woefully unprepared to suppress the rebellion of the secessionist states. Although the Regular Army expanded significantly during the war, reaching nearly sixty-seven thousand men, it was necessary to form an enormous army of state volunteers that overshadowed the Regulars and bore most of the combat burden. Nevertheless, the Regular Army played several critically important roles, notably providing leaders and exemplars for the Volunteers and managing the administration and logistics of the entire Union Army. In this first comprehensive study of the Regular Army in the Civil War, Clayton R. Newell and Charles R. Shrader focus primarily on the organizational history of the Regular Army and how it changed as an institution during the war, to emerge afterward as a reorganized and permanently expanded force. The eminent, award-winning military historian Edward M. Coffman provides a foreword.
Both Clayton R. Newell and Charles R. Shrader finished their military careers as the chief of the historical services division at the U.S. Army Center of Military History and are now independent scholars and historical consultants. Newell is the author or editor of several books, including
Lee vs. McClellan: The First Campaign
; Shrader has also written or edited a number of books, including
The Muslim-Croat Civil War in Central Bosnia: A Military History, 1991-1994
. Edward M. Coffman, a professor emeritus of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is the author of many works, including
The Hilt of the Sword: The Career of Peyton C. March
and
The War to End All Wars: The American Military Experience in World War I
.