Had Lee enjoyed the manpower or materiel advantages of Grant, would the South have triumphed? Had Hood possessed strength superior to Sherman's, would he still have lost their encounters in Georgia? Popular sentiment has long bowed to the military leadership of the Civil War's victorious generals--a view that has been disputed by modern scholarship. Many might be startled to learn that a British army officer also called these opinions into question long ago.

Out of print for more than fifty years, Lee, Grant and Sherman is an unrecognized classic of Civil War history that presaged current...