An 1862 Civil War editorial cartoon, “Masterly Inactivity,” shows two giant generals relaxing in rocking chairs, eyeing each other with telescopes across the Potomac River, while tiny soldiers on the banks have a snowball fight with cannonballs. In Virginia, it’s the first six months of the war in a nutshell.

With Forward to Richmond, author Brian K. Burton examines the minds and actions of Union Gen. George McClellan and Confederate Gen. Joe Johnston and their wariness during the first half of 1862. Both leaders, focused on protecting Washington and Richmond, respectively, spent much of their time keeping the status quo. Add in egos and politics, and the inaction of the first months of 1862 comes into focus. That’s not to say there weren’t battles—Gaines’s Mill and Malvern Hill were big and bloody—but without the results that gave one side an advantage.

One of the book’s strengths is that it takes us beyond troop movements and strategies to show that burned bridges, floods, miscommunication, hunger, and fatigue were just as likely to influence outcomes as fighting—things that West Point textbooks probably never considered. This shines a light on the chaos of war and helps explain why early 1862 was such a careful dance. And maps throughout the book provide much‑needed visual aids for understanding how battles unfolded and who was involved.

Readers may find the sheer number of actors, movements, and locations overwhelming, especially with no clear results to clarify things. Burton’s writing is generally straightforward, but he sometimes reaches too far with his vocabulary. Words like celerity and manumission creep in.

One can think of Forward to Richmond as a school‑of‑hard‑knocks lesson. Rocking‑chair commanders were finished. Victory would require no mercy.

I received an advance reading copy from NetGalley.

"Forward to Richmond: The Virginia Campaign of 1862," by Brian K. Burton, has been forwarded to me for review in the form of an ARC by the publisher, the University of Nebraska Press. I have just completed my read of the text and while I find that much of the material presented here will be very familiar to anyone who has immersed themselves in an examination of the early years of the War Between the States, it is a well written work which cogently summarizes the state of current scholarship in this area. Burton explicitly takes his purpose as extending scholarship too often centered in a sort of decontextualized vacuum that only peripherally touches on social, political and diplomatic matters. This is, of course, the path of much modern scholarship on the conflict. The period and geographical limits on the study in question, focusing on the first half of 1862 and the war of maneuver in the area of the Shenandoah Valley, the Piedmont and the Peninsula in Northern Virginia, serves as a useful limitation on Burton's work. The kind of issues connected grow organically out of the clash of arms in these regions and include things like changing attitudes amongst the troops involved on both sides as well as the organization and leadership of those troops, particularly as that leadership evolves and a dynamic develops between policy makers and political leaders on both sides. That may be one of the most fascinating aspects of the book. The scholarship appears current and on point and will prove useful as an intro. to some of these topics for those just approaching the subject matter. Recommended for all collegiate libraries and suitable for many secondary students as well.