Despite popular depictions in film and print, soldiers in the American Civil War did not always travel by horse, wagon, or foot. Advances in railroad systems in the decade before the war allowed the movement of large numbers of troops via railway even though railroads had not yet matured into a truly integrated transportation system. Gaps between lines, incompatible track gauges, and other vexing impediments remained in both the North and South. As John E. Clark Jr. explains in his compelling study, the skill with which Union and Confederate war leaders dealt with those problems and utilized the rail system to its fullest wartime potential reflects each side's overall war management ability as an essential ingredient for ultimate victory.