Introduction: masters and mechanics -- Part I. The education and management gap: schooling, business, and culture in mid-nineteenth century America -- Common school reform and science education -- Mechanics' institutes and agricultural fairs: transmitting knowledge and information in antebellum America -- Building the railroads: early development of the modern management system -- Part II. Skills go to war -- Wanted: volunteer engineers -- Early successes and failures: Fort Henry and Fort Donelson, Island No. 10, and Middle Tennessee -- McClellan tests his engineers: the Peninsula Campaign, 1862 -- Thomas Scott, Daniel McCallum, Herman Haupt, and the birth of the United States Military Railroad -- Summer-Fall 1862: Maryland, Kentucky, and Tennessee -- Part III. Applied engineering -- Vicksburg -- Gettysburg -- Chattanooga -- The Red River and Petersburg -- Atlanta and the Carolina Campaign -- Conclusion: know-how triumphant.