Looks Like a Good Book About Sharpsburg

[Subdeacon Joe]

"I Dread The Thought Of The Place"

 

Quote

Antietam is a battle with many moving parts, many of them moving simultaneously. Hartwig does a masterful job of describing each part down to the regimental and sometimes company level, and crucially, helping the reader understand what was going on elsewhere in the battle when X was happening at location Y.

Antietam was the bloodiest single day in American history. Perhaps the most impactful part of the book is how it gives some sense of how much carnage occurred in short periods of time in small spaces. Many paragraphs in the book describe the killing or wounding of several individual soldiers–often by name–in a single company or regiment in a period of a few minutes. The serial slaughter of color guards is particularly notable in this regard. Although of course nothing can possibly convey the shock of such violence experienced by the participants, the book individualizes the combat and its human consequences in a way that allows us to glimpse, at least distantly, how intense and concentrated the violence was.

One thing that the book makes abundantly clear is the often decisive role played by artillery in the battle. Stephen D. Lee, a Confederate artillery battalion commander at the battle, called Antietam “artillery hell.” It was for Lee, given the pounding that his batteries took on the Dunker Church Plateau. But it was an artillery hell especially for infantry on both sides who were pounded by guns that had unobstructed fields of fire seldom found on Civil War battlefields. Hartwig shows that artillery played a more decisive role at Antietam than at any other battle of the Civil War, including Gettysburg. Before reading the book, I did not appreciate role of Confederate artillery in stymying Burnside’s assault on the Lower Bridge.

The book is also remarkable in its integration of the entire vertical of the battle, from the commanding generals down through each echelon to the lowest private. It describes the actions of each, and is judicious in its judgments on the command decisions at every level of command, from the captains of companies; to the field officers of regiments, to the brigade, division and corps (or wing) commanders; and finally to army commanders McClellan and Lee. These judgments are well reasoned, and often surprising: I can’t say that I’ve ever seen anyone write favorably of Samuel Sturgis, as Hartwig does! Some come in for praise–such as Hooker. Others, not so much. The acerbic D. H. Hill would certainly take issue with Hartwig’s critical assessment of his generalship. The book’s treatment of Edwin Sumner is particularly brutal, but completely warranted given the brutality that Sumner’s soldiers experienced as the result of his blundering.