To Antietam Creek: The Maryland Campaign of September 1862 by Scott Hartwig

To Antietam Creek: The Maryland Campaign of September 1862 by Scott Hartwig published by Johns Hopkins University Press (2012)

My regular readers know that a like to put up reviews of Civil War and Reconstruction books right after they are published, Sometimes I have the first published review of a book. However, with this book, it was published more than a decade ago. I read it soon after it came out, but since it was supposed to be a two-part series on the Antietam Campaign, I figured I would wait a couple of years until the second volume came out and review them together. In the meantime, I used To Antietam Creek to trace the two armies from Virginia to Maryland, did major touring at South Mountain and Harpers Ferry and looked over the Antietam battlefields. Each week I would try to see when the next book was coming out. After a few years, I stopped checking and by 2020 I just decided that Scott Hartwig had gone on to other things. I was happy when I saw last summer that the second volume would be issued in August 2023 and I decided to read the new book and also publish two reviews of both books. Of course, when I sat down to review To Antietam Creek, I could not remember enough about it to write a review! It could have been the eleven years since I read it or it may have been my stroke last June, or a combination of both. So, I picked up the book and I read it again. All 808 pages.

We all know that the Battle of Antietam was the “Bloodiest Day In American History,” but is has not gotten the same amount of secondary source material as, let’s say Gettysburg. It gets a little snippet in the movie “Glory” but it has never been the focus of films, TV, or plays. While most Americans have heard the term “Antietam” and associate it with Emancipation, few non-Civil War nerds could tell you that George McClellan commanded the semi-victorious army, and even among readers familiar with the Civil War, try to get them to name the Union Corps’ commanders.

Rereading this book was very rewarding. Scott Hartwig, who was a National Park Service historian at Gettysburg, gives a fine look at the two armies at the start of the campaign. The Army of Northern Virginia had just won two major victories during the Peninsula Campaign and at Second Bull Run. While the men were at the height of their morale, it had poor supplies, units were exhausted, and many regiments had seen their leaders killed or wounded during the previous fighting. The Union army was under a commander, George McClellan, who was set to be sidelined by Lincoln until General Pope’s disaster in Virginia. The force chasing after Lee came from two rival Union armies, with only a few top commanders who would still be with the army by the end of the war. These Union troops had similar problems as the Confederates, but without the reassurance of winning victories.

Hartwig also does deep dives into the corps and division commanders who were prominent in the weeks leading up to the battle. I have been reading about this battle for decades, but I found something out about each person Hartwig discusses. Even more impressive are the views of the common soldiers writing home about the campaign. I have read all the major histories of the battle however many of these letters are ones I was unfamiliar with.

The book also does a great job of retelling the stories of the two mini-battles of the campaign. The Battle of South Mountain had 5,000 casualties and became a memorable Union victory for the soldiers involved right before Antietam. The boost for morale lasted even though, almost at the same time, the Union forces surrendered at Harpers Ferry. At that strategic point, more American soldiers were taken into captivity at Harpers Ferry than at any other time in U.S. history up till World War II. During the campaign prior to the fighting at Antietam, nearly 18,000 soldiers were killed, wounded, or  captured.

While this is an excellent book, Hartwig, who treats the civilian aspect of the campaign otherwise admirably, largely leaves out the impact on Blacks living in the paths of the two armies. He does talk about slaves and Black teamsters accompanying the Army or Northern Virginia, but he does not discuss those Blacks whose homes were where they maneuvered. Since there are accounts of Blacks fleeing the Confederates and even a Harper’s Weekly illustration of them fleeing Harpers Ferry, I expected there to be an account.

In sum, this is a very good book, offering much to even those who have studied the campaign extensively. Hartwig’s text is clear, he offers many maps showing the locations of the armies and the battlefields, and the grand tactics are balanced with the experiences of soldiers on the ground. This book is an excellent way to study what placed two legendary armies at Antietam Creek.

In a month I will be back with a review of the concluding volume in this series, I Dread the Thought of the Place: The Battle of Antietam and the End of the Maryland Campaign.

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