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Antietam: Essays on the 1862 Maryland Campaign
The relative importance of Civil War campaigns is a matter for debate among historians and buffs alike. Gettysburg, Vicksburg, and Atlanta have their advocates. Gettysburg certainly maintains its hold on the popular imagination. More recently has come the suggestion that no single campaign or battle decided the war or even appreciably altered its direction.
If any one battle was a dividing line, Antietam is a solid contender. In no other campaign were the political, diplomatic, and military elements aligned so favorably for the Confederacy. Yet Lee's retreat after the terrible battle in September 1862 changed everything. Great Britain had second thoughts about intervention; Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation; and Lee's army, while victorious on other fields, proved not to be unbeatable.
Across the years, Antietam remains the worst one-day slaughter in American history. The ghastly losses in the Cornfield, the West Woods, and the Sunken Road still appall the reader. Lee's gamble against disaster and George McClellan's inexplicable refusal to press his advantage remain puzzlements.
If any one battle was a dividing line, Antietam is a solid contender. In no other campaign were the political, diplomatic, and military elements aligned so favorably for the Confederacy. Yet Lee's retreat after the terrible battle in September 1862 changed everything. Great Britain had second thoughts about intervention; Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation; and Lee's army, while victorious on other fields, proved not to be unbeatable.
Across the years, Antietam remains the worst one-day slaughter in American history. The ghastly losses in the Cornfield, the West Woods, and the Sunken Road still appall the reader. Lee's gamble against disaster and George McClellan's inexplicable refusal to press his advantage remain puzzlements.
113 pages, Paperback
First published November 1, 1989
28 people want to read
About the author
Gary W. Gallagher
110 books99 followersGary W. Gallagher, the John L. Nau III Professor of History at the University of Virginia, is the author or editor of many books in the field of Civil War history, including The Confederate War; Causes Won, Lost, and Forgotten: How Hollywood and Popular Art Shape What We Know about the Civil War; and The Union War.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
September 20, 2020
The Antietam campaign of 1862 continues to be one of the most widely studied, and most exhaustively discussed, campaigns of the American Civil War. When the Union Army of the Potomac and the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia met near Sharpsburg, Maryland, on September 17, 1862, the Battle of Antietam that followed resulted in about 3,650 fatalities, making it the bloodiest day of combat in American history. In spite of all that has been written about Antietam over the past 150 years, scholars still have new things to say about that singularly sanguinary engagement, as shown by a group of scholars brought together by Gary W. Gallagher for the 1989 book Antietam: Essays on the 1862 Maryland Campaign.
Gallagher, a Civil War scholar at Penn State University, sets forth well the stakes involved in the Antietam Campaign, in an introductory essay titled “The Autumn of 1862: A Season of Opportunity.” As Gallagher points out, it seemed to be very much a season of opportunity for the Confederacy when Robert E. Lee led the Army of Northern Virginia across the Potomac in early September of 1862, in the A.N.V.’s first attempt to invade the North; the Confederates had driven the Union Army away from Richmond in the Seven Days’ Battles, and had defeated the Union forces in August at the old Bull Run/Manassas battle site.
Yet the momentum, and opportunity, shifted to the Union side when Lee imprudently divided his outnumbered army on Northern soil, and when soldiers of General George B. McClellan found Lee’s complete battle plan wrapped around three cigars in a field near Frederick. Suddenly, it was the Union that had the opportunity to achieve a game-changing battlefield success. Gallagher concludes that “Lee misjudged the resources of his army”, and that “The fall of 1862 was the only time in the war that one major army in the East had the opportunity to destroy another major army” (p. 12) – even if McClellan was ultimately unable to make the most of that opportunity.
Part of the prelude to Antietam was Lee’s campaign against the Union garrison at Harpers Ferry, Virginia; the Confederate general sent three columns of rebel soldiers to surround the garrison, and ultimately they forced the largest Union surrender of the Civil War. But the success of this action meant that Lee could have been even more badly outnumbered when his army met McClellan’s. Dennis E. Frye, as historian at Harpers Ferry National Historical Park, is uniquely well-suited to write “Drama Between the Rivers: Harpers Ferry in the 1862 Maryland Campaign.” He criticizes Lee’s decision to divide the Army of Northern Virginia, writing that “Robert E. Lee enjoyed remarkably good luck in his gamble at Harpers Ferry. Insisting on an unreasonable timetable, and willing to divide his badly outnumbered army on the basis of his reading of George B. McClellan, Lee had courted catastrophe at the picturesque Ferry where two fabled rivers join their waters” (p. 34).
Robert K. Krick, author of eight books on the Confederacy, is likewise critical of Lee’s generalship during the Maryland Campaign. In “The Army of Northern Virginia in September 1862: Its Circumstances, Its Opportunities, and Why It Should Not Have Been at Sharpsburg,” he looks at the way in which Lee brought his scattered army together along Antietam Creek and offered battle to McClellan. Krick relates an anecdote of Lee meeting troops of General James L. Kemper’s brigade, pointing toward the hills west of the Antietam, and saying, “We will make our stand on those hills,” and concludes that Lee’s “decision to make that stand was a bad one, probably his worst of the war” (p. 55).
Where Krick offers a critique of Lee’s command decisions during the Maryland Campaign, A. Wilson Greene offers a comparable examination of the actions of Lee’s adversary, Union General George B. McClellan. In “‘I Fought the Battle Splendidly’: George B. McClellan and the Maryland Campaign,” Greene, the staff historian at the Fredericksburg & Spotsylvania National Military Park, examines “the controversy [that] swells most tempestuously around the Federal commander” (p. 56) – who, one recalls, had an army twice the size of Lee’s, and had Lee’s complete battle plan, and had Lee backed up against the Potomac River, and yet got nothing out of it except for an exceptionally bloody tactical draw.
While fair-mindedly considering the perspectives of those who have tried to defend McClellan’s generalship during the Maryland Campaign, Greene ultimately sees McClellan as a poor tactician who “suffered from self-deception” – and concludes, in a manner similar to Gallagher’s ideas from the introductory essay, that “Between September 13 and 18, 1862, George McClellan discarded the best opportunity offered to destroy the Confederacy’s principal field army. The nation met the price of his failure during thirty-one additional months of Civil War” (p. 83).
And editor Gallagher returns to the podium for this volume’s concluding essay, “The Maryland Campaign in Perspective.” Gallagher points out the many momentous ways in which Antietam changed the Civil War – most notably, “Abraham Lincoln took a momentous step toward emancipation, while European leaders recast their thinking about the likelihood of Confederate independence” – and concludes on that basis that “The broad consequences of the 1862 Maryland campaign exceeded those of any other operation of the American Civil War” (p. 84).
President Lincoln had needed a Union battlefield victory before he could issue his Emancipation Proclamation, and with Antietam he had that victory. For all its high cost in human life and suffering, the Union victory at Antietam, and the subsequent Emancipation Proclamation, meant that “the stakes had been raised to encompass the entire social fabric of the South. The war after Antietam would demand a decisive resolution on the battlefield, and that the Confederacy could not achieve” (p. 94).
The overall feel of this brief, 97-page volume is remarkably like that of a session at an academic conference. The session chair introduces the topic; three speakers present thoughtful commentary on various aspects of the topic; and then the session chair offers a summative conclusion that synthesizes what the speakers have said, and gives the audience something to think about regarding possible future directions for research in the field.
Read in that spirit, Antietam: Essays on the 1862 Maryland Campaign can be helpful to the reader who already possesses a good understanding of the strategic and tactical dimensions of the Maryland Campaign and the Battle of Antietam. I would not recommend it as someone’s first book about Antietam; a broad-based overall study like Stephen Sears’s Landscape Turned Red (1982) or James Murfin’s The Gleam of Bayonets (1965) would probably work better for that purpose. But if you already know Antietam, this well-written and well-organized volume will help you to know Antietam better.
Gallagher, a Civil War scholar at Penn State University, sets forth well the stakes involved in the Antietam Campaign, in an introductory essay titled “The Autumn of 1862: A Season of Opportunity.” As Gallagher points out, it seemed to be very much a season of opportunity for the Confederacy when Robert E. Lee led the Army of Northern Virginia across the Potomac in early September of 1862, in the A.N.V.’s first attempt to invade the North; the Confederates had driven the Union Army away from Richmond in the Seven Days’ Battles, and had defeated the Union forces in August at the old Bull Run/Manassas battle site.
Yet the momentum, and opportunity, shifted to the Union side when Lee imprudently divided his outnumbered army on Northern soil, and when soldiers of General George B. McClellan found Lee’s complete battle plan wrapped around three cigars in a field near Frederick. Suddenly, it was the Union that had the opportunity to achieve a game-changing battlefield success. Gallagher concludes that “Lee misjudged the resources of his army”, and that “The fall of 1862 was the only time in the war that one major army in the East had the opportunity to destroy another major army” (p. 12) – even if McClellan was ultimately unable to make the most of that opportunity.
Part of the prelude to Antietam was Lee’s campaign against the Union garrison at Harpers Ferry, Virginia; the Confederate general sent three columns of rebel soldiers to surround the garrison, and ultimately they forced the largest Union surrender of the Civil War. But the success of this action meant that Lee could have been even more badly outnumbered when his army met McClellan’s. Dennis E. Frye, as historian at Harpers Ferry National Historical Park, is uniquely well-suited to write “Drama Between the Rivers: Harpers Ferry in the 1862 Maryland Campaign.” He criticizes Lee’s decision to divide the Army of Northern Virginia, writing that “Robert E. Lee enjoyed remarkably good luck in his gamble at Harpers Ferry. Insisting on an unreasonable timetable, and willing to divide his badly outnumbered army on the basis of his reading of George B. McClellan, Lee had courted catastrophe at the picturesque Ferry where two fabled rivers join their waters” (p. 34).
Robert K. Krick, author of eight books on the Confederacy, is likewise critical of Lee’s generalship during the Maryland Campaign. In “The Army of Northern Virginia in September 1862: Its Circumstances, Its Opportunities, and Why It Should Not Have Been at Sharpsburg,” he looks at the way in which Lee brought his scattered army together along Antietam Creek and offered battle to McClellan. Krick relates an anecdote of Lee meeting troops of General James L. Kemper’s brigade, pointing toward the hills west of the Antietam, and saying, “We will make our stand on those hills,” and concludes that Lee’s “decision to make that stand was a bad one, probably his worst of the war” (p. 55).
Where Krick offers a critique of Lee’s command decisions during the Maryland Campaign, A. Wilson Greene offers a comparable examination of the actions of Lee’s adversary, Union General George B. McClellan. In “‘I Fought the Battle Splendidly’: George B. McClellan and the Maryland Campaign,” Greene, the staff historian at the Fredericksburg & Spotsylvania National Military Park, examines “the controversy [that] swells most tempestuously around the Federal commander” (p. 56) – who, one recalls, had an army twice the size of Lee’s, and had Lee’s complete battle plan, and had Lee backed up against the Potomac River, and yet got nothing out of it except for an exceptionally bloody tactical draw.
While fair-mindedly considering the perspectives of those who have tried to defend McClellan’s generalship during the Maryland Campaign, Greene ultimately sees McClellan as a poor tactician who “suffered from self-deception” – and concludes, in a manner similar to Gallagher’s ideas from the introductory essay, that “Between September 13 and 18, 1862, George McClellan discarded the best opportunity offered to destroy the Confederacy’s principal field army. The nation met the price of his failure during thirty-one additional months of Civil War” (p. 83).
And editor Gallagher returns to the podium for this volume’s concluding essay, “The Maryland Campaign in Perspective.” Gallagher points out the many momentous ways in which Antietam changed the Civil War – most notably, “Abraham Lincoln took a momentous step toward emancipation, while European leaders recast their thinking about the likelihood of Confederate independence” – and concludes on that basis that “The broad consequences of the 1862 Maryland campaign exceeded those of any other operation of the American Civil War” (p. 84).
President Lincoln had needed a Union battlefield victory before he could issue his Emancipation Proclamation, and with Antietam he had that victory. For all its high cost in human life and suffering, the Union victory at Antietam, and the subsequent Emancipation Proclamation, meant that “the stakes had been raised to encompass the entire social fabric of the South. The war after Antietam would demand a decisive resolution on the battlefield, and that the Confederacy could not achieve” (p. 94).
The overall feel of this brief, 97-page volume is remarkably like that of a session at an academic conference. The session chair introduces the topic; three speakers present thoughtful commentary on various aspects of the topic; and then the session chair offers a summative conclusion that synthesizes what the speakers have said, and gives the audience something to think about regarding possible future directions for research in the field.
Read in that spirit, Antietam: Essays on the 1862 Maryland Campaign can be helpful to the reader who already possesses a good understanding of the strategic and tactical dimensions of the Maryland Campaign and the Battle of Antietam. I would not recommend it as someone’s first book about Antietam; a broad-based overall study like Stephen Sears’s Landscape Turned Red (1982) or James Murfin’s The Gleam of Bayonets (1965) would probably work better for that purpose. But if you already know Antietam, this well-written and well-organized volume will help you to know Antietam better.
September 4, 2020
Gary Gallagher’s book of essays on the Battle of Antietam is regarded by many as one of the top books on the battle. This is not a discussion of the entire Maryland Campaign or of the entire battle. For that, look to Stephen Sears’ Landscape Turned Red, or for more detailed studies, Ezra Carmen’s or Joseph Harsh’s books on the campaign. Instead, Gallagher’s approach is to have noted historians write essays on various aspects of the campaign.
The first essay, by Gallagher, explores the circumstances that led to Lee’s decision to invade the North. Dennis E. Frye follows with a discussion of the Harper’s Ferry operation. Then Robert Krick and A. Wilson Greene author critical discussions of the performances of the soldiers and generals of the Army of Northern Virginia and the Army of the Potomac, respectively. Gallagher then concludes the volume with a perspective on the campaign and its impact on the war.
After you read a good survey of the Maryland Campaign, read Gallagher’s book for a fuller understanding. A good, quick read.
The first essay, by Gallagher, explores the circumstances that led to Lee’s decision to invade the North. Dennis E. Frye follows with a discussion of the Harper’s Ferry operation. Then Robert Krick and A. Wilson Greene author critical discussions of the performances of the soldiers and generals of the Army of Northern Virginia and the Army of the Potomac, respectively. Gallagher then concludes the volume with a perspective on the campaign and its impact on the war.
After you read a good survey of the Maryland Campaign, read Gallagher’s book for a fuller understanding. A good, quick read.
September 22, 2025
3.75 Interesting essays exploring the entirety of the late summer campaign in Maryland in 1862. A moment of foolhardy decisions and lost opportunities on both sides. For Lincoln and the United States, the best chance to defeat the rebels in one great battle was entrusted once again to George B. McCellan, whose self delusion knew no bounds. There is no historical figure that frustrates and annoys me like that man.
July 8, 2020
Insightful essays on the Battle of Antietam and the wider Maryland Campaign of 1862. Dennis Frye's essay on the Battle of Harper's Ferry is in my view, the strongest part of the book. Jackson's capture of Harper's Ferry was one of the most successful Confederate military operations. Frye's essay really shows just how significant Harper's Ferry was to the larger Maryland Campaign.
April 26, 2022
Essentially only got it for the extended article on the Battle of Harpers Ferry. This article was worth it but the others gave me nothing new.
July 17, 2023
Classic!!
August 5, 2012
Decent collection of essays offering different perspectives on aspects of the Antietam campaign. Gallagher is the editor and contributor to a number of these essay compilations. This is the shortest of them and possibly the first. It seems a much larger collection of essays was published in 1999 (and republished in 2008) - so I would recommend getting that instead. This happened to be the version my college's library had.
January 17, 2026
This is a pretty good book, although not quite as extensive as Mr. Gallagher's UNC Press collection, and this volume also lacks footnotes. Four of the five essays do a good job examining the conduct and strategies of the two armies in the campaign. The exception is Dennis E. Frye's essay on Harpers Ferry; it seems more like a narrative on the operations that an analysis.
January 3, 2017
Short book, but the essays are pretty good.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews