Antietam, South Mountain, and Harpers Ferry: A Battlefield Guide

by Ethan S. Rafuse

In September 1862 the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia and the Union Army of the Potomac conducted one of the truly great campaigns of the Civil War. At South Mountain, Harpers Ferry, and Antietam, North and South clashed in engagements whose magnitude and importance would earn this campaign a distinguished place in American military history. The siege of Harpers Ferry produced the largest surrender of U.S. troops in the nation’s history until World War II, while the day-long battle at Antietam on September 17 still holds the distinction of being the single bloodiest day of combat in American history.


This invaluable book provides a clear, convenient, stop-by-stop guide to the sites in Maryland and West Virginia associated with the Antietam campaign, including excursions to Harpers Ferry and South Mountain. Thorough descriptions and analyses, augmented with vignettes and numerous maps, convey the mechanics as well as the human experience of the campaign, making this book the perfect companion for both serious students of the Civil War and casual visitors to its battlefields.

Genres: Civil War

282 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 2008

Reviews

[Paul Haspel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Harpers Ferry, in what is now West Virginia, and South Mountain and Antietam in Maryland, make up the three points of a triangle that encompasses much of the area covered by one of the most important campaigns of the American Civil War. For any student of the war era who is contemplating a visit to the area, with its battlefield parks and historic sites, Ethan Rafuse’s Antietam, South Mountain & Harpers Ferry: A Battlefield Guide is a valuable book to take along.

Rafuse, a professor of military history at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, writes authoritatively about the major figures and events from the Maryland Campaign, in a way that is likely to appeal to both specialists and casual visitors. This book, part of the This Hallowed Ground series of Civil War battlefield guides published by Bison Books/University of Nebraska Press, is clearly organized. Narrative introductions to each of the three major centers of the campaign – the Battle of Antietam (17 September 1862), the Battle of South Mountain (14 September 1862), and the siege of Harpers Ferry (13-15 September 1862) – are followed by an organizational schema that will make the book particularly helpful to the battlefield visitor.

Precise and well-designed maps begin each new section. “Directions” take the visitor from one stop to the next. “Orientation” instructs visitors where to look in order to understand how the action unfolded on each particular part of the three sites. A “What Happened” section offers a clear overall look at each site’s battle action. Sometimes, though not always, a “Vignette” section provides engaging human-interest stories from the various battlefronts. And sometimes, though not always, an “Analysis” section will give Rafuse’s own interpretation of the larger significance of what happened in each specific area.

My only quibble regarding the overall organization of the book is that Rafuse starts with Antietam, then goes to South Mountain, and finally deals with Harpers Ferry. I would have put South Mountain first, followed by Harpers Ferry, and only then have brought in Antietam; doing so would have placed the events of the Maryland Campaign in rough chronological order, and would have emphasized the dramatic, even overwhelming, nature of the campaign’s climax on those hilly, rocky fields near Sharpsburg, Maryland.

Yet Rafuse’s analyses and interpretations of the various aspects of the battle action are invariably judicious and well-grounded, as when he discusses the repulse by General John B. Hood’s Confederate division of a Union attack through local farmer David Miller’s cornfield: “Hood later complained that his men had not received any support until after the fight in the Cornfield was over. This, however, was largely a consequence of the ferocity with which Hood’s men entered the battle. This saved the Confederate left, but also made it difficult to manage the battle” (p. 53). Characteristic, too, of this guide’s (and series’) attention to detail is the fact that the Union leaders’ names are given in conventional print, the Confederate leaders’ names in italics. This can be a helpful thing for Civil War “newbies,” considering that the topic under discussion is a conflict in which most of the participants on both sides have similar-sounding, sometimes identical, Anglo-American surnames. Without that helpful typographic practice, a novice reader might have difficulty telling the Yankees from the Rebels without a scorecard.

The “Vignettes” section, as mentioned above, is likely to be of greatest appeal to those readers who want to enjoy the piquant, quirky stories that give such a strong human-interest element to the grand epic of Civil War combat. One example that stood out for me in that regard was the story of the 51st Pennsylvania Infantry, one of the regiments that successfully took the Lower Bridge or “Burnside’s Bridge,” at the southern end of the Antietam battlefield, after two prior attacks against the bridge had failed. As Rafuse tells it, Brigadier General Edward Ferrero asked his men if they could take the bridge. A 51st Pennsylvania corporal, acutely aware that the regiment’s whiskey ration had been taken away for undisclosed offenses against good order and discipline, asked in reply, “Will you give us our whiskey, General, if we take it?” General Ferrero’s response shows that he knew how to motivate his men at a critical moment: “Yes, by God!...You shall have as much as you want, if you take the bridge….if it is in the commissary or I have to send to New York to get it, and pay for it out of my own purse; that is if I live to see you through it” (p. 98). Suffice it to say that Burnside’s Bridge was taken, and that the thirsty infantrymen of the 51st Pennsylvania Regiment did get their whiskey back.

The book’s illustrations, by and large, are reproductions of illustrations taken from the Century magazine’s Battles and Leaders of the Civil War series – no points for originality there, but the illustrations are high-quality and, well, illustrative. Also helpful is an appendix that Rafuse provides; after the presentation of the orders of battle for the Army of the Potomac and the Army of Northern Virginia, Rafuse offers a helpful review of military organization, weaponry, and tactics for the Civil War era. So many authors of Civil War books seem to assume that their readers will be familiar with the distinctions among army, corps, division, brigade, and regiment; Rafuse recognizes that there will always be readers for whom those distinctions are new.

I took this book along on a recent trip to Shepherdstown, West Virginia, where many of Antietam’s Confederate wounded were treated after General Robert E. Lee led his battered forces back across the Potomac and ended his first attempt to invade the North; and I found it a useful re-introduction to a region and a history I have come to know well, over the course of many, many visits. Readers planning to visit the grounds of the Maryland Campaign would do well to take along a copy of Rafuse’s Antietam, South Mountain & Harpers Ferry: A Battlefield Guide.

[Tom · Rating 5 out of 5]

great guide to the batlefields on this important campaign. Pair this with Mcphearson's book on Antietam. Best way to see Amtieam? on a bicycle! or the first weekend in December when the battlefield's roads are covered in Luminaries (one of each dead soldier).