The Critical Battle

By Michael Ellis | Sunday, November 3, 2002

September 17, 1862 was the bloodiest day in American history. September 11, 2001 killed approximately 3,000 Americans, and December 7, 1941 saw the deaths of about 2,400 Americans. But, both of these pale to the Battle of Antietam, where between 6,300 and 6,500 soldiers, both Confederate and Union, were killed in the course of a day's battle. 15,000 more soldiers were wounded on that day, a striking number given that the total number of soldiers in both armies who took the field that day numbered no more than 100,000. More than a fifth of the Union army and more than a third of the Confederate forces became casualties. That such a blood-letting could occur in a single day is astounding—all the more when realising that more Americans died at Antietam than did during the eight-year course of the Revolutionary War.

It is this grisly day that renowned Civil War scholar James M. McPherson has made the subject of his most recent book, Crossroads of Freedom: Antietam: The Battle That Changed the Course of the Civil War. McPherson, a professor of history at Princeton University, and author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Battle Cry of Freedom, is America's leading Civil War historian. Crossroads of Freedom is by far a more slender volume than McPherson's Battle Cry, which occupied more than nine hundred pages. But despite the reduction in size, nothing of McPherson's solid historical analysis, painstaking attention to factual accuracy, and compelling narrative is lost.

McPherson argues that the Antietam was 'the event of the war,' a turning point, and from the deep background that he paints for the reader, it is not difficult to see his point. Although in the early stages of the Civil War momentum shifted back and forth between the Union and the Confederacy, by the late summer of 1862, the Confederacy was rising. Robert E. Lee took command of the Army of Northern Virginia in June 1862 in the midst of General George McClellan's siege of Richmond, when the continued existence of the Confederacy was very much in doubt. Shortly after his appointment, Lee defeated McClellan during the Seven Days' Battle, and with a combination of slyness and audacity, forced McClellan's withdrawal from the vicinity of Richmond. Simultaneously, Lee's lieutenant Stonewall Jackson was masterfully defeating several Union armies in the Shenandoah Valley and Confederate forces farther west launched an invasion of Kentucky. Within a matter of weeks, Lee had defeated a Union army shielding Washington under the command of John Pope at the Second Battle of Bull Run and seemed poised to threaten the city. According to McPherson, both Union soldiers and civilians alike were 'much weakened and demoralized' by the recent turn of events.

More importantly, argues McPherson, Britain and France were preparing to recognise the Confederacy diplomatically as well as consider the possibility of intervention to secure their cotton supplies from the South. If the powers of Europe had diplomatically recognised the Confederate states as a separate and sovereign entity, there would have been no telling how the war could have played out. Lee, seizing the opportunity while it existed, took an enormous risk given the exhausted state of his army, and prepared for an invasion of Maryland.

Crossing the Potomac about forty miles north of Washington, Lee was expected by most outside observers to take Washington, Baltimore, and perhaps even Philadelphia in the face of scattered Northern resistance. McClellan, however, was not done for. Rallying the Army of the Potomac, McClellan moved northwards to meet Lee, setting the stage for a climatic showdown. As McPherson notes, 'destiny awaited those tired, ragged, shoeless, hungry, but confident Rebel soldiers on the far side of the Potomac as the forded the river singing 'Maryland, My Marland': the destiny of the Confederacy and of the United States itself as one nation, indivisible.'

McPherson spends the first three quarters of his book building up to Antietam, spending only twelve pages on the battle itself. Having already established the importance of the upcoming battle in the countryside of western Maryland in relation to the war's future course, McPherson then shows how the battle truly was a turning point: either side could have easily been victorious. He is right not to focus exclusively on the battle itself; the events that immediately proceeded are every bit as important. Had a Union solider not stumbled upon Lee's Secret Orders No. 191 rolled up inside a cigar that detailed all his planned movements, the battle would no doubt have turned out substantially different. McClellan discovered that Lee intended to split his army in two by sending a portion under Stonewall Jackson to capture Harper's Ferry and leaving the rest under his own command to hold off the Union forces. Although, as McPherson argues, McClellan should have been quicker to take advantage of this opportunity to defeat Lee's divided army, and as McClellan himself said, 'if I cannot [now] whip Bobby Lee, I will be willing to go home.'

McClellan and his Army of the Potomac were soon able to catch Lee in a desperate holding action September 14, 1862 at South Mountain, and if it were not for the timely reinforcement of Jackson's forces back fresh from Harper's Ferry, Lee might have been driven back across the Potomac right then and there. On September 17, McClellan renewed his attack, and the grisly fighting that followed was some of the most intense of the entire war. The Union and Confederate troops charged in turn over the rural countryside, lending infamy to the places now known simply as 'the Cornfield,' 'Bloody Lane,' and 'Burnside's Bridge' until as several different soldiers noted, 'one could walk through the field of battle without ever stepping on the ground,' due to the sheer number of fallen soldiers.

By the end of the day, Lee was forced to withdraw back across the Potomac to Virginia to replenish his losses. Although it was strategically a draw—Union troops were unable to chase the Confederates into Virginia—it was nonetheless a tactical victory for the Union. Never again would the Confederates be in a position where one victory could have caused the North to sue for peace, nor that would have provoked a European recognition of the Confederacy. McPherson makes a compelling case that Antietam was the 'beginning of the end' for the Confederacy. As James Longstreet, one of Lee's corps commanders put it, 'at Sharpsburg [Antietam] was sprung the keystone of the arch upon which the Confederate cause rested.'

McPherson also makes great note of the fact that the reversal of Union fortunes at Antietam made possible Lincoln's issuing of the Emancipation Proclamation. With a victory behind him, President Lincoln could proclaim the freedom of slaves in Confederate territory without the appearance of desperation, and furthermore, in full knowledge that the North would eventually win the war and restore the Union. Lincoln had wanted to do so earlier, but had held off until he could 'give it to the country supported by military success.' With that success in hand, Lincoln transformed the war from a conflict over states' rights or economic issues into a war against the institution of slavery.

Crossroads of Freedom nonetheless remains a curious book. It makes an unconventional argument in favour of Antietam, rather than Gettysburg, as the turning point of the Civil War, but does so with the force of well-reasoned arguments. While small in size, McPherson succeeds at what eludes many other military historians: the art of making his point well while being concise. Those who read military history solely for the gripping battle accounts may emerge disappointed by the short amount of time McPherson spends describing the battle itself. But those who appreciate the greater contours of history—military, political, and economic, as well as the pivotal moments where fates were determined, will thoroughly enjoy Crossroads of Freedom.

The Critical Battle

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