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- [00:00]
A
Want to explore even more history? Sign up to History Hit, where you will discover history from around the world. From the American Revolution to prehistoric Scotland. There is plenty to discover with your subscription. You'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries with a brand new release every week, exploring everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com subscribe to bring the Past Alive. By September 1862, 18 months into the American Civil War, the North was tired, exhausted. Any easy confidence that the Southern rebellion could be swiftly crushed had been replaced by casualty lists that grew longer with every passing week and annoying suspicion that victory would always be just out of reach. In Washington, Abraham Lincoln carried the burden of a war that refused to resolve itself. Midterm elections loomed public patience was thinning. Political support, once firm, had begun to feel fragile. Lincoln waited for news, not simply to steady his generals, but also the nation itself. He had already drafted words, a proclamation intended to redefine and broaden the purpose of the war. But he understood the critical importance of timing issued after defeat. It would sound like desperation. The Union needed something that could be plausibly called a success. That hope narrowed to a few square miles of farmland in western Maryland. On the night of September 16th, soldiers lay awake along the ridges above Antietam Creek. Fog drifted low through cornfields and over split rail fences, swallowing sound and distance alike. Officers spoke in hushed voices. Soldiers cleaned their rifles in the dark. Somewhere out there, two vast armies waited for morning, and at first light, the mist began to lift. With it, the silence collapsed into a cacophony of rifles, muskets, and the opening salvos of vicious artillery. Good day, good listeners. Hello, and welcome to a new episode of American History hit. I'm Don Wildman, your host. In the fall of 1862, the Civil War had reached a moment of reckoning. After weeks and months of Union defeats, frustrations, misfires, at least in the eastern theater, Robert E. Lee and his Confederate generals felt emboldened enough to gamble on a push northward into Maryland for the first time taking the war to the Union on their own soil. On September 17, 1862, near a quiet creek called Antietam, two massive armies faced one another, engaging in what would become not just to that point, but onward to our present, the bloodiest single day conflict in American military history. The Battle of Antietam altered the course of the war, reshaped its purpose, its politics, and the nation's understanding of the extreme and costly stakes of preserving the Union and fighting for a moral cause. To put this pivotal battle into perspective, we are lucky to welcome Gary Adelman. He is an award winning author of a long list of books and articles about Gettysburg. In particular, he is Vice president of the center for Civil War Photography. He works full time as chief historian at the esteemed American Battlefield Trust in D.C. who do such important land preservation work. Welcome Gary. Glad you could join us.
- [03:54]
B
Thanks for having me. Don, love the podcast and well summarized. I think you've rendered me unnecessary. Oh, good.
- [04:00]
A
No, no, no, not at all. People are often confused about the battles of the Civil War in general. There are so many, large and small over those four years. But Antietam stands out. Such an important battle with key consequences on and off the battlefield, fundamental to the whole scope of the war. Antietam comes in the late summer, 1862. September. War has been underway for a year and a half since Fort Sumter, April 61. And generally it's not been going well for the Union. Give us a setup here, Gary, about the context of the Battle of Antietam.
- [04:31]
B
Yeah, my pleasure. But first of all, let me say, for anybody listening who does find it intimidating, all these battles, even in the east, just Spotsylvania, Winchester, Cedar Creek, Richmond, Petersburg, they all fit into about five grand movements. So if you start to understand that they went south from Washington and then up toward Antietam and then down to Fredericksburg, up to Gettysburg and then back to Richmond, everything sort of fits in. So there's my little push that it can make sense. Now Civil War sort of starts. There's a first great land battle called Manassas or Bull Run. Different sides use different terminology for the particular battles. And it goes from there. The Confederates are sort of rising their tide. They win in the west at a place called Wilson's Creek. And things start to go really well in the west for the north, for the Union, for the Federals. But meanwhile in the east, things aren't going well. And this country is very Eastern, very concerned for what's happening around Washington. So as the Union sends a massive army toward Richmond via what's called the Peninsula, resulting in battles at Fair Oaks and then the Seven Days Battles, and Robert E. Lee emerges as the great Confederate general. People in the east, in Washington, are very concerned. This is in the spring of 1862. And in that spring, Robert E. Lee starts to formulate his army into this, at least perceived as an invincible thing. And as it goes towards summer, they start to move northward. Even though the Union continues to win victories in the west, everybody is very concerned in the east as to what Lee might do he wins a battle at a place called Cedar Mountain, wins at a place called Manassas or Second Manassas. They fight to sort of draw Chantilly. And then, as you said, he decides to invade the north at that point. And he's trying to accomplish a few things, but he doesn't have a whole lot of options. He wants to keep that initiative going. And of course, this campaign will climax at Antietam or Sharpsburg.
- [06:28]
A
Key element here is the public's feeling, especially in the North. Both sides are becoming weary. But in the north, they really had this expectation in the first year that this would be a pretty not easy battle to win, but it would be over pretty soon. At this point, September of 1862, they are weary, the public is weary, the politicians are weary, and Lincoln is staring down a midterm election coming in a few months. How is the north approaching this?
- [06:52]
B
So the North, I would suggest, is, you know, already fighting an internal battle as to whether to hang on, whether they should just give this thing up. The casualty roles are growing. It seems like Robert E. Lee and the Confederates are simply better in some cases this despite that most of the battles near Richmond were actually won by the North. But there's this growing perception that there's an incompetence or an inability for the north to actually bring this thing. And this is not wide, this is not ubiquitous. This is, you know, felt by an increasing number of people. Other people simply feel concerned and know they need a victory. The situation is sufficiently intense that the president himself wants to issue a very important proclamation or at least wants to forecast it, but they keep not having enough success. They lost at Cedar Mountain. They lost at Second Manassas. And he needs a position of strength to be able to do this. So there's political stakes in that front. There are, of course, elections coming up to a degree, in a fall of 1862, we would call them midterms. So there's a lot politically going on. And militarily speaking, if the north can't force the south to stay in the Union or return to the Union, depending on how you perceive that, there's going to be big problems for this American, American experiment.
- [08:04]
A
Yes, exactly. Well, I mean, everyone is aware, north and south, of the North's advantages in. In population, obviously industrial capacity. You know, there's like really big resources that the south doesn't have. So they're pursuing a course of kind of attrition, like if we can possibly convince these. These Northerners, especially with these elections coming up, that this isn't Worth the battle, then they've won, then they're at the negotiating table and, and there's no surrender involved and, and they get what they need. Along comes this idea that Lee, based on what's happened so far, you know, he's got the momentum on his side, he decides to cross that Rubicon, which is to say let's take this to the north and they go up through Maryland. Part of this also interesting sidelight is relieving the Virginian farmland, you know, of the resources that are required to feed an army. Right?
- [08:53]
B
Absolutely. Well put on so many fronts. You know, Lee rightly knows that there are a lot of Confederate sympathies in Maryland. Maryland is of course a border state, one of those four states that stays with the Union but still allows slavery in certain cases. So Lee rightly knows that there are Confederate leaning Marylanders, except he chooses the wrong part of Maryland to march through. He thinks he's going to march through sort of what we call western Maryland and that the populace is going to flock to this army. This army of his is first of all weary. They fought like they never fought before. They have marched. I mean, think about walking up here from Richmond and fighting battles on the way. You might feel good about all your victories, but they are physical human beings just like us. So Lee sort of does that. At the same time, he is, as you said, trying to impact Northern morale and confidence. That's their main play. The main thing the Confederates can hope for in the Civil War is to not lose. They don't have to win. If they do win, all the better. But they don't even have to. All they have to do is convince the north that this isn't worth it, just let us go. That's their main play. Now as you stated for the North, I mean the north has bigger armies, better machines, better manufacturing capability. I'll throw in my favorite stat of the entire Civil War. For every, every Southern factory worker. The north has an entire factory, so wrap your brain around that one. But as you also said, this is a long game for the North. They're trying to blockade the South. They are trying to out manufacture the south and out general the south and these things take time. So Lee has the initiative after coming up after the seven days battles and he is going to keep it. And he figures his best play, as you said, is relieve the south and Virginia of some suffering, invade the north, convince the maybe foreign powers to stay out of this war, are still siding with the south nonetheless and win some battles and change the Northern mindset.
- [10:48]
A
You mentioned one that I was about to mention myself, which is this international powers which are going to play a part in how Lincoln especially is thinking about this in an incident to come. We're speaking of Robert E. Lee, famously a bold initiative guy. He's facing off with General George McClellan, famously the opposite. Tell me about that union leadership at this point.
- [11:08]
B
Yeah, so it's incredible. The side that doesn't have an army yet, the south that creates one out of nowhere, did a pretty good job with some of their initial generals. I mean, they've got Robert E. Lee as the third ranking guy. They've got Joseph E. Johnston, much maligned but still capable. And PGT Beauregard. Their second ranking guy is Albert Sidney Johnston. Whereas the north already had these sort of old war generals, Winfield Scott and guys named Patterson and other things like this. And they sort of just started promoting, promoting them. But out of the wind comes this guy in his mid-30s. George McClellan looks the part. An incredibly organized guy, says I can do it all and can claim credit for it all too. And this dude inspires the troops. And he is going to lead this mighty army out of the peninsula. Where he does not perform well. He backbites against the political leadership. He blames others for what is happening. He never has enough troops. He overestimates the enemy. Consist doesn't perform that well to the degree that Lincoln actually demotes him, doesn't remove him, but demotes him from command of sort of a larger sphere of armies until McClellan is sort of cowed. Lincoln sort of starts relying on this other guy, John Pope, who does not do well and loses at Cedar Mount and second Manassas, or at least the second Manassas. And then Lincoln is forced to use the tools he has. He brings McClellan back into command to save the union. And there's McClellan. I've been called upon to save the country again. And it is going to be McCle marching northward. And I don't think anybody expects him to act aggressively. Stay between Robert E. Lee's army and Washington and try to seize the moment with his larger army if he can. He's going to outnumber the Confederate army by about double during this campaign. So certainly an opportunity may present itself. But can McClellan take advantage of it?
- [13:01]
A
So we got president Lincoln sorely in need of a victory to stabilize the union, secure his position, prepare for those midterm elections. That's the political aspect of this for the president. But along comes a famous incident, a coup, really, an intelligence coup. That happens in September 62. That has everything to do with McClellan's uncharacteristically bold move about this attack on Lee. It's generally referred to as the lost order. Can you take us through what happened?
- [13:29]
B
Absolutely. So Robert E. Lee is bold. He doesn't respect his opponent. He had just sort of played with him on the peninsula quite a bit in the seven Days battles and felt he could read him really well. So Lee, as he's moving north into Maryland, separates his army into 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 parts. I mean, this is a bold move. I mean, when you separate your army, you are vulnerable. One piece can be defeated before the other piece can help. And Lee is sending marching orders to these soldiers. And at one point he sends out something that a commander would do with some frequency, special orders 191 that dictated who was supposed to march where. Okay. And you only send these to the people who need to know it. Okay. But chain of command is difficult. People are always dying. The army is always moving around. So there was this extra copy that probably didn't need to be made. We think it was supposed to go to a guy named D.H. hill, a Confederate general. And somehow that lost order, wrapped around three cigars and tied with red ribbon, got left in a Frederick, Maryland field on what would later be the battlefield of Monocacy. Incredibly. And this thing was found by some men from Indiana, 27th Indiana. And they opened it up and said, wow, cigars. But one guy looked at it and felt that maybe this is important. He wrote it up the chain of command until it made it to McClellan's headquarters, where his chief of staff, who used to know the Confederate Chief of staff Chilton, and recognized his writing and said, this is real. And famously, George McClellan grabbed the piece of paper, said, with this information, if I can't whip Bobby Lee, I am willing to go home. Because he was given this gift that the Confederate army was separated by on a 20, 30, 40 mile front and therefore vulnerable.
- [15:12]
A
I mean, the details of this moment in the field are so remarkable that it's worth. Think you've got these two corporals who are sitting down, you know, after a march, resting. It's. It's so human. And then this private comes over. He's the one that notices that there is this little thing in the. This, I guess red ribbon was what he saw and picks that up and that's what they're talking about. It's as simple as that. And this becomes the critical piece of information that. That prompts McClellan to finally be bold, because he's got basically information that says this army that he's going to be facing, which is a lesser ar army than his, by the way. He's got a much more. A greater force nonetheless. For once, Robert e. Lee is divided and vulnerable. They also now knew of where the confederate units would be. So it really allows them to be much more decisive than the union forces had been to this point. Massive advantage.
- [16:07]
B
Correct. And let me add on here that, you know, Lee isn't just separating his army for no reason. A you want to separate your army because these armies, even Lee's army, a smaller one on one road, would be 40 miles long with all of its horses, wagons, artillery, and everything. So you march on separate roads to try to get to a particular point. But he's also having to deal with a union force at a place called Harpers ferry in now west Virginia, then Virginia, where he couldn't march northward with that sort of in his rear. So he wants to capture or destroy that force of 12,000 soldiers there. So he's sending big forces there, others into what we now call other parts of west Virginia, like Martinsburg and hagerstown, Maryland. So he's separating for a reason to be able to win this campaign. But mcclellan is going to disrupt it when he happens upon, like you said, unbelievable gift.
- [16:55]
A
Yeah, exactly. It really speaks to the confidence that Lee is feeling at this point and the Confederates in general, With a great battle fast approaching, it is one that will change the entire course of the civil war and shock the nation. All that to come after a short break. We're back with Gary Adelman from the American battlefield. Trust Gary. The Battle of Antietam, September 17, 1862. Known for being the bloodiest single day of combat in American military history. Let's find out why we're in the north for the first time in this war. In the middle of western Maryland. Can you describe the physical landscape where the fighting takes place? You live there, right?
- [17:42]
B
Yeah, I'm about 25 minutes from Antietam by design. I'm close to Gettysburg, Antietam, Manassas, Monocacy at Harpers Ferry. This is no accident. And it's beautiful out. You know, it is generally rolling terrain. It sits next to the Appalachian mountains, you know, so you've got mountains always in the distance. It's right next to a valley called pleasant valley. And so it is. But it's mostly characterized by, you know, meandering streams, rolling terrain. It's near the Potomac river around there. So you do have Some deep undulations in the ground, but generally speaking, it's just beautiful Maryland countryside that had been worked by farmers for several generations.
- [18:21]
A
You mentioned the Potomac, and I mentioned before, before the Antietam creek. All this action will take place generally between those two courses of water. Why did Lee choose this ground in particular?
- [18:32]
B
Well, you know, first of all, there's a couple of choices to be made, and I have to back up a tiny bit. You know, in becoming more aggressive, McClellan starts pushing toward Lee's army. Lee can't figure out why this is happening. He would not know for another year or so why mcclellan was able to act in the way that he did, but in pushing back or slowing mcclellan there. There's a big fight at the battle of south mountain. More than 4,000 casualties. While eventually the union will clear the mountain passes, allowing them to go further west, Lee has to gather his armies together from Martinsburg and wait for Harpers Ferry's fall. So Lee, when he first hears of this, says this campaign is over, and then he hears from Stonewall Jackson that Harpers ferry is about to fall. He just needs another day or so to be able to deal with this. Okay, so if you look on a map and you figure, okay, now there's hope, I can still maybe invade the north. If I can gather my army, I can head into Maryland, further into Maryland, and then into Pennsylvania and threaten the north. So he's feeling all these things. And Antietam, which is basically a creek near sharpsburg, Maryland, with its rolling hills where he could defend portions of the creek where he could gather his armies, was a geographic central point. I mean, other parts of Maryland would have worked as well. The boldest, or some people would say stupidest part of this plan is that the Potomac river is from 1 to 5 miles to his back. It's angling away from him, and he needs to be able to cross that river. So he's basically got one way across, and he needs to defend that. So it's an extraordinarily bold or some would say unintelligent move at this point.
- [20:07]
A
I mentioned massive armies. There will be a total of 132,000 troops from both sides engaging in this battle. On McClellan's side, about 75,000 troops in battle, more in reserve. Lee's army is 40 to 45,000 troops, many exhausted, under supplied. They've come a long way, of course. They are spread thin on a defensive above Antietam creek near Sharpsburg, as you mentioned. Let's talk about how the battle Itself happens. It's all one day. They've basically taken up positions to September 16th. Now the morning rises. What happens?
- [20:44]
B
Yes, so first of all, as you said, Lee is spread out so literally Confederates are arriving throughout that morning and into the battle straight from the march. And most notably, one of the most capable and most experienced divisions and about 6,000 soldiers under A.P. hill are still dealing with the paroles in Harpers Ferry. And they are doing this famous 17 mile march with hardly any rest in order to get to the battlefield on time. So while the battle's being fought toward its climax, here's AP Hill coming. It's just an important thing to remember. Okay, so the battle's characterized really by George McClellan crossing Antietam Creek with two of his corps. He's got multiple corps. A corps can be about, let's say average, about 10,000 soldiers in the Union army at that point. And he's going to take those corps under Hooker and mansfield. So about 18, 20,000 soldiers. He's going to cross Antietam Creek at an unguarded point. Lee cannot possibly cover every crossing of Antietam Creek, so he's going to cross them and get some of his artillery across and start to push onto what we now know as the Antietam battlefield into what we call the north woods, facing soon to be famous places, the Cornfield and Dunker Church and along the Hagerstown pike and sort of threaten Lee's left flank, so to speak. Lee repositions his army of face to the north north. That sets off the battle. This is one of the battles where if you take it at its simplest, because there are always a lot of details, but the troops actually fought in chronological geographic order. You can take the morning fighting, the costliest fighting of the battle, around the Cornfield and the Hagerstown pike and what we call the epicenter as this four hours called the cornfield. It's basically phase one of the fight in which the Union will push through the cornfield and threaten to push the Confederates all the way back. More Union soldiers arrive on the field. They meet disaster in what we call the West Woods. This is a post war name that we use to understand a battlefield. West Woods, Northwoods. And they meet disaster at the hands of a powerful Confederate counterattack. And that's phase two. Some of the rest of the Union troops arriving push southward toward what we now know as a sunken lane or the bloody lane. And that's phase three, where for several hours the Union, the North, the Federals try to capture this sunken road that The Confederates are holding against three times their number. Eventually, the Union captures that. That. And overlapping with that fight is phase four, the fight for Burnside Bridge and the final attack. The Union takes about three hours to get across this. This crossing featured with high bluffs above it and the Confederates holding off several times their number. The Union will push across it and then engage in, you know, this massive attack in which they can cut the Confederates off and maybe capture the entire army.
- [23:27]
A
Wow. Great overview. Let's go through each one of those phases with a little more detail. The cornfield you mentioned is a nightmare.
- [23:34]
B
Okay.
- [23:35]
A
This is a full grown corn. Of course, we're in September, so there's a lot of concealment there. And I guess Union troops go into this expecting that's going to be something effective. The opposite happens, right?
- [23:45]
B
Correct. You know, nobody knows where anybody else is. I mean, at least the war has progressed enough where the two sides have picked different flags to wave. They've picked different uniforms in general, but intelligence is still tough. And that corn is not like today's genetically modified corn. It might not be as tall, but it's not in the rows. It is, you know, just. You can't see through it at all. So you send a brigade through the corn. You know, in this case, New Yorkers. They meet Louisiana, Georgia troops and meet with absolute disaster. Two more brigades come and the thing grows. This is after a massive artillery fight, so there's a lot going on at once, but suffice it to say, it's back and forth through the corn and the stubble field to the south of it. Okay. And the good thing is you could go there and see where this cornfield was. Sometimes there's still corn growing there. And you could see the stubble field and see the fences on the Hagerstown Pike. So it is the most pristine battlefield in the east of the Civil War. Just a great place. Do you agree?
- [24:42]
A
Yeah. Reminds you the Civil War wasn't that long ago. You can really see this stuff as it was. There was a famous quote from Major General Joseph Hooker of the army of the Potomac in the north. And I'm going to read it here. Capture the spirit of the moment. In the time that I am writing, every stalk of corn in the northern and greater part of the field was cut as closely as could have been done with a knife. And the slain lay in rows precisely as they had stood in their ranks a few moments before. It was never my fortune to witness a more bloody, dismal battlefield. That's General Joseph Hooker speaking of the. I Corps. Incredible moment of. Well, unfortunately not the first time this kind of thing has happened in the war, and it will happen a lot more. But Antietam is famous for these kinds of scenes, isn't it?
- [25:27]
B
It is indeed. And you know, that says a lot that someone like Fighting Joe Hooker said something like that. He was at the Seven Days Battles. He was at Fair Oaks. He was later at Chancellorsville. I mean, these are some terrible fights. And if you say that, I think it means a lot. Now, of course, they're going back and forth through the corn, but one of the good stories is that you've got a certain group of Confederates under John Bell Hood who had established themselves as hard fighters. Okay, These are Texas, Mississippi and Alabama soldiers. And they had been fighting, skirmishing with the enemy the night before. They hadn't gotten to eat. So they were said, you know, you know, you guys can go and rest and eat, but if we need you, you're going to have to come immediately. And of course, you know how it works. They just boil their coffee, they just get their food going, and the cornfield happens, and they get called into battle angry as hornets. These guys split into four groups. They pushed into the corn, some almost all the way, you know, to the Union position, but ultimately got decimated. And it just turns into one more back and forth in the corn until after that, the Union pushes on so that they can get all the way to the whitewashed church that we call the Dunker Church. So in other words, they've captured. Captured the better part of that whole battlefield. Things are looking pretty good at this point.
- [26:37]
A
Yeah. And of course, things shift all the time. I'm going to plug your employer there. The American Battlefield Trust has wonderful videos that actually show very clearly. I'm sure you had a lot to do with this, how these lines all shift around as the battle goes onwards. You mentioned the sunken road, which is a very colorful name for a very tragic place. Where is that on the battlefield? And how does that figure into the action?
- [27:01]
B
Yeah, so this sunken road, it says that every battlefield has a peach orchard, a slaughter pen, a sunken road, and a railroad cut. Antietam has some of those. I guess roads get sunken because of heavy use. And in the case of Antietam and other places, they are sunken because there are toll roads. The Hagerstown pike is a turnpike. It is a toll road. So by using this sunken road, they could avoid two tolls, just like we would today. So. So that's probably lent itself to why it was at least partly sunken. Let me Intersperse, though, there is this one little phase that Confederates and Union soldiers would never forget called the west woods between the cornfield fight and the sunken road fight. And that is when a new corps arrives on the battlefield. And this impacts both phases two and three. The first division of that corps, under a famous guy named John Sedgwick, would move straight forward with the corps commander, Sumner, and they would move into what we call the west woods. It just happened, happened to be that the Confederates were assembling a powerful force. Turns out to be 7,000 soldiers that arrived right on the Union flank and rear at the perfect moment and absolutely decimated, killing and wounded half of Sedgwick's men. And they go running away. And the Confederates sort of therefore gain a foothold back on this northern part of the battlefield. They sort of control the Dunker Church and a lot of the west woods at this point. And that's going to give them some good fighting ability to reinforce the next phase, that is the sunken sunken road.
- [28:26]
A
Before you get into the details of the sunken road, let me read another quote that sort of warms things up a bit. The battle raged all day with a fury unequaled in the war. Again and again repulsed, the enemy rallied his columns and returned again and again to attack with desperate determination. The shades of evening settled over the blood stained field, but still the fight went on along a line extended by many miles with unabated fury. The scope, scope of that area, that geography, that this quote from Lt. James W. Shin, who is with the south, with the 4th North Carolina infantry, it speaks to the spread outness, right, the vastness of this space.
- [29:04]
B
I really think that, you know, there's a lot of things I wish people knew about the Civil War going into it. And one of the most basic parts of it is I think people who haven't visited Civil War battlefields think that they're going to show up at some fenced in area of an acre or three and that they can see the battlefield and which way the troops came from. They don't realize that you can go on a 24 mile hike on the Antieta battlefield alone and not traverse and not even go way out of your way just to circumvent the thing and go and check out the main spaces. So these battlefields are large. The terrain across them might be generally rolling, but there are some very different type of areas along them and you can be at a complete shadow as to what might be happening a mile, let alone four miles away from other parts world. The of Your army?
- [29:50]
A
Yeah, it. It astonishes me when we talk about these. These battles. And then you can go back to Napoleon how. How they even envision these things, much less manage the movement of men and materials all around these huge areas with all the challenges involved without machinery. It's incredible.
- [30:06]
B
It really is. You know, they. They have telegraphs while they're on the campaign, but in a battle, they don't have the ability to set up a telegraph thing, so they're using signal flags, but they're most commonly sending a. To guide a horse, trying to find one commander miles away in a place they've never been before. So people sometimes criticize McClellan for kind of staying in the rear during this fight. This is exactly where a commander of 80,000 soldiers should be, is, you know, in the middle somewhere, where you can sort of make these grand movements and, you know, delegate.
- [30:36]
A
And it speaks. That quote that I read speaks to the general strategy of the North. They just keep coming. They know they have a big, bigger force, so they can afford to just keep marching into this thing. Not as chaotically as I'm suggesting, but that was. The big factor, was that they had just had more men and they could keep on coming. This moment in the sunken road is a missed opportunity, though. There's a gap in the Confederate line that opens and the Union fails to break through. Why is that?
- [31:00]
B
Well, after hours of fighting, you know, here US Troops do capture the sunken road, and there's a lot to do with this fighting. There's a lot of stories. There's a lot of heroism and terror and whatnot. It is just. Just an awful fight where bodies get stacked up and, you know, the north ultimately captures it. Okay, but think about it. At this point, McClellan's on the other side of Antietam Creek. Joseph Hooker, their most fighting guy, is, you know, wounded, terrible wound in the foot. The most likely guy to exploit victory here. Israel Richardson has been desperately wounded right at the climax, right when he's trying to lead people to go beyond the sunken road. So nobody's really there to take command. Okay? And from McClellan's perspective, let me just say that he gets. I'm no McClellan fan. He's a hard to like guy, but I do think he gets unfairly criticized, as if he had 30 or 40,000 men waiting in reserve. He didn't. And wherever he shows up, okay, they do well in the cornfield. I march into the west woods, and here's 7,000 more confederates. You know, I attack. You know, I capture the bloody Lane. And then more Confederates are attacking me now. The southerners were putting on a front. It was a facade. They were almost out. We now know later that, you know, the Confederates were in a perilous situation. James Long, the second ranking guy at Antietam for the Confederates, said 10,000 more men could have meant the end of this army. And that's true to a lot of us backing Lee up against a river that's swollen without a way to escape. I mean, Lee very well could have been captured that day. But it's really easy for us to say and call ourselves geniuses for saying that maybe some other course of action would have been more successful than what didn't work. War and sports are the only things where people congratulate themselves on this genius for thinking that suggesting something other than what didn't work is somehow shows greatness of mind.
- [32:52]
A
But it will feed Lincoln's mentality more immediately about his opinion of McClellan. I want to get to the last phase that you mentioned. Burnside's Bridge. At what point of the day does this take place? We're talking about Ambrose Burnside of the North.
- [33:07]
B
So Burnside Bridge is a thin bridge. People often wonder why Burnside was obsessed with it when you could probably wade the creek in certain areas where, well, you try to wade that creek and get up a steep bank with all your artillery and everything you need to launch a bigger attack. The bridge means nothing if you can't get into the Confederate rear afterwards. So he feels he needs that bridge, he attacks it once at 10 again at noon, and finally successfully at 1. Each of those attacks proving bloody nothing like what was going on at the cornfield or at the bloody lane or anything like that. But each time getting repulsed. But finally, at 1pm they launch an attack. Two regiments go across it. The Confederate line is weak at that point and. And that allows Burnside to actually amass his whole army about an hour and a half, two hours later, atop the bluff the Confederates were extending to deliver a mile wide coup de grace against the Confederates who are weak, who are on the run, and who seem to have almost no hope at this point.
- [34:05]
A
Yeah, but that's when A.P. hill comes into play, right?
- [34:08]
B
Yes, Don, you can't write it any better than this either. Not even all of Hill's men arrived. You really have maybe 3,500 arriving. But the most experienced Confederates arrived exactly when they were most needed, at just about the perfect spot upon the flank of just about the least experienced people in McClellan's entire army. It's the stuff, you just don't need to make anything up because it happens this way. They fight in a 40 acre cornfield. The US soldiers do really well trying to repel the Confederates, but it's hopeless. And them falling back unmasks other Union troops and eventually the whole Union line line ones that the frontmost elements could see the spires of Sharpsburg and see the Confederates fleeing through the streets. They very reluctantly fell back toward Burnside Bridge.
- [34:58]
A
Interesting. As a result, I mean, let's talk about the consequences of this, of this battle. Roughly 23,000 men are killed, wounded or captured on both sides in one day. Union 12,410 casualties, confederates 10,360. It boggles the mind how that was even managed. We could talk about Clara Barton and all the medical side of this thing. It's really, really epic. The strategic, tactical aspect of this is that neither side can really claim a clear victory. Correct?
- [35:29]
B
Yes. At least depending on how you look at it tactically, operationally, it's a little tough. Let me just put this into perspective though, this level, because nobody could have understood it. When the Battle of Bull Run or Manassas was fought something like 14 months earlier, it was by far the bloodiest, costliest battle in all American history. That was 4,500 casualties. And all of a sudden, nine or 10 months later, they fight at Shiloh and there's more than 23,000 casualties. I mean, imagine the systems, the national shock, the need for care that this would bring out. It's hard to fathom to the point where the battle of South Mountain, right before Antietam, it barely retired, registered because in one year it had come where there were so many battles costlier than 5,000 casualties that it must have numbed the public and the army to some degree. But yet each one of those casualties is a human.
- [36:24]
A
How soon after one of these battles would the public, say in the north, find out about these numbers?
- [36:30]
B
I would say it's over the course of now 164 years. You would have some people finding out and they immediately. And then the newspapers would proliferate and they would correct information they realized were wrong for whatever reason. Some people were buried in a grave of another person because they stole someone else's knapsack or book or something like that. So it's a process that still goes on to this day. However, within several days or a week, the north and the south would start to see these casualty rolls, sometimes issued by a friend of the regiment just writing to his host hometown newspaper. Frank Armstrong was killed and things like that. So I would say that there's a lot known within a week, within days to a week of it. There were press pools back then and they reported it pretty dutifully at the time.
- [37:17]
A
Yeah, these are horrific numbers, as we're saying, and they're registering that. And it has a lot to do with the politics that we'll talk about in a moment. After the break, Gary and I explore how events played out immediately after the battle, its wider impacts for the war, and the greater legacy Antietam has come to be remembered, remembered for. And we're back with Gary Adelman of the American Battlefield Trust by September 18, Gary, the battlefield of Antietam has fallen silent. This is the day afterwards. Bodies are scattered all over. How did things stand in the immediate aftermath? Where is Robert Eliot at this point?
- [38:01]
B
So, first of all, both sides aren't sure that this thing is going to remain silent. Robert E. Lee has a lot of work to do in terms of just trying to clear away the wounded, try to start to bury the dead, something he would be unable to do. You can't just leave after a battle lest you leave a whole lot behind. You have to send things to the rear first. While also preparing for a possible counterattack. Lee was certain, of course, McClellan would counterattack at this point. But McClellan, you know, his attitude was to repel the enemy from the. So the north, he didn't have the same objective as Lee and Lincoln, who was to destroy or force surrender of the enemy army. So there's that going on. And of course, all night long you would have had the unbearable cries of the wounded, you know, the pleadings for water, those left between the lines. There were, you know, flags of truce to temporarily exchange wounded on certain parts of the line. You know, so there's all of that stuff that goes along with the horror of battle. Lanterns in the evening and early morning morning combing the field, looking for friends and comrades and do gooders in both armies trying to alleviate the suffering of friend or foe. Once they stopped fighting. Both sides tended to be decent to each other after they were wounded or captured or something like that, at least to the degree possible. So you've got all these scenes playing out on battlefield after battlefield. Antietam's no exception. It just happened to be so much more concentrated and terrible than a lot of the others at that point.
- [39:30]
A
The Confederate forces have withdrawn back over the Potomac, as we mentioned, was behind them the whole time, and move back to Virginia. I mean, this invasion of the north is over until Gettysburg comes.
- [39:41]
B
The Next year, well, there is going to be one more fight at a place called Shepherdstown. That's two and three days after the battle on the 19th and the 20th in which Lee will repel McClellan but loses some of his artillery. His army is clearly worn out, and Lee will end this campaign at that point. Apparently even after Antietam, he's still thinking about headed north. But that final battle after Antietam really convinced him, no, this can't be.
- [40:06]
A
And yet a year later, in a much bolder venture, you know, further north, he will come back. It's really surprising to me.
- [40:12]
B
Yes, he's, you know, his army is, you know, not quite twice as large. The following year, it's riding another high wave after a series of victories, Fredericksburg at Chancellorsville. He thinks, this is my moment. We can move into Pennsylvania this time. We can correct our problems. I've got a good command structure, and we're going to win. And it happens to be that he is beaten like he was never beaten anywhere else at the battle of Gettysburg.
- [40:35]
A
We've obviously done shows about this in the past, and we talked about a lot of these aspects of this. The strategy of attrition and this getting the north to just tire to the point of giving up. Same themes are going on with Gettysburg as are established at Antietam. Lincoln's disappointment with McClellan is major. His lack of pursuit allowed Lee to sort of snatch a draw from the jaws of defeat. But it was made even worse when he learns that McClellan declined to bring pursue him. Consciously correct?
- [41:06]
B
Yes. I mean, Lincoln was tolerating McClellan as it was. You know, that's one of the things that makes Lincoln great. He could deal with quite a bit. I mean, I imagine a lot of managers, chief executives, presidents, would not have had the forbearance that Lincoln would have had for somebody like McClellan who openly insulted Lincoln and whatnot. But Lincoln was willing to do what was necessary to win the civil war to bring this country back together. But that doesn't mean he was a fan of McClellan, so he's willing to put up with him. But if he ordered McClellan to pursue Lee and McClellan wouldn't move. Lincoln waited just long enough for the elections of 1862 to happen for his side to either staunch the bleeding or to make some gains. And then you've got George McClellan still not acting, even after Lincoln visited him himself, and he still wouldn't act. So he removed McClellan, and McClellan would become Lincoln's opponent in the 1864 election.
- [42:04]
A
Exactly. Story he's replaced by Burnside, as a matter of fact, only temporarily because, of course, there's many more moves to be made. But this clears the the way for Lincoln to do something really important politically, and that is to issue the first Emancipation Proclamation, most often remembered for its January iteration in 1863. But Lincoln had drafted this proclamation before the battle of Antietam, and he was. He was waiting to do this based on the hope for success, right?
- [42:33]
B
Absolutely. He got some good advice from his very eloquent and smart Secretary of State William Seward to wait. So you're in a position of strength and Antietam proved enough of a victory for the North. I mean, Lee did abandon his campaign. Lee was driven throughout the entire battle. Lee would be hard for him to claim victory, really? Hardly. Other than pushing the Union back at the end of the battle, there's nothing going on there. But Lincoln's the victor, strategically. Abraham Lincoln won this battle by issuing or forecasting this Emancipation Proclamation. And just by announcing it, he effectively kept European powers out of the war. He set the nation on a new path toward the meaning of war as strong. And people underestimate how strong the cause of Union was in the minds of Americans. This set it forth on a new cause which happened to intersect with Northerners spending time in the south, many of them for the first time, and seeing what slavery actually was instead of reading about. About it. And you see in people's letters, people's hearts and minds start to change as they wrote home. They weren't doing this because of us. 160 years later, they were writing how they felt at the time about it. And many people started to change why they were enlisting, why they were fighting, why they felt strongly about it. And the Emancipation Proclamation was a masterstroke in which Lincoln sort of set a new course for the war and not the. Not to mention would set the course to get 200,000 more people in the army than navies.
- [44:00]
A
He does it on September 22, 1862, declaring freedom for enslaved people in rebelling states, effective from January 1, 1863. That's the 12 of it, isn't it, that it's the same proclamation. It's just done in anticipation of its instatement.
- [44:17]
B
Correct. And you just pointed out masterstroke after masterstroke that he manages to free the slaves only in places that are fighting against, you know, the United States with, so that he can keep places like Maryland, Delaware, Missouri in the Union at the same time. So, you know, honoring his first inaugural pledge you know, that he doesn't have any intent to interfere with slavery in this case. I'll only interfere with it if, you know, those resources are being used against this government.
- [44:48]
A
Yes. And that will have the effect that you mentioned. It will shift the focus from, this is a battle, this is a war. War being fought to preserve the Union, to bring us back together, to this is a war being fought for a moral cause, for a higher ground, for the defeat of the institution of slavery. That's a gigantic shift that happens now, one year into the war.
- [45:08]
B
Yeah, and I would say that it does. It mostly provides another option. You know, soldiers wrote exactly why they fought. There's a great book by James McPherson about this. And some are fighting for a job, for a sense of adventure, for their honor, you know, for or against the Union, for or against slavery. But it provided another big, as you said, moral option to feel good about all this work, all this loss, all of this upheaval of the nation in every way. This was even more than the Gettysburg Address, such a game changer for the
- [45:40]
A
north as we speak. It reminds me in a reverse way of the battle of Saratoga for the Revolution, in that it's a pivotal battle because it has wider consequences that are massive, including international consequences in the Revolution. It brings allies in this one defeats that for the South. They had hoped that they would gain that, and they didn't. But it's that kind of. Yeah, it's that kind of widespread effect on an epic level. That is the importance of this battle in so many ways. So much of the imagery conjured in our minds about this that we're trying to describe was actually captured, captured in photographs by a guy named Alexander Gardner who was working for the famous Matthew Brady. These are some of the most famous images of the war. I mentioned in your bio that you are with the center for Civil War Photography. Why is this such a changing point for photography in general, I suppose?
- [46:31]
B
Well, there's so much, and you might regret asking me this question because it's just about my favorite subject. First of all, I hope that listeners have been, while we've been talking about this battle, picturing these famous and sometimes terrible photos from this battle. The Civil War more broadly, is the first major conflict to be significantly, substantially covered photographically. The first with photojournalists out in the field. This new process of photography, the wet plate process that allowed for a negative to be created from which prints could be made and proliferated, made a whole craze in both portraits and in what I would call documentary Photographs of which Gardner records 80. 80 between September 19 ish and September 22 or so on the battlefield. There's going to be a second visit in early October as well, documenting things like Abraham Lincoln and other subjects as well. So a couple of things about this. First of all, a full 1/4 of his 80 photos are taken of the dead, the human carnage. A coup that had never been accomplished by an American photographer and a coup that, because of the distribution systems, allowed the American public for the first time to actually see what a fresh battlefield looked like. It's one thing to hear the veterans come home and say it was terrible and tell the stories about how their friend died in the middle of a field with a flag draped across his breast. No, they now saw something dead piled one on top of the other. It was lonely face pressed to the earth, far from home. Some of the bodies were bloated, and it was the. The antithesis of a good death, as they called it in 19th century. It did not look glorious. It looked like the reverse, and it shocked the nation.
- [48:15]
A
Were they supplying a curiosity, a market for this? You know, was that a change in the public's desire to know about this stuff, or was it really just a happenstance of this particular photographer taking. Taking liberties?
- [48:27]
B
I think photographers started to realize that the more real and gritty things were, the better they would sell. These are businessmen, you know, while Brady would claim to be documenting history, these are businessmen. And from even before the Civil War, when they would take pictures of a fire, of a man stranded before plunging to his death at Niagara Falls, these things sold. And newspapers would buy them and convert them to engravings or woodcuts and put them in their newspapers. So they recognized this right away. And the various photographers were getting closer. You know, fresh graves on a battlefield in 1862, and then dead horses on a battlefield at Cedar Mountain. Until they finally achieved this terrible moment, being able to arrive on a battlefield before the dead had been buried to depict this for the public. And these images sold like crazy. They still sell. They command three times the price on ebay to this day. Don't bid against me. Okay, good.
- [49:20]
A
I have two images here in my brief. And it's shocking even today to see how vulnerable these bodies look out there in the great expanse of these battlefields, or lined up in one. I have one lined up. Confederate soldiers afterwards, waiting for burial. There's one at the sunken Road. It's just the live soldiers are looking down into this mayhem of death that's below. It brings to mind the World War I images really of the trench warfare, doesn't it?
- [49:48]
B
Yeah, you're right. Except there's two other elements, and World War I would incorporate this. But for its time, it was a first. A people today have no idea how high resolution these photos were. They were beautiful. The glass plate was. Negatives were about 40 or 50 times larger than what you and I grew up with. These 35 millimeter negatives, they were huge. It was a chemical sheet. So they're still better. Everybody listening. I'm sorry to insult your digital camera. Alexander Gardner's resolution was better than yours. And then two. Just about all of Gardner's photos in September were taken on a stereoscopic or a 3D plate designed for people to be able to put into a special viewer and see the scene in 3D, making it all the more terrible. Don, you're probably familiar with some. How some of the newspapers reacted upon seeing these for the first time, because nobody really knew what it looked like before.
- [50:37]
A
It's so interesting to consider the parallels between the Civil War, the effect on the Civil War, and the same later on for Vietnam when newsreels come back and those reporters are in the jungles. It's the same kind of effect of media and the immediacy, isn't it?
- [50:52]
B
You're right. And there were no rules. This is brand new. You know, no photograph had been censored to my knowledge, before the Civil War in American history. And then you have a few happening there. But you would think many people just make the assumption that people would see these dead in photos and say, we have to end this terrible conflict. And some no doubt did, and others no doubt also looked at these photos and said, no, look at these dead. We have to make sure that these dead shall not have what died in vain, as Abraham Lincoln would later. Just like today, and just like Vietnam, two people can look at the same footage or the same photograph and draw a different conclusion based on their opinion of the times.
- [51:32]
A
Yeah, interesting. I think they have everything to do with building the moral purpose, as you say, you know, of changing, shifting the focus at the same thing that the immense, impatient proclamation does. They work hand in hand. Final word, in summary, about this battle. Bloodiest single day, of course, we've repeated many, many times. Certainly did not end the war, which would then go on for another two hours and a half years. But it changed why the war was fought. The staggering cost forced this nation to confront what it was willing to sacrifice. And for the Union, as we've said a few times, it shifted the mission of the war from preservation of the union to the destruction of slavery. This is your life's work. In this business. Antietam really stands out, doesn't it?
- [52:12]
B
It really does. Not only was it my spark when I first picked up William Frasinito's Antietam book in high school as a D. History student, I was not a good student or a reader until I happened to pick up Frasanitos Antietam book in which he takes Civil War photos. Found the same place now, or at least then, and took a picture of it and lined them up. And for whatever reason, that was the closest I'd ever come to time travel. And it changed my whole life. So Antietam was my entry. And from the first time I went there, I spelled a special connection with the place. And for anybody who, you know, if you're listening, you're probably into history already, but you might not be somebody who has walked or chomped or, you know, been to battlefields before. Antietam is a great place to go for. It's easier to understand than some of these other ones. It's got the heavy consequence. It's got maybe more icons than any other American battlefield. The Cornfield, the Sunken Road, the Burnside Bridge, the Dunker Church. And these places are still there. And you can contemplate what happened. And I'll just say that it's like going to a baseball game as opposed to watching it on tv. You can grasp it, understand it, and feel it in a way that you can't. And Antietam is just a great example of it.
- [53:20]
A
Yeah, get your training on this battlefield, which is where Gary has worked for so many years. Gary Adelman's work concerning the Civil War is wide ranging. Just search his books and articles and you'll find many. He is the vice president at the center of for Civil War Photography. Where's that located, Gary?
- [53:37]
B
That is a solely digital thing. We have a PO Box, but we are a board of seven people from five different states who obsess about this subject as much as we can and put on an annual seminar.
- [53:48]
A
Oh, give us an address to look at it.
- [53:50]
B
Civilwarphotography.org we also have a journal and you can join. And while you're at it, you already mentioned battlefields.org and our associated YouTube channel. You can learn everything you want. A lifetime's worth ofstuff@Battlefields.org and at our YouTube channel.
- [54:05]
A
Thanks so much, Gary. Really appreciate it. We'll talk to you again soon, I hope.
- [54:08]
B
Thanks so much for having me.
- [54:14]
A
Thanks for listening. To American History hit. You know, every week we release new episodes, two new episodes dropping Mondays and Thursdays from mysterious missing colonies to powerful political movements to some of the biggest battles across the centuries. Don't miss an episode by hitting like and follow. You help us out, which is great, but you'll also be reminded when our shows are on. And while you're at it, please share with a friend. American History hit with me, Don Wildman. So grateful for your support. Thanks so much.