Antietam: The Soldiers' Battle

by John Michael Priest

Book Overview

On September 13, 1862, in a field near Frederick, Maryland, four Union soldiers hit the jack-pot. There they found, wrapped carelessly around three cigars, a copy of General Robert E. Lee's most recent orders detailing Southern objectives and letting Union officers know that Lee had split his Army into four vulnerable groups. General George B. McClellan realized his opportunity to destroy the Army of Northern Virginia one piece at a time. "If I cannot whip Bobbie Lee," exulted McClellan, "I will be willing to go home." But the notoriously prudent Union general allowed precious hours to pass, and, by the time he moved, Lee's army had begun to regroup and prepare for battle near Antietam Creek. The ensuing fight would prove to be not only the bloodiest single day of the entire Civil War, but the bloodiest in the history of the U.S. Army.
Countless historians have analyzed Antietam (known as Sharpsburg in the South) and its aftermath, some concluding that McClellan's failure to vanquish Lee constituted a Southern victory, others that the Confederate retreat into Virginia was a strategic win for the North. But in Antietam: The Soldiers' Battle, historian John Michael Priest tells this brutal tale of slaughter from an entirely new point of view: that of the common enlisted man. Concentrating on the days of actual battle--September 16, 17, and 18, 1862--Priest vividly brings to life the fear, the horror, and the profound courage that soldiers displayed, from the first Federal cavalry probe of the Confederate lines to the last skirmish on the streets of Sharpsburg. Antietam is not a book about generals and their grand strategies, but rather concerns men such as the Pennsylvanian corporal who lied to receive the Medal of Honor; the Virginian who lay unattended on the battlefield through most of the second day of fighting, his arm shattered from a Union artillery shell; the Confederate surgeon who wrote to the sweetheart he left behind enemy lines in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania that he had seen so much death and suffering that his "head had whitened and my very soul turned to stone."
Besides being a gripping tale charged with the immediacy of firsthand accounts of the fighting, Antietam also dispels many misconceptions long held by historians and Civil War buffs alike. Seventy-two detailed maps--which describe the battle in the hourly and quarter-hourly formats established by the Cope Maps of 1904--together with rarely-seen photographs and his own intimate knowledge of the Antietam terrain, allow Priest to offer a substantially new interpretation of what actually happened.
When the last cannon fell silent and the Antietam Creek no longer ran red with Union and Confederate blood, twice as many Americans had been killed in just one day as lost their lives in the War of 1812, the Mexican War, and the Spanish-American war combined. This is a book about battle, but more particularly, about the human dimension in battle. It asks "What was it like?" and while the answers to this simple question by turns horrify and fascinate, they more importantly add a whole new dimension to the study of the American Civil War.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0195084667
• ISBN13: 9780195084665
• Release Date: January 1994
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
• Length: 424 Pages
• Weight: 1.36 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.1" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Terrific read

I can't say enough good things about this book. Prior to visiting the Antietam battlefield, I read Sear's Landscape Turned Red to get an overview. But then after seeing the battlefield I was eager to read more. Priest's book was just what I wanted. It is a compilation of first person accounts that puts you right in the middle of the action. You'll feel the shells and bullets flying all around. I've now read this book at least ten times, learning and understanding more with each read. I've also recently revisited the battlefield to help me put everything together.

Outstanding, gripping first person accounts

Terrific book. Unique in its approach of using first person accounts to describe in detail one of the most horrific fights of the ACW. Priest puts you in the thick of the action. Contains numerous great maps as well. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys military history, and consider it one of the best written on the Civil War.

Excellent anectdotes

the way that Mr. Priest's book is written, allows you to follow the war through the eyes of the soldiers who fought there. As the book runs from anectdote to anectdote, the reader is able to get a clearer picture of the battle and what happened there. As a Civil War Reenactor, my unit fought at antietam, and the anectdotes helped me to be more realistic in my impression.

Witnesses to Human Carnage

The American Civil War was unprecedented in the sustained ferocity and magnitude of casualties endured over a four-year period. Even in the ACW, Antietam earned unique respect. At reunions after the war, even old veterans of Gettysburg bowed in deference to the veterans of Antietam. Killed and wounded in one day at Antietam totaled more than all those killed in the Revolutionary War, War of 1812, Mexican War and Spanish American War combined. Statistics alone do not even begin to tell the story - the violence, the horror, the effect on the participants and the nation's collective psyche. Priest's great book helps us to understand, on a more personal level, the events that transpired on the rolling farmland between Antietam Creek and the town of Sharpsburg on September 17, 1862. As the two great armies prepared for conflict, gradually collecting on opposite sides of the meandering creek, from South Mountain, Boonsboro, Harper's Ferry and Sheperdstown, and then the red day itself dawns, Priest leads us on using the words of the participants. The soldiers who fought, unfortunate souls who descended for what must have seemed an eternity into a nightmare realm, newspaper correspondents, civilians caught in the fray, nurses, all give testament to the human carnage. The book is at times as dis-jointed as McClellan's attack, but this is not a standard historical treatment nor is it approachable subject matter. The opposing armies advanced and retreated so many times through Miller's cornfield, leaving dead and dying behind with every attack and counter-attack, that afterwards no man could say for sure "how many?" When we visit Antietam Battlefield now and try to understand the conduct of the battle, we have Priest's great work to help us try to understand what it must have been like to be there, on that red day. This book is a rare combination of first rate historical research and a creative, intelligent presentation approach. A model for future like efforts.

Fantastic Book!

This book is a "must read" for the serious Civil War buff interested in Antietam. Priest gives you the battle from the perspective of those who fought it, in the actual chronology of the battle. The many maps are some of the most detailed I have ever seen of the battlefield - you can locate within a few feet where a particular company stood at a particular time. In addition, Priest simply tells what happened - again, in great detail. He thankfully does not editorialize or moralize (unlike Sears in "Landscape Turned Red: The Battle of Antietam"). This book ranks up there with "Battles and Leaders of the Civil War" by Johnson and Buel as one of the truly great, unbiased works about Antietam. ... Priest has also written a book on the few days preceeding Antietam, called, "Before Antietam: The Battle for South Mountain" - another gem!