To Make Men Free: A Novel of the Battle of Antietam

by Richard Croker

Book Overview

In the style of Gods and Generals comes a vivid, exciting and realistic novel of one of the most important battles of the Civil War and its significance for American history. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060559098
• ISBN13: 9780060559090
• Release Date: January 2005
• Publisher: Harper Paperbacks
• Length: 448 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.2" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Accurate Yet Highly Readable

"To Make Men Free" is the title of a new book by a new (to me) author named Richard Croker. I attended his speech at a local Rotary luncheon last week, and was impressed right there. Bought the book (Perennial, a Harper-Collins sub, ISBN 0-06-055909-8) and am halfway through it. It's an Antietam book, but it carefully sets up the plot by starting at Second Manassas and pays due attention to Harper's Ferry. I'm not yet finished with it, so I don't know yet if it's going to end with the passage "And then A. P. Hill came up." Hope not. But then, I'm the person who invented the website http://www.redshirt.aphill.forgood.gov. (Don't click on it, it doesn't really exist. I just invented it to tick off a Hill fan who is truly a clump in the litterbox of life.) This book is a narrative, not an historical account. As it was portrayed by the author, one might expect a Jeff Shaara-esque stream of consciousness, but that's not really what it is. It's an excellent narrative, a good, well-structured time-line within which all sorts of vignettes are used to move the story forward. William F. Buckley once wrote (possibly quoting someone else, I don't recall) that the author who seeks to slay his audience with each passage he writes runs the risk of succeeding. I have thought of that maxim many times while reading this book, for Croker's one-liners--really, one-para-liners--come close to being like that...there are so many keepers. Keepers in terms of imagery, mostly. My prediction is that you will do to your beloved what I have already done twice to mine: Make her stop what she's doing and listen patiently while I read an irresistible passage. When you get to the passage(s) about what it means to be buried face down with bullet holes in your back, and when you get to the one about Clara Barton comforting a wounded soldier just north of the cornfield, you'll remember what I just said. Don't buy this book for historical enlightenment, although that's there for me, a rank amateur. And don't buy it for "X's and O's", for they're not really there. Keep your copy of Sears alongside your bed if that's needed. And maybe, just maybe, don't even buy it for the educational value of reading the work of another wordsmith who uses the Queen's language with efficiency and precision. Instead, do what I've done and am going to do again twice more: Buy it for the fun of it, and buy it for a friend. Croker has not written a Civil War book. He's written a work of literature which simply exploits one of the most fertile historical subjects for a work of literature which has ever been. Too tactical ever to be another War and Peace, it nonetheless has its share of Prince Andreis and Count Buzuhoffs. I kinda like this book. Herb Edwards

Difficult tale well told.

So many books are written about the Civil War and so few combine the political context, the battle strategy, and the grueling day-to-day existence of the common soldier. To Make Men Free moves freely among the Oval Office, the generals' field headquarters, and the campfire, weaving all three aspects into one remarkable narrative. This book does for the Battle of Antietam what Killer Angles did for Gettysburg, even though Antietam is a much more complex and difficult tale to tell. Historical fiction must be enlightening and yet entertaining. Croker manages both.

From Someone Who Has Trouble Following Battles

I am not a history buff, and I've been frustrated before trying to pick through who was on which side during which battle (for instance the Shelby Foote books, which I understand are excellent!).TO MAKE MEN FREE is about only one battle, and Croker puts it in the context of not only the "big picture" of the war, but the political situation and the personalities involved. I know, it's fiction; that probably helped me get through it too.Anyhow, my point is, it's a riveting read, even if you don't normally like war stories. Highly recommended.

Antietam version of Killer Angels

I thoroughly enjoyed the book. Historical fiction is a rough topic since you cannot wander off course too much without disappointing the die-hards. Mr. Croker seemed to present the battle and it's participants in a comfortable reading sort of way. You felt the desperation of the South and the arrogance of the North.I feel I understand the players on a more personal level after reading the book. As for the accuracy of the battle, I cannot argue with the details. The parts that were incorrect (not sure there were any since I'm not an Antietam fact follower), I attribute to the fiction part of the book. I read the book more for the mood than the facts. I can read the facts from the other hundreds of books.If you are looking for a book to kick back, get a feel for the history of the subject and enjoy it at a personal level, then this is your kind of book. I put the level of enjoyable reading in the same category as the Killer Angel, Last Full Measure, etc ...Hope you get a chance to enjoy the book.

The hand of God

This is a novel in the style of The Killer Angels. It is about one of the most fascinating battles in American history, the Battle of Antietam. The title comes from a verse to The Battle Hymn of the Republic: "As [Christ] died to make men holy, let us die to make men free." The emphasis on death and freedom is entirely appropriate in that it was the Union's marginal victory at Antietam that allowed Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation thus taking the first actual step toward freeing the slaves. But this was at a cost. September 17, 1862 remains the bloodiest day in American history. More Americans died at Antietam than on D Day, or at Pearl Harbor, or on September 11. (Some early casualty estimates of September 11 suggested that Antietam's toll had finally been exceeded but more accurate later figures prove that Antietam still holds the record.) And the population at that time was a small fraction of today's population.Most Civil War battles, at least most single day Civil War battles, have a single location, a peach orchard or a sunken road, where the fighting was most intense and the bodies dropped liked dominos. Antietam has three: Miller's cornfield in the north, the sunken road forever after known as Bloody Lane in the middle, and the Rohrbach Bridge, forever after known as the Burnside Bridge to the south. The battle also features some of the most fascinating characters in American history; Lee, Stonewall Jackson, Ambrose Burnside, Joe Hooker, and George McClellan. McClellan, the Union commander, is particularly fascinating. This thirty-four year old had the supreme self confidence that only his belief that he was preordained by God to save the Union could convey. He also possessed massive amounts of paranoia that caused him to treat better men than himself with contempt, most notably Abraham Lincoln whom he routinely referred to as a baboon. McClellan had three reasons that he should have overwhelmingly crushed Lee and ended the war: He had massive numerical superiority approaching three to one, a stroke of luck placed a copy of Lee's plans into his hands at just the moment he could best use them, and Lee's troops were spread out such that McClellan could defeat them in detail. But McClellan squandered all of these advantages and barely avoided defeat. Despite the reality, McClellan believed that it was he who was massively out numbered. Despite knowledge of Lee's plans, he failed to move quickly enough to truly capitalize on this unique opportunity. When the actual shooting started, McClellan committed his troops piecemeal rather than launching coordinated attacks and thus was himself nearly defeated in detail. (Simulations of this battle from my cardboard counter days through Sid Meier's Antietam all require that only certain Union troops be available or activated at any given time. Otherwise, the Confederate player would not stand a chance. McClellan himself, of course, was not so restricted and could h