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Landscape Turned Red: The Battle of Antietam
Combining brilliant military analysis with rich narrative history, Landscape Turned Red is the definitive work on the Battle of Antietam.
The Civil War battle waged on September 17, 1862, at Antietam Creek, Maryland, was one of the bloodiest in the nation's history: on this single day, the war claimed nearly 23,000 casualties. Here renowned historian Stephen Sears draws on a remarkable cache of diaries, dispatches, and letters to recreate the vivid drama of Antietam as experienced not only by its leaders but also by its soldiers, both Union and Confederate, to produce what the New York Times Book Review has called "the best account of the Battle of Antietam."
The Civil War battle waged on September 17, 1862, at Antietam Creek, Maryland, was one of the bloodiest in the nation's history: on this single day, the war claimed nearly 23,000 casualties. Here renowned historian Stephen Sears draws on a remarkable cache of diaries, dispatches, and letters to recreate the vivid drama of Antietam as experienced not only by its leaders but also by its soldiers, both Union and Confederate, to produce what the New York Times Book Review has called "the best account of the Battle of Antietam."
464 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1983
About the author
Stephen W. Sears
51 books203 followersStephen Ward Sears is an American historian specializing in the American Civil War.
A graduate of Lakewood High School and Oberlin College, Sears attended a journalism seminar at Radcliffe-Harvard. As an author he has concentrated on the military history of the American Civil War, primarily the battles and leaders of the Army of the Potomac. He was employed as editor of the Educational Department at the American Heritage Publishing Company.
Sears resides in Norwalk, Connecticut.
A graduate of Lakewood High School and Oberlin College, Sears attended a journalism seminar at Radcliffe-Harvard. As an author he has concentrated on the military history of the American Civil War, primarily the battles and leaders of the Army of the Potomac. He was employed as editor of the Educational Department at the American Heritage Publishing Company.
Sears resides in Norwalk, Connecticut.
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February 28, 2021
“If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it. If I could save the Union by freeing all the slaves, I would do it. If I could save the Union by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do it.”
-- Abraham Lincoln, August 22, 1862
Stephen W. Sears’ Landscape Turned Red: The Battle of Antietam—which is also known as the Battle of Sharpsburg—(September 17, 1862) provides an in-depth, blow-by-blow account of the battle, which was the bloodiest day in the Civil War. The losses on both sides were unbelievably high: 12,400 Union and 10,320 Confederate dead and wounded—a total of 22,720 men. Sears doesn’t include the body count of the horses, which never volunteered to fight in the war. Antietam occurred a couple of weeks after Lee’s victory at Second Bull Run (August 30, 1862), making Antietam the first battle in the Civil War to take place on Northern soil.
Sears gives an intimate, blow-by-blow account of the events leading up to the battle. Because Lee’s opponent, General George B. McClellan, was known as an officer who never made a move until everything was perfectly ready, Lee felt confident that he could do what no general should do: split up his Army of Northern Virginia. Even worse, he sent six of his nine divisions—two thirds of his army—to surround and capture Harpers Ferry so they could capture the desperately needed machinery that manufactured muskets and bring it back to Virginia. But unknown to Lee, some Union soldiers found a copy of his orders, which was given to McClellan. McClellan decided to attack Lee, but his incompetence allowed Lee to push back hard against him.
Sears spends a lot of time following the lead-up to the battle, including following Jackson’s activities. But the main part of the book describes the Battle of Antietam at company and regimental levels. Sears describes the carnage, heroism, cowardice, and stupidity on both sides. McClellan, though, takes the prize for incompetence.
I found it unbelievable how soldiers on both sides fought one another to create what became the bloodiest single day of the Civil War. “The Cornfield,” “Sunken Road” (also called “Bloody Lane”), and “Burnsides Bridge” have become synonymous with both heroism and carnage. Right now, though, I’m reading James M. McPherson’s For Cause and Comrades, which explains why the soldiers on both sides fought as they did. McPherson quotes one officer who served in VietNam who said that no current soldier would ever fight with the tenacity and determination of the Civil War soldiers.
Even though the battle was a draw, President Abraham Lincoln used the battle as a reason for issuing his Emancipation Declaration. But there was a catch to the declaration: emancipation applied only to the states that were in rebellion, over which Lincoln had no control—but not the border slave states because he feared they might join the Confederate cause. He also removed McClellan from command.
The only drawback I found in the book was the effusion of names. Sears cited so many that I had a hard time keeping track of who they were.
All in all, Landscape Turned Red is an excellent, well written book.
-- Abraham Lincoln, August 22, 1862
Stephen W. Sears’ Landscape Turned Red: The Battle of Antietam—which is also known as the Battle of Sharpsburg—(September 17, 1862) provides an in-depth, blow-by-blow account of the battle, which was the bloodiest day in the Civil War. The losses on both sides were unbelievably high: 12,400 Union and 10,320 Confederate dead and wounded—a total of 22,720 men. Sears doesn’t include the body count of the horses, which never volunteered to fight in the war. Antietam occurred a couple of weeks after Lee’s victory at Second Bull Run (August 30, 1862), making Antietam the first battle in the Civil War to take place on Northern soil.
Sears gives an intimate, blow-by-blow account of the events leading up to the battle. Because Lee’s opponent, General George B. McClellan, was known as an officer who never made a move until everything was perfectly ready, Lee felt confident that he could do what no general should do: split up his Army of Northern Virginia. Even worse, he sent six of his nine divisions—two thirds of his army—to surround and capture Harpers Ferry so they could capture the desperately needed machinery that manufactured muskets and bring it back to Virginia. But unknown to Lee, some Union soldiers found a copy of his orders, which was given to McClellan. McClellan decided to attack Lee, but his incompetence allowed Lee to push back hard against him.
Sears spends a lot of time following the lead-up to the battle, including following Jackson’s activities. But the main part of the book describes the Battle of Antietam at company and regimental levels. Sears describes the carnage, heroism, cowardice, and stupidity on both sides. McClellan, though, takes the prize for incompetence.
I found it unbelievable how soldiers on both sides fought one another to create what became the bloodiest single day of the Civil War. “The Cornfield,” “Sunken Road” (also called “Bloody Lane”), and “Burnsides Bridge” have become synonymous with both heroism and carnage. Right now, though, I’m reading James M. McPherson’s For Cause and Comrades, which explains why the soldiers on both sides fought as they did. McPherson quotes one officer who served in VietNam who said that no current soldier would ever fight with the tenacity and determination of the Civil War soldiers.
Even though the battle was a draw, President Abraham Lincoln used the battle as a reason for issuing his Emancipation Declaration. But there was a catch to the declaration: emancipation applied only to the states that were in rebellion, over which Lincoln had no control—but not the border slave states because he feared they might join the Confederate cause. He also removed McClellan from command.
The only drawback I found in the book was the effusion of names. Sears cited so many that I had a hard time keeping track of who they were.
All in all, Landscape Turned Red is an excellent, well written book.
September 19, 2022
The lands and farms and forests around Sharpsburg, Maryland, became truly a world of blood on September 17, 1862, just as a peaceful little creek called Antietam ran with the blood of wounded and slain Unionists and Confederates. So absolute was the mayhem and slaughter and chaos and violence of the day that one participant – Private David Thompson of the 9th New York Infantry – later recalled that as his regiment was preparing to charge upon rebel positions in Sharpsburg, "the whole landscape for an instant turned slightly red.” And it is from that grim observation that historian Stephen W. Sears took the title for his magisterial 1983 book Landscape Turned Red: The Battle of Antietam.
Sears, who had previously worked as a writer and editor for the American Heritage publishing company, took a new direction when he wrote Landscape Turned Red. Since then, he has written many best-selling and critically praised works of Civil War history, focusing mainly on the Union Army of the Potomac and its battles and engagements from the first half of the war. In the process, he has, of necessity, placed careful focus on Union General George B. McClellan, who organized the army, gave it its name, and commanded it in two major campaigns.
Nicknamed “the Young Napoleon” for his precocious demonstration of the sort of military talent that the people of his time generally expected to find in much older commanders, McClellan was a mercurial figure who generally believed that he was always the smartest man in the room, and labored under an excessive sense of his own heroic destiny; he really seems to have believed that he had been chosen by God Himself to save the republic. He excelled as an organizer of the Union forces, but ultimately proved irresolute as a battlefield commander.
The stakes, when Confederate General Robert E. Lee led his Army of Northern Virginia northward across the Potomac River into Maryland, could not have been higher. The A.N.V. was feeling confident, its morale high, after a crushing victory over the Union Army at the same Bull Run/Manassas battlefield where the Confederates had won their first big victory one year before. Leading figures in the British Parliament were speaking openly about recognizing the Confederate States of America as a nation. Meanwhile, U.S. President Abraham Lincoln had written a proclamation emancipating all people held in slavery in rebel-controlled parts of the United States – but he knew that doing so would be meaningless unless the Union Army of the Potomac could win a battlefield victory over the rebels.
It was against that background that McClellan – demoted after the failure of his Peninsula Campaign against the Confederate capital at Richmond earlier in 1862 – was brought back to lead the Army of the Potomac. His reinstatement caused immediate joy among the A.O.P. rank and file, who loved McClellan and felt that they had been badly mishandled by General John Pope, the defeated Union commander at Second Bull Run/Second Manassas. Moreover, McClellan swiftly reorganized the defeated Union forces at Washington, and made them an army that could march northwest to take on the Confederate invaders.
But along with McClellan’s ability to organize came a strange inability to fight all-out. Was it his realization that Pope, so confident of victory at Second Bull Run, had completely failed to account for an entire division of rebel troops that had charged, as if out of nowhere, to pummel his army? Whatever the reason, McClellan labored under an enduring delusion that his numerically superior army was actually outnumbered by the Confederates. And his decision to put Chicago private detective Allan Pinkerton in charge of what one would now call G-2 (army intelligence), a task for which Pinkerton was not qualified, meant that Pinkerton was constantly providing McClellan with overestimates of rebel strength – overestimates that gave McClellan an excuse to move slowly when speed was called for.
Sears is strict, but not unfair, in assessing this dimension of McClellan’s exercise of command:
In the end, of course, responsibility for the evaluation of all his intelligence rested with General McClellan. Its contents could not have come as any real surprise to him; conditioned by more than a year of such fictions, he was fully prepared to accept that once again he was outnumbered. If those reports of numerous stragglers, and of ragged, barefooted Rebels scrambling for whatever food they could find raised any nagging suspicion in his mind that perhaps Richmond was incapable of supporting such a massive force on Northern soil, he left no record of it. In any case, it was hardly credible that General Lee was now daring to invite battle in command of an inferior force. Nor was it credible that God would call the commander of the Army of the Potomac to save his country from an outnumbered foe. Consequently, the Young Napoleon advanced his army slowly and with elaborate caution, making no attempt to seize control of events. (p. 107)
Throughout Landscape Turned Red, Sears shows a real talent for the telling anecdote that illuminates the larger story of Antietam – a massive and chaotic engagement that fought itself out along three distinct battlefronts over the course of a long September day. When describing the experience of the Union 12th Corps on the northern part of the battlefield, for instance, Sears tells how the soldiers of the corps, on their way to the relief of 1st Corps troops in the North Woods, “were unnerved by the grim debris of battle beginning to appear. The walking wounded were coming back, bloody and dazed. ‘Go in, boys,’ a man with a shattered wrist kept repeating; ‘give ‘em hell, give ‘em hell!’ They passed an artilleryman with both legs terribly mangled, screaming in agony and pleading for someone to shoot him” (p. 204).
One can see, at the Antietam National Battlefield of today, an upturned cannon that marks the site where the 12th Corps’ commander, Joseph K.F. Mansfield, a veteran of 40 years of army service, was fatally wounded in the fighting. “For months, the earnest old regular had pulled strings in Washington to win the field command that would crown his career, and it had lasted barely two days” (p. 206). Mansfield’s is not the only monument of its kind at Antietam: six generals – three from each side – were killed or fatally wounded on the battlefield that day.
Considering the sheer intensity of the combat at Antietam -- about 3,700 killed and 17,300 wounded on the two sides -- it should be no surprise that when the day was over, both commanders realized that their armies had been fought to exhaustion. Sears records that, in spite of Lee's well-known aggressiveness in combat command, “Finally it became clear even to Lee that the Army of Northern Virginia had been fearfully wounded in spirit, as well as in body, at Sharpsburg. Since early August, he had driven his men ruthlessly toward that goal of a decisive victory that might spell Southern independence. Now they could be driven no more” (p. 308). On the other side of the battle lines, McClellan’s sense of how Antietam had gone seems to the modern student of the battle little short of delusional: “His role as the Union’s messiah was vindicated, his campaign a personal triumph over every imaginable adversary: he had repelled both the massive Rebel army in the field and the veritable army of detractors in the capital” (p. 308).
In fact, with the Confederate Army retreating across the Potomac after the battle, Antietam was enough of a Union victory for President Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation, forever changing the moral basis for the war, and ensuring that there would be no European intervention on the side of the Confederacy. McClellan, slow and reluctant in his pursuit of the defeated rebels, would soon be removed from his command, as Lincoln continued his search for a general who could both organize an army and command it in battle. And the officers and soldiers who served at Antietam would forever remember it as a uniquely intense and horrific battlefield experience.
Landscape Turned Red is gracefully written and well-illustrated with photographs and battlefield maps. As a Marylander who has visited the major sites of the Antietam campaign, I have a whole shelf filled with Antietam books. But if I could only recommend one Antietam book to a reader new to the campaign, Landscape Turned Red would be it.
Sears, who had previously worked as a writer and editor for the American Heritage publishing company, took a new direction when he wrote Landscape Turned Red. Since then, he has written many best-selling and critically praised works of Civil War history, focusing mainly on the Union Army of the Potomac and its battles and engagements from the first half of the war. In the process, he has, of necessity, placed careful focus on Union General George B. McClellan, who organized the army, gave it its name, and commanded it in two major campaigns.
Nicknamed “the Young Napoleon” for his precocious demonstration of the sort of military talent that the people of his time generally expected to find in much older commanders, McClellan was a mercurial figure who generally believed that he was always the smartest man in the room, and labored under an excessive sense of his own heroic destiny; he really seems to have believed that he had been chosen by God Himself to save the republic. He excelled as an organizer of the Union forces, but ultimately proved irresolute as a battlefield commander.
The stakes, when Confederate General Robert E. Lee led his Army of Northern Virginia northward across the Potomac River into Maryland, could not have been higher. The A.N.V. was feeling confident, its morale high, after a crushing victory over the Union Army at the same Bull Run/Manassas battlefield where the Confederates had won their first big victory one year before. Leading figures in the British Parliament were speaking openly about recognizing the Confederate States of America as a nation. Meanwhile, U.S. President Abraham Lincoln had written a proclamation emancipating all people held in slavery in rebel-controlled parts of the United States – but he knew that doing so would be meaningless unless the Union Army of the Potomac could win a battlefield victory over the rebels.
It was against that background that McClellan – demoted after the failure of his Peninsula Campaign against the Confederate capital at Richmond earlier in 1862 – was brought back to lead the Army of the Potomac. His reinstatement caused immediate joy among the A.O.P. rank and file, who loved McClellan and felt that they had been badly mishandled by General John Pope, the defeated Union commander at Second Bull Run/Second Manassas. Moreover, McClellan swiftly reorganized the defeated Union forces at Washington, and made them an army that could march northwest to take on the Confederate invaders.
But along with McClellan’s ability to organize came a strange inability to fight all-out. Was it his realization that Pope, so confident of victory at Second Bull Run, had completely failed to account for an entire division of rebel troops that had charged, as if out of nowhere, to pummel his army? Whatever the reason, McClellan labored under an enduring delusion that his numerically superior army was actually outnumbered by the Confederates. And his decision to put Chicago private detective Allan Pinkerton in charge of what one would now call G-2 (army intelligence), a task for which Pinkerton was not qualified, meant that Pinkerton was constantly providing McClellan with overestimates of rebel strength – overestimates that gave McClellan an excuse to move slowly when speed was called for.
Sears is strict, but not unfair, in assessing this dimension of McClellan’s exercise of command:
In the end, of course, responsibility for the evaluation of all his intelligence rested with General McClellan. Its contents could not have come as any real surprise to him; conditioned by more than a year of such fictions, he was fully prepared to accept that once again he was outnumbered. If those reports of numerous stragglers, and of ragged, barefooted Rebels scrambling for whatever food they could find raised any nagging suspicion in his mind that perhaps Richmond was incapable of supporting such a massive force on Northern soil, he left no record of it. In any case, it was hardly credible that General Lee was now daring to invite battle in command of an inferior force. Nor was it credible that God would call the commander of the Army of the Potomac to save his country from an outnumbered foe. Consequently, the Young Napoleon advanced his army slowly and with elaborate caution, making no attempt to seize control of events. (p. 107)
Throughout Landscape Turned Red, Sears shows a real talent for the telling anecdote that illuminates the larger story of Antietam – a massive and chaotic engagement that fought itself out along three distinct battlefronts over the course of a long September day. When describing the experience of the Union 12th Corps on the northern part of the battlefield, for instance, Sears tells how the soldiers of the corps, on their way to the relief of 1st Corps troops in the North Woods, “were unnerved by the grim debris of battle beginning to appear. The walking wounded were coming back, bloody and dazed. ‘Go in, boys,’ a man with a shattered wrist kept repeating; ‘give ‘em hell, give ‘em hell!’ They passed an artilleryman with both legs terribly mangled, screaming in agony and pleading for someone to shoot him” (p. 204).
One can see, at the Antietam National Battlefield of today, an upturned cannon that marks the site where the 12th Corps’ commander, Joseph K.F. Mansfield, a veteran of 40 years of army service, was fatally wounded in the fighting. “For months, the earnest old regular had pulled strings in Washington to win the field command that would crown his career, and it had lasted barely two days” (p. 206). Mansfield’s is not the only monument of its kind at Antietam: six generals – three from each side – were killed or fatally wounded on the battlefield that day.
Considering the sheer intensity of the combat at Antietam -- about 3,700 killed and 17,300 wounded on the two sides -- it should be no surprise that when the day was over, both commanders realized that their armies had been fought to exhaustion. Sears records that, in spite of Lee's well-known aggressiveness in combat command, “Finally it became clear even to Lee that the Army of Northern Virginia had been fearfully wounded in spirit, as well as in body, at Sharpsburg. Since early August, he had driven his men ruthlessly toward that goal of a decisive victory that might spell Southern independence. Now they could be driven no more” (p. 308). On the other side of the battle lines, McClellan’s sense of how Antietam had gone seems to the modern student of the battle little short of delusional: “His role as the Union’s messiah was vindicated, his campaign a personal triumph over every imaginable adversary: he had repelled both the massive Rebel army in the field and the veritable army of detractors in the capital” (p. 308).
In fact, with the Confederate Army retreating across the Potomac after the battle, Antietam was enough of a Union victory for President Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation, forever changing the moral basis for the war, and ensuring that there would be no European intervention on the side of the Confederacy. McClellan, slow and reluctant in his pursuit of the defeated rebels, would soon be removed from his command, as Lincoln continued his search for a general who could both organize an army and command it in battle. And the officers and soldiers who served at Antietam would forever remember it as a uniquely intense and horrific battlefield experience.
Landscape Turned Red is gracefully written and well-illustrated with photographs and battlefield maps. As a Marylander who has visited the major sites of the Antietam campaign, I have a whole shelf filled with Antietam books. But if I could only recommend one Antietam book to a reader new to the campaign, Landscape Turned Red would be it.
April 27, 2016
The terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 were so sudden, shocking, and horrible that they defied the imagination. Words were insufficient to describe the events, and many survivors said of the experience, simply, that it was “like a movie.” To grasp the magnitude of the death and destruction of that day, many attempted to place it within a historical context. The search for a historical parallel, a day of equivalent violence, led to another lethal September, this one occurring in 1862.
The battle of Antietam (or Sharpsburg, depending on whether you prefer manmade to geographical landmarks) still stands as the deadliest single day in American history, a history rife with deadly days. On September 17, 1862, near a small Maryland town, 3,654 Americans (Union and Confederate) died, and 22,717 were wounded. Stephen Sears tells the story of this great civil bloodletting in Landscape Turned Red (the title comes from a literary private of the 9th New York, who was reminded of Goethe’s description of a battle in the Napoleonic wars, when “the whole landscape for an instant turned slightly red”).
In 1862, after taking command of the Confederate army (following Joe Johnson’s wounding), Robert E. Lee won two great victories, first knocking George McClellan off the Peninsula (aborting McClellan’s advance on Richmond), and then thrashing the hapless John Pope at Second Bull Run (leading Pope to banishment in Minnesota, and the Sioux Uprising). Like a guy who’s just won the lottery, and doesn’t know what to do with all the money, Lee cast about for his next move. Ultimately, instead of opening a night club, he decided to take the offensive and bring the war to the North (as Sears points out, this was a break with Confederate strategy, as the South was busily portraying itself as innocent victims of Northern aggression).
Lee’s decision was taken for a number of reasons. By moving north, he could relieve pressure on the Virginia frontier, goad the Army of the Potomac onto a battlefield of his choosing, and hopefully demonstrate to the fence-sitting nations of Europe that the Confederacy was a viable nation, deserving of formal recognition.
Convinced of McClellan’s timidity (and perhaps starting to convince himself of his own infallibility), Lee undertook the risky (and militarily unorthodox) move of splitting his inferior forces in the face of a superior enemy. With his divided army, Lee planned to capture Harper’s Ferry, re-link his army, and destroy McClellan’s army, possibly somewhere in Pennsylvania.
It is impossible to know how this strategy would have worked in practice. (While Lee counted on McClellan’s cautiousness in splitting his forces, he seems to ignore the fact that McClellan would have been unlikely to give Lee battle on ground of Lee’s choosing). We can only speculate as to how things might have gone, since McClellan soon received one of the great gifts of the Civil War: a copy of Lee’s Order 191, which described in detail the division and disposition of Lee’s army.
(The orders were found wrapped around three cigars by a corporal of the 27th Indiana. Sears gives the fullest possible explanation for the loss of the orders in an appendix).
The orders made their way to McClellan, who suddenly held in his hands the blueprint to destroying Lee in detail, one small army group at a time. McClellan knew this, and boasted to a colleague that if he could not “whip Bobby Lee” he would be willing to go home. Despite this optimism, McClellan acted entirely in character. With a slowness that must have had Abe Lincoln stitching McClellan voodoo dolls and jabbing them in the ass with hatpins, McClellan put the Army of the Potomac in motion.
After fights at Turner’s Gap and Crampton’s Gap, both pyrrhic Union victories, Lee and around 28,000 of his men arrayed themselves along Antietam Creek, outside Sharpsburg, Maryland. McClellan’s army, with overwhelming numerical superiority, drew up to fight them. And then waited. And waited. And waited, for a full day, with McClellan deluded by the belief that Lee had 100,000 men waiting for him across that narrow strip of water. In the meantime, the fragmented portions of Lee’s army was rushing to join him.
Finally, McClellan launched his attacks, which were uncoordinated and piecemeal. One Union commander complained that McClellan sent his men into battle “in driblets.” McClellan’s failure to concentrate his forces or to attack both flanks at once allowed Lee to shift men along his interior lines, preventing the Union from flanking his army. The battle ended in stalemate. The next day, McClellan refused to press his advantage; his army stayed in camp as Lee slipped back into Virginia.
This is the second Civil War battle-study I’ve read by Stephen Sears, the other being his 600 page tome on Gettysburg. The two books, and the two battles, share many similarities. Historically speaking, both Antietam and Gettysburg were fought at small, heretofore unknown crossroad towns; both were precipitated by Lee’s army taking the offensive; and both ended with the battlefield in Union hands and the Confederate army fleeing unmolested.
Literarily speaking, Sears devotes a lot of time in each book to explaining the tactics and troop movements leading up to the final clash of arms. In both books he does an admirable job interweaving intimate, firsthand accounts of the fighting with clearly-written descriptions of battlefield maneuvers and critical, dispassionate judgments on the choices made by the leadership on both sides.
In Landscape Turned Red, though, Sears delivers an overall livelier narrative than in Gettysburg. He does not aspire to be Shelby Foote or Bruce Catton, but his style is engaging and, at times, evocative:
Antietam is a more difficult battle to describe than Gettysburg. At Gettysburg, the troops were spread about on a wide front, angling for well-defined geographic points. The geography defined the strategy, and in that sense, all the maneuvering takes on logical sense (it’s always hard for a layperson, such as myself, to look at ground as a soldier looks at ground). For instance, it is relatively easy to follow the route of Pickett’s charge: the Confederates go one way for awhile, and then they turn around and go the other way, with a bit more speed.
This is not the case at Antietam. Here, much of the battle took place in small, deadly spaces, with various bodies of troops charging, colliding, retreating, and then charging again, all on the same patch of earth. At the Cornfield, for instance (it’s odd how a deadly battle can give immortality to something as benign as a farmer’s square of corn), so many different troops engaged each other at so many different times that any attempt to plot the movements on a map turns out looking like a child scribbling on a placemat at an International House of Pancakes. (The maps that are included are helpful, and quite detailed, and even go so far as to tell you what crop was planted in each field).
Despite the confused unfolding of the battle, caused mainly by McClellan’s distant, hands-off approach to generalship, Sears doesn’t let you get lost (or rather, you won’t be lost for very long). He helps the reader maintain his bearings by keeping the various generals’ internal logic at the fore. It’s one thing to say that the objective of Company A is this hill or that forest; it’s another thing to explain to the reader why that hill or forest is important; the dangers presented in the approach; and the functional difficulties presented in trying to move large bodies of men from one spot to another while remaining in formation.
The one thing I missed in Landscape Turned Red, which was present in Gettysburg, is the focus on the human factors involved in each of the decisions made during the battle. Don’t get me wrong. This element is certainly present. However, it tends to recede a bit into the background, especially when it comes to the Confederate viewpoint. Lee and his lieutenants (Longstreet, Jackson, Hill) nearly disappear for long stretches of this book. This is in sharp contrast to Sears’s handling of Gettysburg, where he alternates viewpoints throughout. (I realize this might be partly due to the fact that Lee didn't have as much to do at Antietam as at other battles, since he didn't have enough men to move onto the offensive). In Sears’s telling, the outcome of Antietam was less the result of Lee’s generalship, and more the fault of the Army of the Potomac’s commanders, specifically McClellan.
Even some of the Union commanders could have used a bit more analyzing. For instance, there is the enigma of the beautifully-whiskered Ambrose Burnside, a portly, genial man, who well-understood his own glaring limitations. Burnside was a favorite of his contemporaries, had a penchant for great personal courage, and yet tended to fall into deep, childish sulks when he didn't get his way. At Petersburg, for example, he spearheaded the ingenious plan to tunnel beneath the Confederate works and blow a hole in their trenches. He then chose and specially trained a black division to lead the assault. When Meade and Grant balked at sending blacks in first, Burnside’s psyche collapsed, and he chose the black division’s replacement by having three division commanders draw lots (!). The “winning” commander was a drunk, and the ensuing Battle of the Crater a bloody, wasted opportunity. At Antietam, Burnside was chafing under a personal slight from McClellan. Meanwhile, coincidentally or not, Burnside’s attack on Lee’s right flank (over the bridge that would later bear his name) was very slow in developing. I would have like Sears to have spent a bit more time probing the recesses of Burnside’s mind on that day (however, to be fair to Sears, he does include a discussion of Burnside’s actions in an appendix).
The man at the center of Landscape Turned Red, the general who receives all the attention usually allotted to Robert E. Lee, is General George Brinton McClellan, the Young Napoleon, the commander of the Army of the Potomac. Sears is something of a McClellan expert who has written a biography of the man, as well as editing a collection of his letters.
McClellan has come down to us through history as a master planner, organizer, and inspirer. The only thing he lacked, the thing that kept him from greatness, was guts. In a way, he is something of a sympathetic character. He was too young, too inexperienced for the position in which he was placed. He built up his great “Army of the Republic,” came to love his men, and when the time came to risk their lives, he flinched. Unfortunately, his virtues as a human are vices for a general, and his risk-averseness and notions of limited war ultimately extended the duration of the Civil War (and cost far for men than saved by his caution). Of course, whatever sympathy you might gain for McClellan are lost the instant he refers to Lincoln as a “Gorilla.” For whatever reason, possibly as a psychological shield to cover his own insecurities, McClellan exhibited various mental health symptoms, including narcissism, grandiosity, and paranoia. In his own world, he could never do wrong.
You might think that Sears, by dint of writing McClellan’s biography, would go soft on McClellan. Moreover, in his other books, Sears has critically reevaluated and rehabilitated (at least partially) the reputations of General Joe Hooker (who proved to be a fine corps commander at Antietam, until felled by a wound) and General George Meade, the victor at Gettysburg. Here, however, Sears declines the opportunity to polish McClellan’s reputation.
Now, I have been led to believe there is a certain faction of revisionist historians who believe that McClellan has been posthumously shafted. They point to his organization skills, as well as the fact that tactically speaking, he won more battles than he lost (despite getting kicked off the Peninsula, McClellan “won” most of the Seven Days’ Battle).
Sears does not agree with this line of thinking. He recites all the obvious problems with McClellan’s leadership: the grossly inflated estimates of his enemy; his oft-infuriating caution; his well-remarked-upon slowness; and his inability to take advantage of any opportunity, even when it’s hand-delivered along with three cigars.
Sears goes well beyond that, however, and is extremely critical of McClellan’s battlefield handling of the Army of the Potomac. Unlike Meade at Gettysburg, who was everywhere on the line, constantly shifting troop dispositions, McClellan spent most of Antietam sitting in a camp chair smoking a cigar, with all the apparent interest of a father looking at his kids’ watercolor painting while simultaneously trying to watch a football game. As if that’s not enough, Sears is less than awed by McClellan’s job as an organizer; indeed, he describes an Army of the Potomac that resembles a sluggish beast moving with all the speed and grace of a three-legged 20-year-old cat that has just polished off a saucer of milk. The Army of the Potomac was never a fighting machine; it was a huge, inefficient organism that hemorrhaged supplies, stragglers, and money. In other words, it was the military equivalent of our current healthcare system.
Antietam is an interesting battle. Its place in the historical firmament is written in the blood that was shed. Tactically speaking, it was a draw. McClellan won the field, but that was not his objective; Lee had to retreat, but his army remained intact. Strategically, unlike at Gettysburg, Antietam did not mark an overall military turning point. In fact, Lee’s greatest victories were still ahead.
Rather, Antietam marked a moral turning point. Shortly afterwards, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. However limited the reach of the Proclamation (Lincoln, the lawyer, tried to root it in his Constitutionally-granted War Powers), it explicitly stated what had always been true about the Civil War: that it was caused by slavery; and that it must end with slavery’s destruction.
Accordingly, one should not look at Antietam as a bloody draw; a wasted opportunity for the Union (and what might have happened had McClellan, the anti-abolitionist Democrat won the Civil War at Antietam?). Instead, it should be seen as the moment when the Civil War lost its opaqueness and became a crusade. No longer was the War clouded with ambiguous soundbites like “States’ rights” or “restoring the Union.” From Antietam on, the war was about freedom: those who were for it, and those who were against it. It was a war, as Lincoln famously noted, that would last until “every drop of blood drawn with the lash” would be repaid “by another drawn with the sword.”
The Battle of Antietam, followed by the Emancipation Proclamation gave righteousness to the Union cause; it made European intervention virtually impossible; and it consigned the South to make its bitter fight alone.
The battle of Antietam (or Sharpsburg, depending on whether you prefer manmade to geographical landmarks) still stands as the deadliest single day in American history, a history rife with deadly days. On September 17, 1862, near a small Maryland town, 3,654 Americans (Union and Confederate) died, and 22,717 were wounded. Stephen Sears tells the story of this great civil bloodletting in Landscape Turned Red (the title comes from a literary private of the 9th New York, who was reminded of Goethe’s description of a battle in the Napoleonic wars, when “the whole landscape for an instant turned slightly red”).
In 1862, after taking command of the Confederate army (following Joe Johnson’s wounding), Robert E. Lee won two great victories, first knocking George McClellan off the Peninsula (aborting McClellan’s advance on Richmond), and then thrashing the hapless John Pope at Second Bull Run (leading Pope to banishment in Minnesota, and the Sioux Uprising). Like a guy who’s just won the lottery, and doesn’t know what to do with all the money, Lee cast about for his next move. Ultimately, instead of opening a night club, he decided to take the offensive and bring the war to the North (as Sears points out, this was a break with Confederate strategy, as the South was busily portraying itself as innocent victims of Northern aggression).
Lee’s decision was taken for a number of reasons. By moving north, he could relieve pressure on the Virginia frontier, goad the Army of the Potomac onto a battlefield of his choosing, and hopefully demonstrate to the fence-sitting nations of Europe that the Confederacy was a viable nation, deserving of formal recognition.
Convinced of McClellan’s timidity (and perhaps starting to convince himself of his own infallibility), Lee undertook the risky (and militarily unorthodox) move of splitting his inferior forces in the face of a superior enemy. With his divided army, Lee planned to capture Harper’s Ferry, re-link his army, and destroy McClellan’s army, possibly somewhere in Pennsylvania.
It is impossible to know how this strategy would have worked in practice. (While Lee counted on McClellan’s cautiousness in splitting his forces, he seems to ignore the fact that McClellan would have been unlikely to give Lee battle on ground of Lee’s choosing). We can only speculate as to how things might have gone, since McClellan soon received one of the great gifts of the Civil War: a copy of Lee’s Order 191, which described in detail the division and disposition of Lee’s army.
(The orders were found wrapped around three cigars by a corporal of the 27th Indiana. Sears gives the fullest possible explanation for the loss of the orders in an appendix).
The orders made their way to McClellan, who suddenly held in his hands the blueprint to destroying Lee in detail, one small army group at a time. McClellan knew this, and boasted to a colleague that if he could not “whip Bobby Lee” he would be willing to go home. Despite this optimism, McClellan acted entirely in character. With a slowness that must have had Abe Lincoln stitching McClellan voodoo dolls and jabbing them in the ass with hatpins, McClellan put the Army of the Potomac in motion.
After fights at Turner’s Gap and Crampton’s Gap, both pyrrhic Union victories, Lee and around 28,000 of his men arrayed themselves along Antietam Creek, outside Sharpsburg, Maryland. McClellan’s army, with overwhelming numerical superiority, drew up to fight them. And then waited. And waited. And waited, for a full day, with McClellan deluded by the belief that Lee had 100,000 men waiting for him across that narrow strip of water. In the meantime, the fragmented portions of Lee’s army was rushing to join him.
Finally, McClellan launched his attacks, which were uncoordinated and piecemeal. One Union commander complained that McClellan sent his men into battle “in driblets.” McClellan’s failure to concentrate his forces or to attack both flanks at once allowed Lee to shift men along his interior lines, preventing the Union from flanking his army. The battle ended in stalemate. The next day, McClellan refused to press his advantage; his army stayed in camp as Lee slipped back into Virginia.
This is the second Civil War battle-study I’ve read by Stephen Sears, the other being his 600 page tome on Gettysburg. The two books, and the two battles, share many similarities. Historically speaking, both Antietam and Gettysburg were fought at small, heretofore unknown crossroad towns; both were precipitated by Lee’s army taking the offensive; and both ended with the battlefield in Union hands and the Confederate army fleeing unmolested.
Literarily speaking, Sears devotes a lot of time in each book to explaining the tactics and troop movements leading up to the final clash of arms. In both books he does an admirable job interweaving intimate, firsthand accounts of the fighting with clearly-written descriptions of battlefield maneuvers and critical, dispassionate judgments on the choices made by the leadership on both sides.
In Landscape Turned Red, though, Sears delivers an overall livelier narrative than in Gettysburg. He does not aspire to be Shelby Foote or Bruce Catton, but his style is engaging and, at times, evocative:
Before the armies came, Sharpsburg…was a quiet place, an entirely ordinary little rural community where the roads came together. In September 1862 it was just a year short of being a century old, having been founded a dozen years before the Revolution and named in honor of Maryland colonial governor Horatio Sharpe. Its main street was called Main Street, and there was the usual proportion of churches and taverns and stores, with the 1,300 residents living in unprepossessing frame houses scattered along side streets and lanes. Some of them worked on the nearby Chesapeake and Ohio Canal or at the ironworks a few miles away at the mouth of Antietam Cree, but mostly they made their living as shopkeepers and blacksmiths and gristmill hands serving the farming trade. A good many of the local farmers were of sturdy German stock, with names like Rohrbach and Mumma and Otto and Poffenberger, and they had made the land bloom. In neatly fenced fields the corn stood tall, the orchards were heavy with fruit, and the haylofts in the big barns were full. Life in Sharpsburg might have continued on its pleasant, uneventful way, unremarked by history like a thousand other little towns dotting the American landscape, except for that suddenly all-important fact that it was the place where the roads came together…
Antietam is a more difficult battle to describe than Gettysburg. At Gettysburg, the troops were spread about on a wide front, angling for well-defined geographic points. The geography defined the strategy, and in that sense, all the maneuvering takes on logical sense (it’s always hard for a layperson, such as myself, to look at ground as a soldier looks at ground). For instance, it is relatively easy to follow the route of Pickett’s charge: the Confederates go one way for awhile, and then they turn around and go the other way, with a bit more speed.
This is not the case at Antietam. Here, much of the battle took place in small, deadly spaces, with various bodies of troops charging, colliding, retreating, and then charging again, all on the same patch of earth. At the Cornfield, for instance (it’s odd how a deadly battle can give immortality to something as benign as a farmer’s square of corn), so many different troops engaged each other at so many different times that any attempt to plot the movements on a map turns out looking like a child scribbling on a placemat at an International House of Pancakes. (The maps that are included are helpful, and quite detailed, and even go so far as to tell you what crop was planted in each field).
Despite the confused unfolding of the battle, caused mainly by McClellan’s distant, hands-off approach to generalship, Sears doesn’t let you get lost (or rather, you won’t be lost for very long). He helps the reader maintain his bearings by keeping the various generals’ internal logic at the fore. It’s one thing to say that the objective of Company A is this hill or that forest; it’s another thing to explain to the reader why that hill or forest is important; the dangers presented in the approach; and the functional difficulties presented in trying to move large bodies of men from one spot to another while remaining in formation.
The one thing I missed in Landscape Turned Red, which was present in Gettysburg, is the focus on the human factors involved in each of the decisions made during the battle. Don’t get me wrong. This element is certainly present. However, it tends to recede a bit into the background, especially when it comes to the Confederate viewpoint. Lee and his lieutenants (Longstreet, Jackson, Hill) nearly disappear for long stretches of this book. This is in sharp contrast to Sears’s handling of Gettysburg, where he alternates viewpoints throughout. (I realize this might be partly due to the fact that Lee didn't have as much to do at Antietam as at other battles, since he didn't have enough men to move onto the offensive). In Sears’s telling, the outcome of Antietam was less the result of Lee’s generalship, and more the fault of the Army of the Potomac’s commanders, specifically McClellan.
Even some of the Union commanders could have used a bit more analyzing. For instance, there is the enigma of the beautifully-whiskered Ambrose Burnside, a portly, genial man, who well-understood his own glaring limitations. Burnside was a favorite of his contemporaries, had a penchant for great personal courage, and yet tended to fall into deep, childish sulks when he didn't get his way. At Petersburg, for example, he spearheaded the ingenious plan to tunnel beneath the Confederate works and blow a hole in their trenches. He then chose and specially trained a black division to lead the assault. When Meade and Grant balked at sending blacks in first, Burnside’s psyche collapsed, and he chose the black division’s replacement by having three division commanders draw lots (!). The “winning” commander was a drunk, and the ensuing Battle of the Crater a bloody, wasted opportunity. At Antietam, Burnside was chafing under a personal slight from McClellan. Meanwhile, coincidentally or not, Burnside’s attack on Lee’s right flank (over the bridge that would later bear his name) was very slow in developing. I would have like Sears to have spent a bit more time probing the recesses of Burnside’s mind on that day (however, to be fair to Sears, he does include a discussion of Burnside’s actions in an appendix).
The man at the center of Landscape Turned Red, the general who receives all the attention usually allotted to Robert E. Lee, is General George Brinton McClellan, the Young Napoleon, the commander of the Army of the Potomac. Sears is something of a McClellan expert who has written a biography of the man, as well as editing a collection of his letters.
McClellan has come down to us through history as a master planner, organizer, and inspirer. The only thing he lacked, the thing that kept him from greatness, was guts. In a way, he is something of a sympathetic character. He was too young, too inexperienced for the position in which he was placed. He built up his great “Army of the Republic,” came to love his men, and when the time came to risk their lives, he flinched. Unfortunately, his virtues as a human are vices for a general, and his risk-averseness and notions of limited war ultimately extended the duration of the Civil War (and cost far for men than saved by his caution). Of course, whatever sympathy you might gain for McClellan are lost the instant he refers to Lincoln as a “Gorilla.” For whatever reason, possibly as a psychological shield to cover his own insecurities, McClellan exhibited various mental health symptoms, including narcissism, grandiosity, and paranoia. In his own world, he could never do wrong.
You might think that Sears, by dint of writing McClellan’s biography, would go soft on McClellan. Moreover, in his other books, Sears has critically reevaluated and rehabilitated (at least partially) the reputations of General Joe Hooker (who proved to be a fine corps commander at Antietam, until felled by a wound) and General George Meade, the victor at Gettysburg. Here, however, Sears declines the opportunity to polish McClellan’s reputation.
Now, I have been led to believe there is a certain faction of revisionist historians who believe that McClellan has been posthumously shafted. They point to his organization skills, as well as the fact that tactically speaking, he won more battles than he lost (despite getting kicked off the Peninsula, McClellan “won” most of the Seven Days’ Battle).
Sears does not agree with this line of thinking. He recites all the obvious problems with McClellan’s leadership: the grossly inflated estimates of his enemy; his oft-infuriating caution; his well-remarked-upon slowness; and his inability to take advantage of any opportunity, even when it’s hand-delivered along with three cigars.
Sears goes well beyond that, however, and is extremely critical of McClellan’s battlefield handling of the Army of the Potomac. Unlike Meade at Gettysburg, who was everywhere on the line, constantly shifting troop dispositions, McClellan spent most of Antietam sitting in a camp chair smoking a cigar, with all the apparent interest of a father looking at his kids’ watercolor painting while simultaneously trying to watch a football game. As if that’s not enough, Sears is less than awed by McClellan’s job as an organizer; indeed, he describes an Army of the Potomac that resembles a sluggish beast moving with all the speed and grace of a three-legged 20-year-old cat that has just polished off a saucer of milk. The Army of the Potomac was never a fighting machine; it was a huge, inefficient organism that hemorrhaged supplies, stragglers, and money. In other words, it was the military equivalent of our current healthcare system.
Antietam is an interesting battle. Its place in the historical firmament is written in the blood that was shed. Tactically speaking, it was a draw. McClellan won the field, but that was not his objective; Lee had to retreat, but his army remained intact. Strategically, unlike at Gettysburg, Antietam did not mark an overall military turning point. In fact, Lee’s greatest victories were still ahead.
Rather, Antietam marked a moral turning point. Shortly afterwards, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. However limited the reach of the Proclamation (Lincoln, the lawyer, tried to root it in his Constitutionally-granted War Powers), it explicitly stated what had always been true about the Civil War: that it was caused by slavery; and that it must end with slavery’s destruction.
Accordingly, one should not look at Antietam as a bloody draw; a wasted opportunity for the Union (and what might have happened had McClellan, the anti-abolitionist Democrat won the Civil War at Antietam?). Instead, it should be seen as the moment when the Civil War lost its opaqueness and became a crusade. No longer was the War clouded with ambiguous soundbites like “States’ rights” or “restoring the Union.” From Antietam on, the war was about freedom: those who were for it, and those who were against it. It was a war, as Lincoln famously noted, that would last until “every drop of blood drawn with the lash” would be repaid “by another drawn with the sword.”
The Battle of Antietam, followed by the Emancipation Proclamation gave righteousness to the Union cause; it made European intervention virtually impossible; and it consigned the South to make its bitter fight alone.
March 7, 2024
I wouldn’t necessarily call this “the definitive work on the Battle of Antietam” anymore, which is how the book’s description read when it was published more than four decades ago. But it is a well-written, very readable, concise history that will certainly do the job for anyone interested in the battle but not interested in digging too deeply into the details.
As compared to a modern work like Scott Hartwig’s exhaustively thorough but nuanced To Antietam Creek: The Maryland Campaign of September 1862 and its companion volume I Dread the Thought of the Place: The Battle of Antietam and the End of the Maryland Campaign, Sears’s work takes a more conventional approach, which I suppose was the historiographical standard at the time it was written. Hartwig takes care not to oversell his narrative, by explaining that Antietam was “a turning point but not the turning point” of the Civil War, while Sears presents the less subtle view that “Antietam was pivotal in the history of the Civil War.” Hartwig seeks to more fully understand the strengths and weaknesses and motives of Union Gen. George McClellan, while Sears offers the more traditional, relentlessly harsh assessment of McClellan that focuses on his failings.
The early chapters of the book hammer home this point, with a critical assessment of McClellan's performance during previous campaigns. This appraisal continues as the Maryland Campaign begins, and it gets to the point that Sears resorts to outright speculation in his condemnation of McClellan. While criticizing McClellan for not moving more swiftly after finding Gen Robert E. Lee’s “Lost Order,” he declares that “no doubt, had the situation been reversed,” Lee “would have had (Stonewall) Jackson's foot cavalry on the march within the hour and every other man in his army who could carry a rifle moving after them within two.” How could he possibly know that, and say it so declaratively?
The intense focus on McClellan and the Union Army comes at the expense of a similar focus on Lee and the Confederates. We learn about McClellan’s failings, but not Lee’s successes. We learn how McClellan reacted to Lee’s invasion of the North, but there’s not much discussion of what led to Lee’s invasion in the first place.
All of that said, the book comes alive as the battle begins. Sears provides an excellent description of the mood - the anticipation, the dread, the nervous energy - on the eve of the battle. He paints a very understandable and easy-to-visualize picture of the landscape, the geography of the battlefield and its nondescript landmarks that would soon become legendary. And a lot of the writing is just plain good. After describing the sheer ordinariness of a town like Sharpsburg, he observes ominously that “life in Sharpsburg might have continued on in its pleasant, uneventful way, unremarked by history like a thousand other little towns dotting the American landscape, except for that suddenly all-important fact that it was the place where the roads came together.”
The battle itself is described with just the right mix of soldiers’ experiences and generals’ strategies, providing both an on-the-ground perspective that takes you into the battle, and an eagle’s-eye-view that lets you see how it all played out.
As the battle ends and the book nears its conclusion, though, it once again becomes clear that this book is very much about McClellan and Antietam, and not about the Battle of Antietam more holistically. Out of curiosity, I actually went to the index and counted the number of times Lee and McClellan were mentioned. Lee had 113 references in the index, while McClellan had 268, more than twice as many. So this is not a book about how Lee took his fight to the North and retreated to the South in defeat. Instead, it’s a book about how McClellan reacted to Lee’s moves, how he managed to eke out a strategic victory while failing to earn a more decisive win, and how he ultimately lost his command. In wrapping things up from this standpoint, Sears gets in one last dig while praising the performance of the Union troops: “The Yankee fighting men who had checked Lee's invasion did so not because of McClellan but in spite of him.”
However perspectives may change in the future, McClellan is likely never going to be held up as a hero for the Union. But the blunt condemnation that Sears offers here, is starting to feel just a bit outdated when there are more thoughtful analyses now available. As, however, a narrative of the battle itself - what it was like, why it was important and why it matters - this may no longer be “the definitive work on the Battle of Antietam,” but it still manages to hold up as one of the best.
As compared to a modern work like Scott Hartwig’s exhaustively thorough but nuanced To Antietam Creek: The Maryland Campaign of September 1862 and its companion volume I Dread the Thought of the Place: The Battle of Antietam and the End of the Maryland Campaign, Sears’s work takes a more conventional approach, which I suppose was the historiographical standard at the time it was written. Hartwig takes care not to oversell his narrative, by explaining that Antietam was “a turning point but not the turning point” of the Civil War, while Sears presents the less subtle view that “Antietam was pivotal in the history of the Civil War.” Hartwig seeks to more fully understand the strengths and weaknesses and motives of Union Gen. George McClellan, while Sears offers the more traditional, relentlessly harsh assessment of McClellan that focuses on his failings.
The early chapters of the book hammer home this point, with a critical assessment of McClellan's performance during previous campaigns. This appraisal continues as the Maryland Campaign begins, and it gets to the point that Sears resorts to outright speculation in his condemnation of McClellan. While criticizing McClellan for not moving more swiftly after finding Gen Robert E. Lee’s “Lost Order,” he declares that “no doubt, had the situation been reversed,” Lee “would have had (Stonewall) Jackson's foot cavalry on the march within the hour and every other man in his army who could carry a rifle moving after them within two.” How could he possibly know that, and say it so declaratively?
The intense focus on McClellan and the Union Army comes at the expense of a similar focus on Lee and the Confederates. We learn about McClellan’s failings, but not Lee’s successes. We learn how McClellan reacted to Lee’s invasion of the North, but there’s not much discussion of what led to Lee’s invasion in the first place.
All of that said, the book comes alive as the battle begins. Sears provides an excellent description of the mood - the anticipation, the dread, the nervous energy - on the eve of the battle. He paints a very understandable and easy-to-visualize picture of the landscape, the geography of the battlefield and its nondescript landmarks that would soon become legendary. And a lot of the writing is just plain good. After describing the sheer ordinariness of a town like Sharpsburg, he observes ominously that “life in Sharpsburg might have continued on in its pleasant, uneventful way, unremarked by history like a thousand other little towns dotting the American landscape, except for that suddenly all-important fact that it was the place where the roads came together.”
The battle itself is described with just the right mix of soldiers’ experiences and generals’ strategies, providing both an on-the-ground perspective that takes you into the battle, and an eagle’s-eye-view that lets you see how it all played out.
As the battle ends and the book nears its conclusion, though, it once again becomes clear that this book is very much about McClellan and Antietam, and not about the Battle of Antietam more holistically. Out of curiosity, I actually went to the index and counted the number of times Lee and McClellan were mentioned. Lee had 113 references in the index, while McClellan had 268, more than twice as many. So this is not a book about how Lee took his fight to the North and retreated to the South in defeat. Instead, it’s a book about how McClellan reacted to Lee’s moves, how he managed to eke out a strategic victory while failing to earn a more decisive win, and how he ultimately lost his command. In wrapping things up from this standpoint, Sears gets in one last dig while praising the performance of the Union troops: “The Yankee fighting men who had checked Lee's invasion did so not because of McClellan but in spite of him.”
However perspectives may change in the future, McClellan is likely never going to be held up as a hero for the Union. But the blunt condemnation that Sears offers here, is starting to feel just a bit outdated when there are more thoughtful analyses now available. As, however, a narrative of the battle itself - what it was like, why it was important and why it matters - this may no longer be “the definitive work on the Battle of Antietam,” but it still manages to hold up as one of the best.
June 15, 2017
Excels in every way -- equal to the best of Bruce Catton. This is the definitive story of the Battle of Antietam!
August 10, 2016
Landscape Turned Red: Battle of Antietam is without a doubt the best single-volume history of the battle of Antietam. Sears is a good writer and historian, and he brings the battle to life with emotion and close attention to detail. The book tells the story of a lost opportunity. An intelligence coup gave General George McClellan the opportunity to use the superb tool he had created, The Army of the Potomac, to destroy Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia and quite possibly bring the war to an early end. However, he dithered and gave Lee time to put his army in a strong defensive position behind Antietam creek. This pretty much guaranteed a very bloody day for all concerned. McClellan still could have decisively defeated the Confederate forces, albeit at a greater cost than if he had acted quickly, if he had been willing to commit his army to a general attack. He had a 2 to 1 advantage in numbers and his army was better equipped and in better condition. Instead he committed his forces piecemeal, permitting the defenders to hold them off and make their escape bloodied but unbroken the next day. The war continued for another three years. Opportunity lost.
I would say this book is a must read for students of American history, and if one wants to write a story that includes that bloody day, this book should be constantly at hand.
I would say this book is a must read for students of American history, and if one wants to write a story that includes that bloody day, this book should be constantly at hand.
October 16, 2015
An excellent and readable history of the Antietam campaign. Lee’s motives in the campaign have been open to debate; while some historians argue that Lee wanted to pillage supplies and take Union pressure off Virginia, Sears argues that Lee wanted to force the Union into an all-out fight. While Antietam is sometimes seen as a success for McClellan, Sears is more critical of the general’s sluggishness and, of course, McClellan's belief in the rebels’ numerical superiority was constant throughout the campaign.
Sears draws heavily on primary sources and really fleshes out the fighting conditions of the war, and how traumatizing the defensive firepower of the Union was to the Confederates at Antietam. While the writing can get a little dry at times, Sears’ insight into the various players is shrewd, and his rendition of the fighting is clear, and effective, with a judicious use of eyewitness recollections and a number of helpful maps.
A graphic, compelling, and thorough history of the campaign.
Sears draws heavily on primary sources and really fleshes out the fighting conditions of the war, and how traumatizing the defensive firepower of the Union was to the Confederates at Antietam. While the writing can get a little dry at times, Sears’ insight into the various players is shrewd, and his rendition of the fighting is clear, and effective, with a judicious use of eyewitness recollections and a number of helpful maps.
A graphic, compelling, and thorough history of the campaign.
October 13, 2019
I really enjoyed reading Mr. Sears book. Mr. Sears described not only the battles in detail, but the leaders as well - specifically looking at McClellan's handling of the Army of the Potomac and his interaction with President Lincoln. The book itself covers more than just the Battle of Antietam, it includes the entire Maryland Campaign from Lee's crossing of the Potomac and return. Great reference material and detailed discussion of both the lost Order 191 and General Burnside's assault on Rohrbach Bridge.
July 27, 2011
The best account of Antietam I have ever read and probably the best book about any Civil war battle I have ever read. I really appreciated Sear’s sarcasm about the slowness of McClellan and his need to micromanage all the logistical details such as setting up camp the night prior to his offensive. Great read!
October 27, 2014
How familiar are you with the American Civil War? Can you tell McClernand from McClellan from McPherson? Did you know there was a General Ewell of importance for both the Union and Confederacy? One more miniquiz question: in what states would one find Shiloh, Corinth, and Fredericksburg?
What I am trying to say is that this tome, which is either the definitive work on the battle at Antietam or a strong contender, is written for those of us who are pretty well versed in the basics. It won't explain the essentials as it moves along; there is an assumption inherent in about 400 pages regarding the approach to this battle (about the first 100 pp), the battle itself, and the consequences regarding same. Sears writes with precision and authority, but he does not write for beginners.
As you can see from the rating, I loved it.
Sears isn't on a mission to merely recount, blow by blow, what happened when. If he were set on hundreds of pages of injury and carnage, I don't know that anyone but a masochist would care for that many pages of horrifying detail.
Instead, he sets out to prove that General McClellan, who essentially held the Union Army hostage for the duration of his tenure as commanding general, systematically and deliberately prevented the Army of the Potomac from crushing the Confederate forces. He proves the point. Beyond any question, McClellan chose not to send his soldiers to fight because he was sympathetic toward the slaveocracy and wanted the Confederacy to achieve its goal.
He contemplated participating in a coup d'etat,unseating Lincoln and tossing out the Constitution, but the vast groundswell of demand for such a thing,which he believed existed and might carry him to power, never unfolded. Though he had carved out a base of support for himself and his views within the Army of the Potomac sufficient to cripple its use for the duration of the war, there were also soldiers in this army who were sick of not fighting for their country, and who were pleased to see him leave.
I have read other histories of the Battle of Antietam, and they served the purpose of explaining who fought where, and how much blood was shed. What no one else has done is to lay the blame where it rightfully belongs. This battle should have been an open-and-shut deal, and the Confederate forces should have been disabled and the war brought close to a conclusion. Instead, through his reluctance to fight at all and then only because it was clear that to do otherwise would cost him his job, McClellan managed to make the whole thing a bloodbath that was almost a stalemate.
Technically, it was a Union victory, and that was what Lincoln had to have to declare Emancipation and prevent Europe from recognizing the Confederacy. McClellan opposed (of course) the Emancipation, but he was already about to be fired. The question was a political one; no one wanted him to leave before the elections, lest he make a mess of them. Once Congress was once more filled with majority Republican forces on both sides, it was safe to cut the connection and send him packing.
The manner in which he was fired was done with careful attention to military procedure so that he could not contest it without clearly committing a crime.
I had long felt that too much was going unsaid about General McClellan, but I couldn't tell what it was. I had a hunch it would not do him credit. It was a little bit like childhood, when the grown-ups around you use coded phrases designed to protect you from the terrible truth, and the longer you are aware that you can't be told something, the worse that something appears to be. And so it was with McClellan. I don't know whether he has a bunch of really proud ancestors that other writers feared to offend or why he hasn't been held suitably accountable before this. Perhaps the evidence was buried too deep.
One thing is certain: Sears has built his case as solid as the Rock of Gibraltar. Once the book is done, there can be no doubt whatsoever. For the serious American Civil War scholar, this outstanding volume provides information that is generally not in circulation, and that is key to understanding Antietam, as well as much of what took place before it.
What I am trying to say is that this tome, which is either the definitive work on the battle at Antietam or a strong contender, is written for those of us who are pretty well versed in the basics. It won't explain the essentials as it moves along; there is an assumption inherent in about 400 pages regarding the approach to this battle (about the first 100 pp), the battle itself, and the consequences regarding same. Sears writes with precision and authority, but he does not write for beginners.
As you can see from the rating, I loved it.
Sears isn't on a mission to merely recount, blow by blow, what happened when. If he were set on hundreds of pages of injury and carnage, I don't know that anyone but a masochist would care for that many pages of horrifying detail.
Instead, he sets out to prove that General McClellan, who essentially held the Union Army hostage for the duration of his tenure as commanding general, systematically and deliberately prevented the Army of the Potomac from crushing the Confederate forces. He proves the point. Beyond any question, McClellan chose not to send his soldiers to fight because he was sympathetic toward the slaveocracy and wanted the Confederacy to achieve its goal.
He contemplated participating in a coup d'etat,unseating Lincoln and tossing out the Constitution, but the vast groundswell of demand for such a thing,which he believed existed and might carry him to power, never unfolded. Though he had carved out a base of support for himself and his views within the Army of the Potomac sufficient to cripple its use for the duration of the war, there were also soldiers in this army who were sick of not fighting for their country, and who were pleased to see him leave.
I have read other histories of the Battle of Antietam, and they served the purpose of explaining who fought where, and how much blood was shed. What no one else has done is to lay the blame where it rightfully belongs. This battle should have been an open-and-shut deal, and the Confederate forces should have been disabled and the war brought close to a conclusion. Instead, through his reluctance to fight at all and then only because it was clear that to do otherwise would cost him his job, McClellan managed to make the whole thing a bloodbath that was almost a stalemate.
Technically, it was a Union victory, and that was what Lincoln had to have to declare Emancipation and prevent Europe from recognizing the Confederacy. McClellan opposed (of course) the Emancipation, but he was already about to be fired. The question was a political one; no one wanted him to leave before the elections, lest he make a mess of them. Once Congress was once more filled with majority Republican forces on both sides, it was safe to cut the connection and send him packing.
The manner in which he was fired was done with careful attention to military procedure so that he could not contest it without clearly committing a crime.
I had long felt that too much was going unsaid about General McClellan, but I couldn't tell what it was. I had a hunch it would not do him credit. It was a little bit like childhood, when the grown-ups around you use coded phrases designed to protect you from the terrible truth, and the longer you are aware that you can't be told something, the worse that something appears to be. And so it was with McClellan. I don't know whether he has a bunch of really proud ancestors that other writers feared to offend or why he hasn't been held suitably accountable before this. Perhaps the evidence was buried too deep.
One thing is certain: Sears has built his case as solid as the Rock of Gibraltar. Once the book is done, there can be no doubt whatsoever. For the serious American Civil War scholar, this outstanding volume provides information that is generally not in circulation, and that is key to understanding Antietam, as well as much of what took place before it.
April 9, 2012
Sears' book is probably the best single-volume work on the Battle of Antietam written to-date. He covers the necessary details of the battle without losing the thread of narrative. He has also written outstanding books on George B. McClellan and Abraham Lincoln, providing even more authority to his knowledge of major participants in the Maryland campaign. For all intents and purposes, the American Civil War should have ended in September 1862 with the destruction of Lee's army by the Army of the Potomac, smashing it into the river opposite Shepherdstown, VA. McClellan outnumbered Lee by more than 3:1, and was even given the miracle of Lee's Lost Orders exposing the entire disposition and plans of the Army of Northern Virginia. McClellan did not use any of the advantages available to him, and allowed R.E. Lee to fight the Union Army to a tactical stalemate at the battle.
This book is one of the first to raise the question as to the qualifications of George B. McClellan for battlefield command. He was very good at organizing and training the Army of the Potomac, but he was not particularly adept at using it as a "tool" on the field of combat. Lincoln would finally fire/relieve McClellan from command in November of 1862...but the damage had been done. The war in the east would drag on for another two-and-a-half years. The great opportunity for ending the war earlier was lost.
This book is one of the first to raise the question as to the qualifications of George B. McClellan for battlefield command. He was very good at organizing and training the Army of the Potomac, but he was not particularly adept at using it as a "tool" on the field of combat. Lincoln would finally fire/relieve McClellan from command in November of 1862...but the damage had been done. The war in the east would drag on for another two-and-a-half years. The great opportunity for ending the war earlier was lost.
December 18, 2013
Simply the best book written about the Battle of Antietam.
October 12, 2019
This is a book that I read a little over a decade ago when I was still in my early 20's, and really taking the study of military history quite seriously. It still stands as one of my favorite books not just on a campaign/battle of the War Between the States, but of military history in general.
The book is written lovingly, the narrative told with the grace and respect of someone deeply in love with the subject matter. The meat of the book, the Battle of Antietam itself, which runs a little over a third of the main narrative, is superb. Written in a fashion that not only clearly conveys what happened, and when, and by whom, but with just enough of a dramatic flair to make a layman fall in love with the subject, and an academic grind their teeth in envious frustration.
All of that said, to be perfectly clear and honest, where this book falls somewhat flat, and why it is a 4 and not a 5 star review despite being a long time favorite of mine, is that military history is at it's heart an analytical science. In no other aspect of the profession of history is there more need for dissecting why an event happened as it did, and extrapolating the immediate and carry on effects of said event as in the study of warfare. Like in the waging of warfare itself, it is both an art and a science. And Sears' book, while narratively gorgeous, is far too subsumed by biases and subsequent analytical flaws to be truly useful as anything more than an introduction to the 1862 Maryland Campaign.
Putting it bluntly, Sears despises General George B. McClellan. Throughout the course of the book, Sears takes every opportunity to snipe at, jab, and prod the Federal commander. Every success McClellan had in the Campaign, and there were more than the Lost Order episode, is chalked down to a happy accident. Every failure, of which there were many of those as well, as there always is, are occasions for Sears to showcase the cowardice, and near treasonous character of McClellan.
This view of McClellan held by Sears went on to influence other Antietam scholars and writers including the author of the relatively recent: Long Road to Antietam, who all but repeats, with a touch of hyperbole, Sears' analysis of McClellan as a threat to the Lincoln Administration. It is this, in my mind, unbalanced, and rather unprofessional personal grudge against McClellan that stains the reputation of an otherwise fine work of history.
Everywhere else, Sears has written a masterpiece. His conclusion that the campaign itself was a strategic victory for the North, is balanced by pointing out that the Confederates inflicted, overall, twice as many losses during the campaign, and that the 12 hour bloodbath of Antietam was a tactical Rebel defensive triumph. Sears rightly points out that Lee himself viewed Antietam as his greatest battlefield achievement of the war. And in his analysis of the Emancipation Proclamation, Sears points out what many historians still seem to overlook: it was a tremendously effective piece of Realpolitik.
The preliminary Emancipation Proclamation was an ideological shot across the bow of the European Great Powers, most of whom were eying the American war with keen interest and a lust for reestablishing European domination over North America. By framing the conflict in an ideological stance that it did not possess at the beginning, and that most on both sides in the ranks would disagree with anyway, Lincoln ensured that European intervention on behalf of the Confederacy would be seen as a defacto defense of Southern slavery.
And even if the Emancipation Proclamation itself freed not a single slave (only freeing the slaves in Rebel territory, while purposefully ignoring slaves held in loyal areas or those areas conquered with loyal slave owners), it shattered any hope the South had of Great Power intervention.
From here on out, Lincoln had ensured that the War would remain strictly an American one.
The book covers the story both from the perspective of Generals McClellan and Robert E. Lee and their respective Army of the Potomac and the Army of Northern Virginia. While far more time politically is spent in Washington than in Richmond, this is due more to the smoothness of the relations between the Confederate government and it's chief armies than that of Washington and theirs. The summer of 1862 saw the South go on the strategic offensive in all the theaters of the vast, continental wide conflict, the only time they would do so.
This reversal of Union fortunes practically everywhere, was the most dramatic in the East. Here the Army of the Potomac under McClellan had come within an ace of besieging the Rebel capital of Richmond and ending the Rebellion, until Lee took command of the ANV following Joe Johnston's wounding at the Battle of Srven Pines. Lee then reorganized the ANV, and went rapidly onto the defensive, throwing Little Mac back in a series of bloody, yet strategically successful offensives away from the environs of Richmond and rescuing the seemingly doomed CSA.
The Lincoln Administration organized a new army in northern Virginia, the Army of Virginia, under John Pope, in the hopes of squeezing Lee between two fires. However, McClellan's Army was in a bind on the Peninsula, and while Sears analyzes it incorrectly, McClellan's Army was ravaged by malaria and other weather and geographical related illnesses (including the decimation of the horses of the Army, which nearly wrecked it's logistics), making rapid movement in support of Pope genuinely difficult.
Lee and the ANV took advantage of McClellan's predicament, especially after it became obvious that Lincoln ordered him back north of the Rappahannock to support Pope in northern Virginia, to focus on Pope's Army. The ensuing campaign of Second Manassas saw Lee and the ANV win a dramatic, and decisive triumph against the AoV and large elements of the AoP, and shove them entirely out of Virginia.
Judging the strategic situation as crucial, and refusing the relinquish the initiative, Lee invaded Maryland, hoping to win another decisive victory, and secure Southern independence.
Alas, it was not to be. And while Sears is loath to admit it, McClellan deserves at least some of the credit for that outcome.
Taking command of the now combined armies, McClellan took a soundly thrashed force, hastily restructured it, reequipped it, and sent it into Maryland to monitor Lee's movements. There the famous Lost Order episode allowed McClellan to act with a celerity that he normally didn't show.
He caught Lee with his veritable pants down around his ankles. Lee's Army was divided into numerous detachments, seeking far too many, simultaneous, strategic rewards. The thin screen of Rebel infantry and cavalry, despite a hard fight, was soundly whipped in the Battle of South Mountain on 14 September, and Lee was forced to hastily concentrate his Army at Sharpsburg, a position that was far from ideal as the ANV had at it's back the Potomac River.
Although Stonewall Jackson successfully seized Harpers Ferry after a brief siege (and 11,000 Yankee prisoners and a treasure trove of war supplies), and raced towards the concentration point at Sharpsburg, McClellan still had a distinct numerical advantage over Lee, somewhat better than two to one with Lee having barely 40,000 men while the Federals could bring to bear roughly 85,000 men.
While Sears is correct in pointing out that McClellan's decision to bring battle on the 17th, rather than the 15th or 16th, allowed the ANV (minus AP Hill's Division) to muster along the banks of the Antietam across from Sharpsburg, it also rested his own men, and ensured that the entirety of the Rebel Army was before him, where it could be ground down in a deliberate battle of attrition.
McClellan understood the cultural character of the Federal Army, that it wasn't gifted for fancy maneuvers or snap changes in circumstances. It did it's best work in set piece affairs, where they could call the dances tempo, and ensure it stayed at a smooth, deliberate, yet steady, rhythm.
While Sears is correct in pointing out that the Federal plan fell apart throughout the day, and that the various Federal Corps fought practically isolated engagements from each other, the point is unmistakable that the Federal forces came within an ace of grinding the outnumbered Confederates to a blood soaked powder.
Even so, the Rebels put up a hell of a fight and, with the last minute arrival of AP Hill's Division, pulled out a tactical victory, although just. Despite the tactical success of the Confederate forces, the Army of Northern Virginia was a spent force having lost a quarter of it's force in a single day and nine General officers killed or seriously wounded.
Although Union losses were somewhat higher, and they too lost nine Generals, they had the resources to absorb such dreadful casualties, and enough unused reserves to ensure a decisive strategic success even if tactically the Confederates had, again, bested them.
And yet despite my issues with Sears' analysis, I cannot unlove this book. It is the first book on the 1862 Maryland Campaign I ever read, and it still stands as one of my favorites in my admittedly very large personal collection. Few works of military history are as well written as this one, and despite my complaints, I still reccomend this as a good work on the Campaign.
A very easy four stars.
The book is written lovingly, the narrative told with the grace and respect of someone deeply in love with the subject matter. The meat of the book, the Battle of Antietam itself, which runs a little over a third of the main narrative, is superb. Written in a fashion that not only clearly conveys what happened, and when, and by whom, but with just enough of a dramatic flair to make a layman fall in love with the subject, and an academic grind their teeth in envious frustration.
All of that said, to be perfectly clear and honest, where this book falls somewhat flat, and why it is a 4 and not a 5 star review despite being a long time favorite of mine, is that military history is at it's heart an analytical science. In no other aspect of the profession of history is there more need for dissecting why an event happened as it did, and extrapolating the immediate and carry on effects of said event as in the study of warfare. Like in the waging of warfare itself, it is both an art and a science. And Sears' book, while narratively gorgeous, is far too subsumed by biases and subsequent analytical flaws to be truly useful as anything more than an introduction to the 1862 Maryland Campaign.
Putting it bluntly, Sears despises General George B. McClellan. Throughout the course of the book, Sears takes every opportunity to snipe at, jab, and prod the Federal commander. Every success McClellan had in the Campaign, and there were more than the Lost Order episode, is chalked down to a happy accident. Every failure, of which there were many of those as well, as there always is, are occasions for Sears to showcase the cowardice, and near treasonous character of McClellan.
This view of McClellan held by Sears went on to influence other Antietam scholars and writers including the author of the relatively recent: Long Road to Antietam, who all but repeats, with a touch of hyperbole, Sears' analysis of McClellan as a threat to the Lincoln Administration. It is this, in my mind, unbalanced, and rather unprofessional personal grudge against McClellan that stains the reputation of an otherwise fine work of history.
Everywhere else, Sears has written a masterpiece. His conclusion that the campaign itself was a strategic victory for the North, is balanced by pointing out that the Confederates inflicted, overall, twice as many losses during the campaign, and that the 12 hour bloodbath of Antietam was a tactical Rebel defensive triumph. Sears rightly points out that Lee himself viewed Antietam as his greatest battlefield achievement of the war. And in his analysis of the Emancipation Proclamation, Sears points out what many historians still seem to overlook: it was a tremendously effective piece of Realpolitik.
The preliminary Emancipation Proclamation was an ideological shot across the bow of the European Great Powers, most of whom were eying the American war with keen interest and a lust for reestablishing European domination over North America. By framing the conflict in an ideological stance that it did not possess at the beginning, and that most on both sides in the ranks would disagree with anyway, Lincoln ensured that European intervention on behalf of the Confederacy would be seen as a defacto defense of Southern slavery.
And even if the Emancipation Proclamation itself freed not a single slave (only freeing the slaves in Rebel territory, while purposefully ignoring slaves held in loyal areas or those areas conquered with loyal slave owners), it shattered any hope the South had of Great Power intervention.
From here on out, Lincoln had ensured that the War would remain strictly an American one.
The book covers the story both from the perspective of Generals McClellan and Robert E. Lee and their respective Army of the Potomac and the Army of Northern Virginia. While far more time politically is spent in Washington than in Richmond, this is due more to the smoothness of the relations between the Confederate government and it's chief armies than that of Washington and theirs. The summer of 1862 saw the South go on the strategic offensive in all the theaters of the vast, continental wide conflict, the only time they would do so.
This reversal of Union fortunes practically everywhere, was the most dramatic in the East. Here the Army of the Potomac under McClellan had come within an ace of besieging the Rebel capital of Richmond and ending the Rebellion, until Lee took command of the ANV following Joe Johnston's wounding at the Battle of Srven Pines. Lee then reorganized the ANV, and went rapidly onto the defensive, throwing Little Mac back in a series of bloody, yet strategically successful offensives away from the environs of Richmond and rescuing the seemingly doomed CSA.
The Lincoln Administration organized a new army in northern Virginia, the Army of Virginia, under John Pope, in the hopes of squeezing Lee between two fires. However, McClellan's Army was in a bind on the Peninsula, and while Sears analyzes it incorrectly, McClellan's Army was ravaged by malaria and other weather and geographical related illnesses (including the decimation of the horses of the Army, which nearly wrecked it's logistics), making rapid movement in support of Pope genuinely difficult.
Lee and the ANV took advantage of McClellan's predicament, especially after it became obvious that Lincoln ordered him back north of the Rappahannock to support Pope in northern Virginia, to focus on Pope's Army. The ensuing campaign of Second Manassas saw Lee and the ANV win a dramatic, and decisive triumph against the AoV and large elements of the AoP, and shove them entirely out of Virginia.
Judging the strategic situation as crucial, and refusing the relinquish the initiative, Lee invaded Maryland, hoping to win another decisive victory, and secure Southern independence.
Alas, it was not to be. And while Sears is loath to admit it, McClellan deserves at least some of the credit for that outcome.
Taking command of the now combined armies, McClellan took a soundly thrashed force, hastily restructured it, reequipped it, and sent it into Maryland to monitor Lee's movements. There the famous Lost Order episode allowed McClellan to act with a celerity that he normally didn't show.
He caught Lee with his veritable pants down around his ankles. Lee's Army was divided into numerous detachments, seeking far too many, simultaneous, strategic rewards. The thin screen of Rebel infantry and cavalry, despite a hard fight, was soundly whipped in the Battle of South Mountain on 14 September, and Lee was forced to hastily concentrate his Army at Sharpsburg, a position that was far from ideal as the ANV had at it's back the Potomac River.
Although Stonewall Jackson successfully seized Harpers Ferry after a brief siege (and 11,000 Yankee prisoners and a treasure trove of war supplies), and raced towards the concentration point at Sharpsburg, McClellan still had a distinct numerical advantage over Lee, somewhat better than two to one with Lee having barely 40,000 men while the Federals could bring to bear roughly 85,000 men.
While Sears is correct in pointing out that McClellan's decision to bring battle on the 17th, rather than the 15th or 16th, allowed the ANV (minus AP Hill's Division) to muster along the banks of the Antietam across from Sharpsburg, it also rested his own men, and ensured that the entirety of the Rebel Army was before him, where it could be ground down in a deliberate battle of attrition.
McClellan understood the cultural character of the Federal Army, that it wasn't gifted for fancy maneuvers or snap changes in circumstances. It did it's best work in set piece affairs, where they could call the dances tempo, and ensure it stayed at a smooth, deliberate, yet steady, rhythm.
While Sears is correct in pointing out that the Federal plan fell apart throughout the day, and that the various Federal Corps fought practically isolated engagements from each other, the point is unmistakable that the Federal forces came within an ace of grinding the outnumbered Confederates to a blood soaked powder.
Even so, the Rebels put up a hell of a fight and, with the last minute arrival of AP Hill's Division, pulled out a tactical victory, although just. Despite the tactical success of the Confederate forces, the Army of Northern Virginia was a spent force having lost a quarter of it's force in a single day and nine General officers killed or seriously wounded.
Although Union losses were somewhat higher, and they too lost nine Generals, they had the resources to absorb such dreadful casualties, and enough unused reserves to ensure a decisive strategic success even if tactically the Confederates had, again, bested them.
And yet despite my issues with Sears' analysis, I cannot unlove this book. It is the first book on the 1862 Maryland Campaign I ever read, and it still stands as one of my favorites in my admittedly very large personal collection. Few works of military history are as well written as this one, and despite my complaints, I still reccomend this as a good work on the Campaign.
A very easy four stars.
October 8, 2021
Great history of the Battle of Antietam on September 17th, 1862. The most loss of life of any day in US history.
Sears recounts a lot of the events leading up to the battle. The Harper’s Ferry battle and battles of Bull Run 1 & 2, with a great description of the various political, egotistical, and professional jockeying of the leaders and generals (especially on the union side). The fascinating ascendency of Mcclellend, backstabbing, slow-supporting, blame gaming these generals all practiced towards each other makes it an amazing feat that they were able to function as an army at all.
The Battle of Antietam includes many key memories, Lee’s lost orders (which was found by the Union and thus knowing his plans), the Dunker Church, the cornfield fight, the sunken road, the Burnside Bridge, etc the outcome of which, commonly agreed to be a draw, but McClellend had the opportunity to win the whole war there and then, and backed away. Which caused him to be replaced less than a month later.
Overall I liked the book. Still amazing these guys got anything done with the poor unity, communications, planning, coordination between the leaders. I recommend it.
Sears recounts a lot of the events leading up to the battle. The Harper’s Ferry battle and battles of Bull Run 1 & 2, with a great description of the various political, egotistical, and professional jockeying of the leaders and generals (especially on the union side). The fascinating ascendency of Mcclellend, backstabbing, slow-supporting, blame gaming these generals all practiced towards each other makes it an amazing feat that they were able to function as an army at all.
The Battle of Antietam includes many key memories, Lee’s lost orders (which was found by the Union and thus knowing his plans), the Dunker Church, the cornfield fight, the sunken road, the Burnside Bridge, etc the outcome of which, commonly agreed to be a draw, but McClellend had the opportunity to win the whole war there and then, and backed away. Which caused him to be replaced less than a month later.
Overall I liked the book. Still amazing these guys got anything done with the poor unity, communications, planning, coordination between the leaders. I recommend it.
March 10, 2014
This volume ranks among the best works of military history that I have read. Sears is a top-drawer writer and historian, and this book displays both those skills. It’s one of the few histories I’ve read that could be legitimately described as a page-turner.
Sears does a great job of unfolding the context for the Battle of Antietam—of 336 pages in the main body of the book, fully 180 are devoted to establishing the background. Much of that material is spent elaborating General George B. McClellan’s personal history and conduct up to the collision between the armies on September 17, 1862. I didn’t come away feeling that any of the detail was unnecessary. In many respects the book is an examination of McClellan, and Sears is not among his fans.
Those looking to redeem the general from history’s opprobrium will need to look elsewhere. By the extensive use of original documents, Sears has documented the man’s failings as a combat commander, although he balanced his critique with a fair assessment of McCellan’s strong record of organizing and training the Army of the Potomac.
The threads of political intrigue that were whirling about Washington are well represented, as is the dithering of the Great Powers as they grappled whether or not to support the Rebellion.
From the first bullets of the skirmishers to the slow withdrawal from the battlefield, Sears is able to narrate the action in such a clear way I was able to follow it without difficulty. The biggest problem was keeping track of which commanders were attached to what unit, as the officers were mowed down so rapidly even regiment and brigade commanders were quickly used up. The maps Sears has included are excellent; you might want to mark the maps with post-notes to enable you to find them easily.
This book will be a treat for those who enjoy military history, especially as regards the Civil War. I recommend it highly.
Sears does a great job of unfolding the context for the Battle of Antietam—of 336 pages in the main body of the book, fully 180 are devoted to establishing the background. Much of that material is spent elaborating General George B. McClellan’s personal history and conduct up to the collision between the armies on September 17, 1862. I didn’t come away feeling that any of the detail was unnecessary. In many respects the book is an examination of McClellan, and Sears is not among his fans.
Those looking to redeem the general from history’s opprobrium will need to look elsewhere. By the extensive use of original documents, Sears has documented the man’s failings as a combat commander, although he balanced his critique with a fair assessment of McCellan’s strong record of organizing and training the Army of the Potomac.
The threads of political intrigue that were whirling about Washington are well represented, as is the dithering of the Great Powers as they grappled whether or not to support the Rebellion.
From the first bullets of the skirmishers to the slow withdrawal from the battlefield, Sears is able to narrate the action in such a clear way I was able to follow it without difficulty. The biggest problem was keeping track of which commanders were attached to what unit, as the officers were mowed down so rapidly even regiment and brigade commanders were quickly used up. The maps Sears has included are excellent; you might want to mark the maps with post-notes to enable you to find them easily.
This book will be a treat for those who enjoy military history, especially as regards the Civil War. I recommend it highly.
July 20, 2016
This book came highly recommended by a few websites which I found while goggling books about the Civil War and especially Antietam. I then recommended it to my son and two of my son-in-laws since we were planning a family outing over Easter at Antietam. All four of us read this book and it did not disappoint. We liked Sears narrative style and the book fully prepared us for our trip. We liked it so much that we starting reading his other book on Gettysburg.
July 25, 2015
I heard this was a classic battlefield history and Sears does not disappoint. He balances drama, military analysis, and political considerations in one of the finest history books ever written. Antietam never fascinated me, but now it sure does.
My only gripe? Too mean to McClellan (1980s was the high tide of McClellan bashing) and too kind to Lee (Sharpsburg was a bad place to fight a battle).
My only gripe? Too mean to McClellan (1980s was the high tide of McClellan bashing) and too kind to Lee (Sharpsburg was a bad place to fight a battle).
December 31, 2020
This is a book about the Battle of Antietam. It is not quite as good a book as Guelzo's Gettysburg (which is the same project with a different battle), but it is painstaking and clearly readable, and I like Sears' dry sense of humor about General McClellan. (McClellan is one of those people where you laugh or you scream.) It also, like Gettysburg, is a book that does not glorify or sentimentalize war.
July 1, 2020
Overall a well written depiction of the Battle of Antietam and the events immediately preceding it. At times I got lost in the details but overall very enjoyable. A few more battlefield maps would've gone a long way to keep things straight.
August 31, 2018
In Landscape Turned Red: The Battle of Antietam, Stephen W. Sears draws on a remarkable cache of diaries, dispatches, and letters to recreate the fateful day of September 17, 1862 as experienced not only by its leaders but also by its soldiers, both Union and Confederate, to produce a comprehensive account of the Battle of Antietam. First published in 1983, Sears’ book is unrivaled in its elegance and complexity, examining not just the military history, but also the politics of the Army of the Potomac, which turned to 36-year-old General George B. McClellan to save the day.
In late summer 1862, the Union’s prospects for victory seemed dismally low. Major General John Pope’s Army of Virginia was shattered at the Battle of Second Manassas, and President Abraham Lincoln called on George McClellan to once again take command of the Army of the Potomac and save Washington, D.C. Sears reveals Lincoln made this decision alone, against the wishes of his cabinet. By his own admission, there was no one else to turn to, but many in his administration, particularly Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, regarded McClellan (a staunch Democrat) as a traitor.
Sears excels at explaining the political conflict between McClellan and the Lincoln Administration, making it almost more interesting than the Battle of Antietam itself. It is a side of the campaign you rarely see. In the battle’s aftermath, when President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, it incensed many officers and enlisted men. Some openly speculated about a Caesar-like march on Washington. McClellan, to his credit, discouraged those feelings and gracefully accepted his dismissal. In the end, all the talk of disloyalty came to nothing.
As for the battle, General McClellan had at least six opportunities during the course of the campaign to crush Lee’s army. Each time, he failed to take the initiative. At the Battle of Antietam, a third of his army sat on the sidelines. Finally, he failed to pursue Lee’s exhausted and depleted ranks, again believing Lee outnumbered him. Sears makes a compelling case that McClellan was plagued by the same failings that cost him victory on the Peninsula in the spring. He seemed paralyzed during a fight, preferring to stay far behind the lines, feebly trying to manage events.
Sears’ narrative of the battle is fast-paced and rich in detail, but he tends to overemphasize casualty statistics, as if to justify the book’s title. A battle’s intensity–or importance–can’t always be quantified by numbers of dead and wounded.
Stephen Ward Sears (born July 27, 1932), of Norwalk, Connecticut, is a graduate of Lakewood High School and Oberlin College. He began his writing career in the 1960s as a World War 2 historian but later found a niche writing about the Army of the Potomac in the American Civil War, and particularly its most famous commander, General George B. McClellan. His other books include Gettysburg (2003) and George B. McClellan: The Young Napoleon (1988).
In late summer 1862, the Union’s prospects for victory seemed dismally low. Major General John Pope’s Army of Virginia was shattered at the Battle of Second Manassas, and President Abraham Lincoln called on George McClellan to once again take command of the Army of the Potomac and save Washington, D.C. Sears reveals Lincoln made this decision alone, against the wishes of his cabinet. By his own admission, there was no one else to turn to, but many in his administration, particularly Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, regarded McClellan (a staunch Democrat) as a traitor.
Sears excels at explaining the political conflict between McClellan and the Lincoln Administration, making it almost more interesting than the Battle of Antietam itself. It is a side of the campaign you rarely see. In the battle’s aftermath, when President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, it incensed many officers and enlisted men. Some openly speculated about a Caesar-like march on Washington. McClellan, to his credit, discouraged those feelings and gracefully accepted his dismissal. In the end, all the talk of disloyalty came to nothing.
As for the battle, General McClellan had at least six opportunities during the course of the campaign to crush Lee’s army. Each time, he failed to take the initiative. At the Battle of Antietam, a third of his army sat on the sidelines. Finally, he failed to pursue Lee’s exhausted and depleted ranks, again believing Lee outnumbered him. Sears makes a compelling case that McClellan was plagued by the same failings that cost him victory on the Peninsula in the spring. He seemed paralyzed during a fight, preferring to stay far behind the lines, feebly trying to manage events.
Sears’ narrative of the battle is fast-paced and rich in detail, but he tends to overemphasize casualty statistics, as if to justify the book’s title. A battle’s intensity–or importance–can’t always be quantified by numbers of dead and wounded.
Stephen Ward Sears (born July 27, 1932), of Norwalk, Connecticut, is a graduate of Lakewood High School and Oberlin College. He began his writing career in the 1960s as a World War 2 historian but later found a niche writing about the Army of the Potomac in the American Civil War, and particularly its most famous commander, General George B. McClellan. His other books include Gettysburg (2003) and George B. McClellan: The Young Napoleon (1988).
February 27, 2020
Excellent book about the battle of Antietam. Sears does a nice job of summarizing the events leading up to and after the battle without making it overlong, so we get a sense of context while still jumping right into the action. This action is intense, obviously, and Sears spares no details. I felt like I was watching the battle safely from the middle of it.
If, like me, you believe the General George McClellan cost the lives of thousands of Federal soldiers and extended the war because he was too afraid to press his advantages (or attack at all in some cases), there is a lot of fodder for you here. Sears takes a very dim view of McClellan's leadership, of which I give you just one example: "Conceivably on another field on another day he might overcome his crippling caution and his distorting self-deceptions and his lack of moral courage in the heat of battle." I am in the "McClellan was terrible" camp and even I thought Sears took a lot of shots at him.
All in all a fantastic account of the bloodiest of Civil War battles.
If, like me, you believe the General George McClellan cost the lives of thousands of Federal soldiers and extended the war because he was too afraid to press his advantages (or attack at all in some cases), there is a lot of fodder for you here. Sears takes a very dim view of McClellan's leadership, of which I give you just one example: "Conceivably on another field on another day he might overcome his crippling caution and his distorting self-deceptions and his lack of moral courage in the heat of battle." I am in the "McClellan was terrible" camp and even I thought Sears took a lot of shots at him.
All in all a fantastic account of the bloodiest of Civil War battles.
August 13, 2022
I tried to find a reason to give it four stars and outside of more maps, I couldn’t really fault this book. Pretty comprehensive on the movements before the battle and the day-of.
In school, Antietam was always talked about and referenced as a Union victory. Reading more, it’s considered a draw because of the Union’s casualties including troops taken prisoner at Harpers Ferry. But I think it’s much more of a Union victory because it stunted the south’s invasion north, kept Europe as bystanders and led up to the Emancipation Proclamation.
The author also talks about the conspiracy among Union generals to remain inactive in a lead up to the armies agreeing to the own peace and maintaining slavery in addition to a coup fronted by McClellan.
In school, Antietam was always talked about and referenced as a Union victory. Reading more, it’s considered a draw because of the Union’s casualties including troops taken prisoner at Harpers Ferry. But I think it’s much more of a Union victory because it stunted the south’s invasion north, kept Europe as bystanders and led up to the Emancipation Proclamation.
The author also talks about the conspiracy among Union generals to remain inactive in a lead up to the armies agreeing to the own peace and maintaining slavery in addition to a coup fronted by McClellan.
January 28, 2018
Stephen Sears became one of my favorite Civil War authors after reading his To the Gates of Richmond. Landscape Turned Red, detailing the battle of Antietam, was equally engaging and incredibly well-researched. His unbiased accounting of actions and motives on both sides adds to his work's credibility. The accompanying maps were crucial in following the events on the battlefield and were equally detailed. Highly recommend.
February 26, 2021
A solid piece of military history that details the bloodiest battle of the Civil War and one that perhaps saved the Union, or at least showed they could stand up to Lee. It certainly stopped the Confederate incursion into Maryland, though McClellan could have achieved a heavier victory if he had pursued Lee or even committed more of his troops at critical times. I am always amazed by how soldiers could march into the face of the weaponry they had then.
January 16, 2018
Sears brings the war to life with pictures of individuals and their experiences along with the movements of regiments divisions and corps.
it's a great picture of a horrible battle but well worth the read.
My biggest complaint is that it's so very easy to lose track of who is who and whether a division is blue or gray. You have to watch very carefully to be sure who was on which side.
it's a great picture of a horrible battle but well worth the read.
My biggest complaint is that it's so very easy to lose track of who is who and whether a division is blue or gray. You have to watch very carefully to be sure who was on which side.
August 13, 2021
This book was mentioned in another book that I read. It is a great combination of explaining the general tactics and how the soldier on the ground lived. This was the last battlefield that my father and I visited on the last trip we went on together. It was nice to be able to remember the area from being then while reading the book.
January 24, 2022
I tried listening to this book which in all fairness was probably not the right thing to do in this situation. It was pretty hard to follow along without the maps that the book included. Still, that being said, I really like this author.
May 11, 2022
Excellent read
February 29, 2024
Stephen Sears provides a masterful overview of the Maryland Campaign, illustrating the tactical draw but strategic victory for the Union that was Antietam and its bloody pre- and post-campaign days. Sears comes down hard on George McClellan, a general that hesitated in saving his beloved Fifth Corps from the battle rather than, as George Meade did at Gettysburg, deploy all available Union units into the breach. One more push into the West Woods; one last charge up Cemtery Hill after crossing Middle Bridge; or one advance further from the Burnside Bridge beachhead may have sundered Lee's Army of Northern Virginia in two.
A very fine overview of the first turning point of the Civil War in both military and strategic terms.
A very fine overview of the first turning point of the Civil War in both military and strategic terms.
May 22, 2015
I grew up close to the Antietam Battlefield. I remember going there as a child and being impressed with the green fields and the impressive monuments. One summer my visiting grandfather insisting on being taken there. We could have visited any number of Civil War sites, including Gettysburg, quite easily but he wasn't interested in those places. He HAD to go to Antietam. Once we got there he insisted on visiting The Bridge. Standing in the middle of it he stared down at Antietam Creek and declared "That stream ran red with Blood." He would say no more about it. It wasn't until later that I began to suspect that his grandfather who was from Georgia might well have fought there.
I thought I knew there was all there was to know about this battle. I knew about the mysterious lost orders, the slaughter in the cornfield, the tragedy of the sunken road and the brutality that happened at "Burnside's Bridge'. I knew it was the single bloodiest day in American history. I found I had a lot to learn.
As he did with his book Gettysburg Sears goes back to the politics behind the battle. How General McClellan came to command the Army of the Potomac and why General Lee thought the time was right for an incursion into Maryland. We learn about the desperation of the Federal Troops at Harper's Ferry and how the Cavalry managed to escape. He gives proper treatment to the precursor conflict, the often overlooked Battle of South Mountain.
Horrible mistakes and misjudgments were made on both sides but there were heroic actions as well. A.P Hill marching his men at the double quick from Harper's Ferry 17 miles away not stopping to rest but going straight into the fight on empty stomachs. The Flag bearer for the New York Irish 69th defiantly waving the Emerald Green flag in the face of the enemy. If he had lived in modern times I could imagine him saying "Come at me!" The book is full of moments like this.
The results of the battle changed the tenor of the war. Lincoln seized the moment to release his Emancipation Proclamation. Foreign Powers now could not in good conscience give aid to the Confederacy. It was also the beginning of the end for Lee's Army of Northern Virginia as he began to loose troops he could not replace. It was one of the turning points of the war.
If I have any problems with the book it might be Sear's insistence on referring to McClellan as 'Little Napoleon' but judging from McClellan's own letters and the observations of other perhaps the description wasn't that far off the mark. The man thought a great deal of himself.
Great book about one terrible day.
I thought I knew there was all there was to know about this battle. I knew about the mysterious lost orders, the slaughter in the cornfield, the tragedy of the sunken road and the brutality that happened at "Burnside's Bridge'. I knew it was the single bloodiest day in American history. I found I had a lot to learn.
As he did with his book Gettysburg Sears goes back to the politics behind the battle. How General McClellan came to command the Army of the Potomac and why General Lee thought the time was right for an incursion into Maryland. We learn about the desperation of the Federal Troops at Harper's Ferry and how the Cavalry managed to escape. He gives proper treatment to the precursor conflict, the often overlooked Battle of South Mountain.
Horrible mistakes and misjudgments were made on both sides but there were heroic actions as well. A.P Hill marching his men at the double quick from Harper's Ferry 17 miles away not stopping to rest but going straight into the fight on empty stomachs. The Flag bearer for the New York Irish 69th defiantly waving the Emerald Green flag in the face of the enemy. If he had lived in modern times I could imagine him saying "Come at me!" The book is full of moments like this.
The results of the battle changed the tenor of the war. Lincoln seized the moment to release his Emancipation Proclamation. Foreign Powers now could not in good conscience give aid to the Confederacy. It was also the beginning of the end for Lee's Army of Northern Virginia as he began to loose troops he could not replace. It was one of the turning points of the war.
If I have any problems with the book it might be Sear's insistence on referring to McClellan as 'Little Napoleon' but judging from McClellan's own letters and the observations of other perhaps the description wasn't that far off the mark. The man thought a great deal of himself.
Great book about one terrible day.
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