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Book provides new understanding of the Antietam Campaign Book provides new understanding of the Antietam Campaign"Unfurl Those Colors! Men and women who enter public life, as we are finding out once again in this election year, find themselves for not only the moment but oftentimes for a very long while afterwards viewed via the looking glass of history. Their faults, their measures at triumph, and their actions in general are written about and considered for years and sometimes their efforts over a short span of time
For Major General Edwin Vose Sumner, his actions at the Battle of Antietam in the Civil War have long been considered poor to the point of bringing about many of the Union losses at this bloody conflict ? a battle where more American lives were lost and more were wounded than in any other single day of fighting in the history of the United States. In "Unfurl Those Colors!", retired Army officer and historian Marion V. Armstrong, Jr. tackles the complex nature of Sumner's command and the oversight of his own commander, Major General George B. McClellan over the Army of the Potomac. In doing so, Armstrong takes on the task of providing a more balanced portrait of Sumner and McClellan both. Sumner was up in years already when he was given his command of the Second Corps under McClellan despite McClellan's own distrust of Sumner and fear that the older gentleman who had just been promoted to rank of major general (two-star rank) was unfit to command such a large number of men in such a critical time as the Maryland Campaign. A poor performance in the Battle of Williamsburg against the Confederate forces under Lieutenant General James Longstreet brought McClellan to believe that Sumner was perhaps a fine organizer of men but not a true leader; oddly, President Lincoln himself held the very same opinion of McClellan despite selecting him for command of the Army of the Potomac. (Later, after Antietam, both McClellan and Sumner were replaced of their respective commands and Sumner's replacement, Major General Darius Couch, proved himself a fine leader yet could not get along with Major General Joseph Hooker who led the Army of the Potomac at the time and thus Sumner resigned his command.) Sumner was, mainly by chance, stuck with some of the toughest choices to make concerning the Maryland Campaign and the Battle of Antietam. When we stop and consider how communications worked at the time of the Civil War between military leaders, we have to realize that unlike today or even in World War II telecommunications and the like were not possible and most important communications resulted in generals or at least their agents meeting with each other in person. The Confederate invasion of Maryland left Washington wondering the exact purpose of their actions were and how best to counter the Rebels. Sumner was given few exact orders and, as Armstrong notes and demonstrates in this book, his tactical planning was probably as strong as it could have been given the circumstances. McClellan for his part was stuck with both the mission of rousting the Rebels out of Maryland with the least damage possible and also protecting Washington itself from a possible attack. The relationship in terms of distance and geography between Washington and Richmond presented alarming tactical challenges for both Union and Confederate leaders. President Lincoln, though now viewed as one of the nation's greatest presidents, was at the time mulling over a variety of political and military actions and seemingly not very certain of any of these, often leaving his generals at a loss and unable to take swift action. President Jefferson Davis and his top general, Robert E. Lee, on the other hand, had conducted a more masterful thrust into Federal territory and General Stonewall Jackson's actions during 1862 had surprisingly countered a far stronger Federal force and left oppurtunities open for further Confederate advances. Communications were at best confusing given the comings and goings of armies and of various commanders and the vast geographical span covered by their marches. Marion Armstrong has studied Antietam with an Army officer's keen eye for details of the choices generals made and moreover, the daily life of the common Yank or Rebel as battles unfolded and the campaign moved forward. He focuses on McClellan and Sumner but despite this (and the rather dry title of his book), he offers plenty about Antietam in general and provides an engaging narrative very far from the dry approach one would expect of a work that sounds like an academic dissertation in title alone. Working mainly from primary sources and careful readings of the works of other historians, Armstrong comes to his own conclusions but is always ready to support these with comprehensive and valid primary data. The publication quality of the book is in keeping with what we would expect from a major univeristy press and the maps included are frequent and of high enough resolution and quality to provide a good basis for the geographical movements of the corps involved. However, for the reader with no experience with standard military maps, these charts may seem somewhat confusing and Armstrong has not gone to lengths to explain them, either. In fact, much of the book reads as if directed towards a reader with a strong military background, though perhaps this is only fair given that this is a study of two commanding generals and one specific campaign. Still, while Armstrong's research is top-notch, his writing is not quite on par with recent works on the Civil War by Peter Cozzens or Drew Gilpin Faust. Overall though, the narrative flows fine and keeps the reader's interest up. One other complaint I must voice about this book though is the bibliography: in a work where research is of such quality and the conclusions reached by the author contest those by earlier writers, it seems essential to have very clear and complete notes and references at hand. While Armstrong's notes are overall very good, at times the bibliography seems incomplete: in example, Joseph Harsh's book "Taken at the Flood" is mentioned in the text and thus in a note, but not listed in the bibliography. Therefore, only the author's name and the book's title is ever made availible for the reader who desires to consult this work. In our contemporary age of Google and Amazon.com that's really enough information to find Harsh's book, but it bucks against the standards of academic writing and when Armstrong calls Harsh's work "masterly" yet omits it from his own book's bibliography and I have to wonder why. There were other small errors in the notes and bibliography, also, and it just seemed that the wealth of reseaerch behind this book could have been presented to the reader in a better manner. Despite these minor misgivings, Marion V. Armstrong has in this volume presented novel arguments towards why generals Sumner and McClellan did not deserve much of the blame both faced in their own time and on the pages of history. In doing so, Armstrong also presents a fresh and detailed overview of the Antietam Campaign that is a worthy new study of this important aspect of the Civil War. Armstrong's take on battlefield operattions and the movements of various corps through the tangled geography of Maryland and Virginia is first-rate and shows the profits of astute research and a ready understanding of period military operations. For anyone interested in Antietam, this book is not only a fine resource but really quite essential to better understanding the Civil War.
MIKE WALKER is a writer and journalist based in Gainesville, Florida. He writes for this and other news media about the Civil War, Southern history, ecology, and natural history. He may be reached via email at: cloudrace@prontomail.com |
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