Customer Reviews

Guide to the Battle of Antietam

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If you are interested in the Maryland campaign of 1862, this is the book for you! It includes South Mountain, Crampton's Gap, Harpers Ferry and a good bit of detail on Shepherdstown.

Unlike the Gettysburg guide this book outlines the campaign on an "operational" as well as "tactical" level. Both of which are easy to understand and follow along if you desire to use this book as a battlefield guide.

The driving directions along with detailed maps, historical photos, and reports taken from the Official Records make this book a complete tour and reference package!

If you require an outstanding volume of work detailing nearly every aspect of the campaign, then look no further. I highly recommend this book as "must read" for anyone interested in Marse Robert's Maryland Campaign of 1862. It will also make an excellent reference tool for anyone who cannot make it to the battlefield. It brings the fields of battle to you!

These series of books from the U. S. Army War College are the best available resource for conducting ACW battlefield tours - assuming that your purpose in touring battlefields is to study and understand the applicable tactics, strategy and terrain and to develop an appreciation for the objectives and efforts of the participants. If you go to ACW battlefields to gawk and gossip as an everyday tourist then an investment in these guides is unnecessary. If you have an active interest in ACW history, military history in general or fascinating chapters in human history, then these guides are remarkable values, "Best Buys". Helpful maps illustrate troop engagements and key terrain features, excerpts from the Official Records provide first person commentary from the participants at each "Stop" on your tour and concise analysis is provided to tie the story together. Thorough but not intimidating, insightful and objective, with no deficiencies noted. This particular guide is especially insightful in that the tour includes the Battle of South Mountain preceding Antietam and includes "Stops" in backwoods areas of western Maryland and West Virginia which are otherwise unrecognized as significant to the Battle of Antietam. A great way to tour a beautiful area of our country and understand in detail a significant chapter in our history.

The Antietam battlefield guide is the second of many Civil War guidebooks and continued setting the standard started in the Gettysburg guide. The book covers the bloodiest single day battle of the American Civil War and a Battlefield Park that has suffered very little from commercialization. In addition to Antietam, South Mountain and Harpers Ferry are included. This gives you a detailed understanding of the important battles leading up to Antietam. Antietam is a confusing battle; this is not a battle history as such. My recommendation is to read Priest's book "Antietam" before visiting this field. This is one of a number of guidebooks on the battle and is an option to employing a guide or purchasing a park driving tour.
The series format is directions to a point on the field, orientation, a general lesson on what happened in your view, followed by first person accounts of the action. These guides are designed using the general staff training concept of a Staff Ride. This is when a class is taken to a historic location, discuss what happened and see how the terrain influences the event. Staff Rides are designed to be intensive "on the ground" training coupled with physical observation in the hopes students will gain experience for later use.
I am not saying this to frighten you away from this guide but to tell you this is not a walk about and look at the monuments type of guide. This guide will have several pages devoted to the action at this point. It may contain a critique of the local commander's actions with possible alternates.
My experience is that reading the book prior to my visit works best. This allows me more time observing the field and less time reading the book. Of the tour options, a professional guide is usually the best but most expensive choice. The park driving tour is the best choice for a quick trip through the field to get the kids passport stamp. This book is the best choice for a serious student of the battle looking for a detailed explanation.

I have read and participated in the AWC staff rides of the battlefields and from that light these book can be instructive at they relate to events and field conditions. They are not for the casual reader or tourist. It is essential that the reader be versed in both the theory and tactics of the time before visiting the site and that you are to read these books while standing on the actual grounds.

These books supplement case studies at the AWC in tactical and strategic thinking. Observe the battleground as a military officer would and try to put yourself in the mind of the writer. What you will be reading are the after action reports written by the officers assigned to write them, of their viewings of events on the field. Beware sometimes these reports can be self serving so take that in mind.

Reading the reports and standing on location will help to give you an incite into field situations and problems that the military officer must see, recognize and solve. One key point to remember is that of communication is not what it is today. The field of battle only existed as far as the individual officer could see. He generally knew nothing of events occuring several hundred yards away let alone a mile or so away in real time. All he knew what what was right in front of him. He never sees the big picture that today's communications can provide or seek instant clarification of orders.

With this in mind and a knowledge of the methods of Civil War fighting these books are very instructive.

Antietam featured one of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War. This is another fine work in the Army War College Guides to Civil War Battles series. I think I'm getting hooked. . . .

The norm with this series is to begin with a bit of context about the battle. Then, reports of key officers--both Blue and Gray--are presented, to provide a sense of events from the eyes of the participants themselves. Finally, a chapter that explores larger issues, in this case the logistics of battle. To complete the volume, there is the always helpful "Order of Battle" (in which the units and their commanding officers for each army are listed) and the grisly listing of casualties for both sides.

The book covers the entire campaign, by the way, not just Antietam itself. That means that we get first hand reports from South Mountain, Crampton's Gap, Harper's Ferry, Bolivar Heights, and, finally, Antietam. One problem with using official reports, of course, is that those who took part may well not take accountability for any errors that they made in command. Nonetheless, their own views as to what happened is useful in itself.

Since I was born in the Midwest, I always pay attention to troops from that region in battle. In this campaign, once again, the "Iron Brigade" catches my attention. Indeed, its performance at South Mountain, in helping the Union forces to clear the pass, led to General McClellan making a comment that produced the label "Iron Brigade." Pages 42-44 provide Gen. John Gibbons' comments (he commanded the brigade) and those of Col. Solomon Meredith, commander of the 19th Indiana regiment in the Brigade.

And on it goes, with the bloodletting at Antietam, as the two armies bled one another down. Most sanguinary. Both sides saw near successes and then near misses, as each side pounded away at the other. At the end of the day, as Burnside, unlikeliest of possible heroes, was hit hard by A. P. Hill's late arriving Confederate "Light Division." With that, both sides withdrew to lick their wounds. Shortly thereafter. Robert E. Lee began the withdrawal of the Confederate forces.

The final substantive chapter deal effectively with issues of logistics.

All in all, a fine work on a desperate struggle. If you find that battlefield reports are helpful, you will probably enjoy this work.

This book was an outstanding guide for touring the area around Harpers Ferry and Sharpsburg. Using the timetable guide as well as the driving directions I was able to poke around some of the real back roads of West Virginia and Maryland. It is very much a worth while guide for touring a fascinationg and horrific section of our country

These series of books are the best available resource for conducting ACW battlefield tours - assuming that your purpose in touring battlefields is to study and understand the applicable tactics, strategy and terrain and to develop an appreciation for the objectives and efforts of the participants. If you go to ACW battlefields to gawk and gossip as an everyday tourist then you do not need to study these guides. If you have an active interest in ACW history, military history in general or fascinating chapters in human history, then these guides are remarkable values, "Best Buys". Thorough but not intimidating, insightful and objective, with no deficiencies noted.

Luvas' book provided an excellent itinerary for those who would visit the Antietam battlefield. However, it fails to help the reader understand the context of the given part of the battle to the whole. After positioning you at strategic points he simply reprints copies of the official reports from officers involved in the components of the battle. Since many officers' reports were comprehensive reports of the entire battle, and Luvas takes only a small section of the report for a given area of the battlefield, even the reports lose the perspective of context.

Another thing missing is a comprehensive map of the battlefield with his selected stops, again helping show the context of a given part of the battle with the whole.