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20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A major work published at last, April 22, 2008
This review is from: The Maryland Campaign of September 1862: Ezra A. Carman's Definitive Study of the Union and Confederate Armies at Antietam (Hardcover)
We have been very lucky to have two important manuscripts published in the last year. First, Savas Beatie published the Cunningham dissertation as "Shiloh and the Western Campaign of 1862" in 2007. Now, Routledge brings us the Ezra Carman manuscript on Antietam. These happy events are an opportunity to improve our scholarship on two important and often over looked battles.
Ezra Ayers Carman led the 13th New Jersey, Third Brigade, First Division, Twelfth Corps on September 17, 1862, fighting in the area of the Dunkard Church. After the war, he held a number of government position and was active in veteran's organizations. He maintained a lifelong interest in Antietam and in 1894 received an appointment as Historical Expert to that battlefield's board. His mission was to gather and coordinate as many firsthand accounts as possible. He directed the writing of the historical markers and is responsible for the Antietam maps in the Atlas of the Battlefield of Antietam. He died in 1909, leaving behind a hand written manuscript covering his research and understanding of the campaign and battle. This manuscript is one of the foundation documents used in every book on the battle but, until now, was never available to the public.
This is not a "my experiences at Antietam" book! This is a detailed, comprehensive campaign study of 24 chapters with extensive documentation and footnotes. Supplementing this is 15 appendices covering everything from army organization to the British perspective on the battle. While written 100 years ago, the author did a modern campaign study including national and international political considerations in addition to detailed battle studies.
The editor has maintained the tempo and feel of Carman's writing. While cleaning up the worst of the grammar, he did not modernize the prose. This decision, keeps both the immediacy and feel of 19th Century military history. Some may object to this but I feel it is an important addition, reminding me that this is not a third or fourth person account.
This is a LARGE book! Each page is about half again the size of a standard book and you will want a place to lay it flat for reading. There are no maps. The author assumes the reader would have access to an Atlas of the Battlefield of Antietam and did not include any. The editor has respected this and published without maps. I use my Trailhead Graphics Antietam National Battlefield map while reading to orientate me and keep the action is perspective. This is an invaluable reference work and a major improvement to my Civil War library.
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14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
THE foundation of Antietam studies, May 3, 2008
This review is from: The Maryland Campaign of September 1862: Ezra A. Carman's Definitive Study of the Union and Confederate Armies at Antietam (Hardcover)
When the U.S. Government undertook in the late 19th century to commemorate the September 17, 1862, battlefield of Antietam, Union veteran Ezra A. Carman was selected to serve as the governing board's "historical expert." Through countless interviews and exchanges of correspondence with veterans of both sides, supplemented by all the accounts of the battle that had been published up to that time, Carman crafted the government's official understanding of what remains the bloodiest single-day battle in all of American history. He oversaw the placement of and wrote the text for hundreds of cast iron markers (still extant today), supervised the construction of a superb multi-plate atlas of the battle, and crafted a never published, 1,400 page history of the entire campaign.
Carman's role in the subsequent development of historical interpretation of this battle and the resultant literature cannot be overstated. Every historian who subsequently worked in the field - consciously or not - has been to some degree influenced by Carman's initial efforts, for his labors not only shaped the physical space of today's Antietam National Battlefield but also provided the template for all subsequent interpretation by first the War Department and then by the National Park Service (where it still forms the core of the interpretive model). Further, his unpublished manuscript has been used a principal source by the authors of every major history of the campaign and battle published in the 20th century: Murfin's Gleam of Bayonets, Sears's Landscape Turned Red, Harsh's Taken at the Flood, etc.
But using this resource has always been difficult - until now! The physical manuscript resides in the Library of Congress, where access is almost always restricted to the microfilm. (And if you've ever tried to read 1,400 handwritten pages on a microfilm reader, you know what a chore that can be.) Although it covers everything from politics to logistics to international diplomacy to political economy to civil-military relations IN ADDITION to providing a comprehensive strategic, operational, AND tactical account of the two-week campaign (including full treatments of the battles at South Mountain, Harper's Ferry, and Shepherdstown Ford) - the original work contained no index of any sort, nor in many cases even the most rudimentary of citations for its hundreds of sources.
Joseph Pierro has corrected these many obstacles, making this seminal yet underutilized resource available and accessible to scholars and Civil War enthusiasts alike. He spent some years tracking down and providing - in complete footnotes at the bottom of each pages - citations for hundreds of passages, allowing future users of the Carman manuscript to evaluate and return to Carman's OWN sources - including many of his never published letters from veterans that reside in various repositories.) He also provided a deft yet much needed polish of professional copyediting to Carman's sometimes clunky, occasionally bewildering sentences structure. The result is a major addition to the literature that stands in equal measure as reference work and as narrative history.
By its very nature, this is NOT intended as a work for beginners. (The closest comparison I can make is to John Bigelow's The Campaign of Chancellorsville - written around the same period.) At nearly half a million words, the sheer volume of information will overwhelm anyone without a prior base of knowledge. But for anyone researching ANY topic related to the 1862 Maryland campaign, or for those buffs who want to go beyond the broad strokes of the action, this long-needed contribution to Civil War history is a must have.
It took a century to get here, but the result was worth the wait.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Must Have Book for the Maryland Campaign, March 16, 2009
This review is from: The Maryland Campaign of September 1862: Ezra A. Carman's Definitive Study of the Union and Confederate Armies at Antietam (Hardcover)
This book is long-awaited good news for students of the Battle of Antietam and Confederate General Robert E. Lee's Maryland Campaign of September 1862. Carman was a participant in the Battle of Antietam as a colonel commanding the 13th New Jersey. He also was the long-term historian serving on the Antietam National Battlefield Board so he was able to tour the various battlefields with veterans and exchange hundreds of letters with them as well as interview residents.
Editor Pierro helps the modern reader by addressing problems regarding Carman's poor writing skills. Without diminishing Carman's meaning, Pierro standardized spelling and punctuation as well as applying modern editing techniques to this previously unedited manuscript. He also corrected Carman's obvious mistakes. While Pierro tried to track down all of Carman's references, some proved elusive since Carman sometimes did not cite his sources or described them only generally.
Pierro's very detailed, extensive index of Carman's manuscript makes researching this large volume easy. Fifteen appendices include details of the organization and strengths of the two armies, casualties in the various battles making up the campaign, the British perspective, the controversial surrender of Harper's Ferry, and the mortal wounding of Union Gen. Joseph K.F. Mansfield. Pierro made these appendices from tables and lists Carman had scattered throughout his 1,400 page manuscript in his successful effort to make the book more readable.
Pierro's use of footnotes must be applauded. This allows the reader to quickly peruse the source of information at the bottom of the page or to find clarification of the source. I found the absence of a bibliography disappointing. The editor explains that Carman did not make one but Pierro helpfully switches back from short-title to full citations in footnotes at the start of each new chapter. He checked and cited only references which probably would have been available to Carman.
Readers of this book must know that there are no maps. This is because the fourteen Carman-Cope maps of Antietam are very large and this size would have turned this book into a giant, coffee table book; as it is, the book is very large not suitable for bedtime reading. I would have preferred a smaller format. The maps are readily available on the web from the Library of Congress or commercially.
As a reviewer already noted, this should not be the first book for someone wishing to know about this campaign. Perhaps that book would be Stephen Sear's "Landscape Turned Red," or James V. Murfin's "The Gleam of Bayonets." Joseph L. Harsh's trilogy including "Taken at the Flood" I would then suggest to those bitten by the Antietam bug. Finally, Carman could be read to appreciate fully what he offers.
Pierro has taken the essential first step by making Carman's unique and comprehensive manuscript available to the general public. What is needed now is a book which dissects Carman's effort thoroughly and evaluates his writing from an historical perspective pointing out his personal biases as well as taking advantage of research and writing done since Carman wrote his tome.
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