Antietam campaign

Antietam campaign , Sept., 1862, of the Civil War. After the second battle of Bull Run , Gen. Robert E. Lee crossed the Potomac to invade Maryland and Pennsylvania. At Frederick, Md., he divided (Sept. 10) his army, sending Stonewall Jackson to capture the large Union garrison at Harpers Ferry and thus clear his communications through the Shenandoah valley. With the remainder, Lee marched NW toward Hagerstown. Gen. George B. McClellan learned of this division of forces and moved to attack. In the battle on South Mt. (the Blue Ridge N of the Potomac, 12 mi/19 km W of Frederick) on Sept. 14, 1862, McClellan defeated Lee's rear guard and took the passes of that range. Lee then fell back to Sharpsburg (c.9 mi/14.5 km W of South Mt.), where his position lay behind Antietam Creek. On Sept. 15 the Harpers Ferry garrison capitulated to Jackson, who, with part of his command, joined Lee before McClellan attacked. The battle of Antietam (or Sharpsburg) opened on the morning of Sept. 17. Early assaults on Lee's left were bloody but indecisive, and McClellan failed to press the slight Union advantage with his available reserves. In the afternoon Burnside's corps crossed the Antietam over the bridge on Lee's right and drove the Confederates back, but A. P. Hill's division arrived from Harpers Ferry and repulsed the attack. The battle was not renewed. On Sept. 18-19, Lee recrossed the Potomac into Virginia unhindered. The fighting at Antietam was so fierce that Sept. 17, 1862, is said to have been the bloodiest single day of the war with some 23,000 dead and wounded, evenly divided between the sides. It was a Union victory only in the sense that Lee's invasion was stopped. McClellan has been blamed for not pursuing Lee with his superior forces. The scene of the battle of Antietam has been set aside as a national battlefield (est. 1890; see National Parks and Monuments , table). The battle influenced Lincoln's decisions to remove McClellan and to deliver a preliminary Emancipation Proclamation.

Bibliography: See K. P. Williams, Lincoln Finds a General (Vol. II, 1950); J. V. Murfin, The Gleam of Bayonets (1965); W. A. Frassunito, Antietam: The Photographic Legacy of America's Bloodiest Day (1978); S. W. Sears, Landscape Turned Red (1988).

Maryland Campaign also called the Antietam Campaign Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee's attempted invasion of Virginia in September 1862, in which his forces captured the Union garrison at Harpers Ferry, clearing communications in the Shenandoah Valley, but were defeated at South Mountain and Antietam.

Antietam, Battle of (1862).In the late summer of 1862, as the Civil War raged on, simultaneous Confederate invasions of Kentucky and Maryland led England's leaders to consider recognizing the independence of the Confederate States of America. Invading Maryland, Robert E. Lee divided his forty thousand–man army into four parts to capture Harpers Ferry, Virginia, held by Union forces. After Union General George B. McClellan, commanding 87,000 soldiers, cautiously probed the Confederate position at South Mountain on 14 September, Lee collected most of his army along the banks of Antietam Creek, near Sharpsburg, Maryland.

The battle of Antietam commenced on 17 September when Federal troops began a series of uncoordinated attacks against the Confederate left. By late morning the Federal attack had shifted to the Confederate center. Here the Confederates took cover in a sunken farm road, later known as “Bloody Lane.” By midafternoon, the battle had shifted to the Confederate right. After taking Rohrbach or “Burnside's” bridge, the Federals advanced toward Sharpsburg. Only the timely arrival of Ambrose Powell Hill's Confederates from Harpers Ferry saved the rebel army's line of retreat. The Confederates abandoned the field on the 18th.

The date 17 September 1862 has the dubious distinction of being the bloodiest day of the Civil War, indeed, of all American history; total casualties amounted to 22,719 killed, wounded, or missing. In the aftermath of the battle of Antietam, England abandoned its consideration of Confederate independence. Following the battle, Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed all slaves in areas of rebellion as of 1 January 1863. What had begun as a war for the Union now became a war for freedom.

Bibliography

Stephen W. Sears , Landscape Turned Red: The Battle of Antietam, 1983.
Gary W. Gallagher, ed., Antietam: Essays on the 1862 Maryland Campaign, 1989.

Jonathan M. Berkey