Antietam: The End of the Overland Campaign...of 1862

   

An unknown Confederate soldier lies dead next to the recent grave of
 Lt. John A. Clark, 7th Michigan Infantry

     The Battle of Antietam signaled the end of the Civil War's first Overland Campaign. That's an intriguing thought. The first time that notion crossed my mind was while reading Joseph Harsh's Taken at the Flood. Three military campaigns--the Seven Days', Second Manassas, and Maryland campaigns--constituted the larger whole. "Each had a distinct aim," Harsh writes.

Lee did not plan them all in advance at one sitting. He did not plot his move against McClellan on the Chickahominy as the first step toward the Potomac. Nonetheless, Lee's three operations do connect to make one larger campaign. As events evolved, Lee lifted his eyes from one freed frontier to the next. One campaign grew naturally from the other, and when completed they formed an organic whole. What started as a campaign to relieve Richmond became a campaign to win the war.(1)

While Lee and the Confederate high command did not envision driving the Army of the Potomac away from Richmond and then immediately moving north into Maryland, bringing that state into the folds of the Confederacy was a goal for the southern government. However, Lee took advantages of the opportunities that were presented to him, which led to a three-month-long stretch from the end of June to September 1862 that witnessed nearly--but not entirely--constant marching and fighting.

Antietam Armament: What Firearms Did Each Army Carry in the Maryland Campaign?

   

This blown-up view of the 93rd New York Infantry taken shortly after the Maryland Campaign shows the infantrymen holding their Enfield rifled muskets (Library of Congress)

     By September 1862, both the United States and the Confederate States had one and a half years to streamline the process of arming their soldiers in the field with uniform firearms. So, on the Antietam battlefield, how many foot soldiers carried smoothbore muskets as compared to rifled firearms in each army? While the answer might seem difficult to arrive at, a survey of several sources gives us an accurate estimate.

McClellan's Guns of Position: Part 4

     An image is worth one thousand words, so the saying goes. Well, it has taken 3,684 words and numerous pictures and graphics to bring us to Part 4 (and the conclusion, sort of) of the "McClellan's Guns of Position" series. Hopefully, this series has opened readers' eyes to the importance of the guns of position at Antietam. Putting together this series has been revelatory for myself and I am walking away from it with a much greater appreciation of the role they played during the Battle of Antietam.
     When originally envisioning this series, I wanted the conclusion of it to not be filled with so many heavy-hitting statistics (that is what parts 1, 2, and 3 are for) but rather with modern pictures from the guns of position locations that drive home the points made in the first three parts. Last winter, I had the pleasure of accompanying many of Antietam Battlefield Guide friends onto the former Ecker Farm to take a gander at what those artillerists saw of the Confederate positions from September 16 to 18, 1862. That trip was the genesis of this series. And while there are many more trees crowning the Ecker Farm Ridge south of the Boonsboro Pike today than there were in 1862, the views were still spectacular.
     I will let the pictures speak for themselves.