New--Federal Second Corps at Antietam

Unfurl Those Colors: McClellan, Sumner, and the Second Army Corps in the Antietam Campaign, Marion V. Armstrong, University of Alabama Press, index, notes, bibliography, maps, illustrations, 424 pages.

Unfurl Those Colors! examines the operational fabric of leadership
and command in the Army of the Potomac during one of the most critical campaigns and battles of the Civil War. The Battle of Antietam remains “the bloodiest single day of combat in American history” with over 5,000 killed, 20,000 wounded, and 3,000 missing. Many eminent Civil War historians consider it the turning point of the war.

As a result of the perceived Federal success at Antietam, Abraham Lincoln was able to issue the Emancipation Proclamation to make the war about ending slavery and terminating any hope of European recognition for the South. This book constitutes an operational study of the Army of the Potomac during this campaign and battle, carefully documenting the command decisions of army commander George B. McClellan and following the execution of those decisions through the corps level of command and down to the ordinary soldier in the Second Army Corps.

It reappraises the leadership and decisions of Edwin V. Sumner during the battle of Antietam as the one federal corps commander who was steadfast in carrying out McClellan’s plan of battle and effectively directed the battle on the Federal right. It details as no previous account has the fighting of the Second Army Corps at Antietam to include Sedgwick’s division in the West Woods and French’s and Richardson’s divisions at Bloody Lane.

"Unfurl Those Colors! is a very important contribution to the field of Civil War and military history. While a number of significant books have been written on the Battle of Antietam and the Maryland Campaign, none have narrowed down a particular phase as this book does.” states Ted Alexander, Chief Historian at Antietam National Battlefield Park and a Smithsonian Associates tour guide specializing in Civil War sites.

Marion V. Armstrong Jr. is a retired U.S. Army reserve officer and teaches history at colleges in middle Tennessee.

Source: text from publisher

CWL: It seems Antietam/Sharpsburg is having a good year when it comes to publishers' attention. The Maryland Campaign of September 1862: Ezra A. Carman's Definitive Study of the Union and Confederate Armies at Antietam by Joseph Pierro arrived on the bookstore shelves in late March and now Unfurl Those Colors is upon us. The summer reading stack is getting tall!

CWL --- McClellan Reflected in the Mirror of the Times

McClellan's War: The Failure of Moderation in the Struggle for the Union, Rafuse, Ethan, Indiana University Press, 525 pp., maps, illustrations, notes, index, 2005, $35.

Rafuse cites Grant as remarking during the 1870s that McClellan 'is to me one to the mysteries of the war.' Did Grant intuit that McClellan was old-fashioned and unwilling to fight a war without moderation? Possibly Grant understood McClellan to have psychological problems that rendered him ill-suited for the task at hand in 1862. Was Grant prescient regarding historian's judgement of McClellan?

Cultural environment and family environments made McClellan essentially different from both Grant and Burnside. The Market Revolution during the Age of Jackson, upward social and political mobility and post-Mexican War nationalism are elements which are present in McClellan's life, much more present than in Grant's life, and somewhat more present than in Bursides' life.

Rafuse presents these dual environments, cultural and family, as being the seed-bed for McClellan's faith in elnightened reason, critical moderation, and the rational direction of activities. An attachment to order and hierarchy and the rigorous practice of deductive reasoning from established principles to the significant details of campaigns is the hallmark of McClellan, the man and soldier. If Grant had known McClellan as thoroughly as Rafuse does, McClellan would not have been a mystery to him. Grant's cultural and family environments were very different from McClellan's. Burnside's cultural and family environments were only somewhat different from McClellan's. Though having West Point in common, upon graduation all three took different lessons away from it.

During the Winter Campaign of November 1862-January 1863, things that went wrong for Burside (besides have Franklin as a wing commander) include the over-attachment to his plans in the face change, unfamiliarity with some the established principles of warfare, and his inability to reason deductively rather than inductively. Both Rable and O'Reilly present the activities of Burnside in the light of this failure to reason deductively, which includes the ability to gather information on the enemy and assess it with an eye to changing plans.