Crossroads of Freedom: Antietam, The Battle that Changed the Course of the Civil War - Book Review

Parameters, Winter, 2003 by Samuel Watson

By James M. McPherson. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. 203 pages. $26.00.

To most people the battle of Antietam is an example of the hesitancy that got George McClellan fired six weeks afterward. To some students of the Civil War it is the battle that permitted the promulgation of the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation (22 September 1862). To many more (judging by personal conversations) it was a tactical draw, noteworthy primarily for being the bloodiest single day in American history. For some it is an example of Robert E. Lee's ability to hold off greatly superior forces; for others, an example of Lee's confidence and willingness to take casualties, perhaps unwisely given the danger his army faced that day;

To James McPherson, the nation's most eminent scholar of the Civil War, it is much more. As his textbook Ordeal by Fire (3d ed.; Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2001) indicates, it was the "first turning point" of the war, a battle whose political and diplomatic consequences far outweighed those around the Bloody Lane. This is not, therefore, a detailed battle narrative, for which readers should still turn to Stephen Sears' Landscape Turned Red (New York: Ticknor and Fields, 1983) or John Michael Priest's microstudy Antietam: The Soldiers "Battle (Shippensburg, Pa.: White Mane, 1989). It is, rather, a comprehensive account of politics, war aims, national and military strategy, and their interaction with public opinion: the story of two nations at war, of national moods, and of the influence of military action on those moods through the first two years of the war. Causally, the emphasis is on expectations, perceptions, and the demand for momentum (making a stimulating comparison as I read this book during the first days of Operation Iraqi Freedom). Its best quality is its integrated treatment of political, military, diplomatic, and social-cultural history, particularly through the many quotations from primary sources, which give a strong sense of the variation, shifts, and fluctuations in national moods.

Militarily, McPherson provides little relief to admirers of McClellan, observing that "he would take no initiative without 'absolute assurance of success'--which rarely if ever exists in any human endeavor, much less in war." Yet he also concludes that, despite the general's hatred for those in command over him, "nothing in McClellan's tenure of command became him like the leaving of it," as he discouraged talk of military coups and attempted to buoy support for his successor. Lee, on the other hand, was unable to resume the offensive (or "offensive-defensive") strategy he had begun in the Seven Days' Battles for eight months.

The Union failed to take advantage of Lee's losses, minimizing the operational consequences of the battle, and this hurt public support for the administration in the North. Yet McPherson points out that Republican losses in the fall elections were far fewer than anticipated, that they gained five Senate seats (making a two-thirds majority there), and were the first administration party in a generation not to lose control of the House in the mid-term elections. He argues persuasively that the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, followed ever more decisively by a shift in national war aims and policy in favor of emancipation and some degree of equality--particularly in the employment of African-American troops in combat--made European recognition of the Confederacy impossible. While I have long doubted that recognition would have led to armed intervention, of any real change in the course of the war, many Confederates certainly looked to recognition as crucial to their independence, and Antietam frustrated those hopes. In effect, Antietam rather than Gettysburg was the "high water mark of the Confederacy." In emphasizing the question of recognition, McPherson also reminds us just how widespread antagonism toward republican institutions was among European government elites, who were engaged in their own imperial ventures and hoped to contain the growth of American power, and that European support for the Confederacy had nothing to do with states' rights or liberty, and everything to do with an abiding hatred of democracy. Fortunately, European public opinion was much more sympathetic to the cause of freedom.

McPherson's Antietam will enlighten military and civilian readers at all levels. At only 150 pages of text, it can easily be assigned at any level of professional education, and its many choice quotations will be of tremendous value for the instructor or staff ride leader. Above all, Antietam provides a balanced, integrated account of the links between all the levels of war--between public opinion, objectives, and action--reminding us both of the contingencies that affect human affairs and the need for determined leadership to work through those contingencies.

Dr. Samuel Watson, Assistant Professor, Department of History, US Military Academy.