Category Archives: Antietam

Antietam 160th

17 Saturday Sep 2022

Posted by in Antietam

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1864 engraving via NYPL Digital

Today is the 160th anniversary of the Battle of Antietam. I was talking to someone yesterday, a retired National Park Service ranger who worked for decades at sites here in New York City and who over his career has visited scores of NPS and other sites across the country. He and I agreed that between Sharpsburg and Gettysburg the former is the better historic site. Of course that does not mean Gettysburg is not a special place; anyone who has been to that small Pennsylvania town feels its power when there. Still, the grandeur and expanse of Antietam—at least for some—resonates more. And of course it was essentially the same men and officers who fought in both places less than a year apart. So many of them are buried here in Brooklyn not far from where I’m writing this. One sees their gravestones in Green-Wood Cemetery. Some of them were killed that September day, and others survived the battle and war and would live into the twentieth century.

It is hard to believe the sesquicentennial anniversary of the Battle of Antietam was a decade ago. It seems longer than that given all that has happened in so many areas. Intellectually I have moved on to different time periods but when all is said and done I will always be a Civil War historian. I checked the weather in Sharpsburg, Maryland this morning and it is a beautiful late summer day, with temps in the early 80s and clear skies. Alas like many I cannot be there today, but let’s pause and remember the bloodiest day in American history.

Thinking of Sharpsburg here in Brooklyn this anniversary

17 Thursday Sep 2020

Posted by in Antietam, Rutherford B. Hayes, William McKinley

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Alfred R. Waud rendering of a somewhat partially apocryphal Antietam scene

These past several days have felt increasingly like Indian summer, with cool mornings and evenings interspersed with warmish afternoons. Today, September 17, I can’t help but think of the 158th anniversary of the Battle of Antietam. The corn was tall and ready for harvest when Hooker’s First Corps came through The Cornfield at around 6:00 am with the first light. Usually on the day of the anniversary the Park Service has a number of all-day hiking tours and other events. It seems for this year they are doing a lot of virtual activities. I always get pensive around the time of the Antietam anniversary. It was the bloodiest day in American history, falls less than a week after the 9/11 commemoration, and just days before the official start of fall. Two future American presidents, Hayes and McKinley, were both there, as they had been at South Mountain.

I thought I would share another Alfred Waud image, this one too from the collection J.P Morgan bequeathed to the Library of Congress in 1919. It depicts the 14th Brooklyn, which indeed fought in The Cornfield, though I don’t think against Confederate cavalry.

Enjoy these waning days of summer, and take pause to remember the Battle of Antietam.

(image/Library of Congress)

Alfred R. Waud’s South Mountain

14 Monday Sep 2020

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Village of Boonesboro–South Mountain in the distance where Burnside fought

Today is the 158th anniversary of the Battle of South Mountain, the struggle between the Army of Northern Virginia and the Army of the Potomac during the Maryland Campaign three days prior to the Battle of Antietam. When we think of visual imagery and the American Civil War we tend to think right away of Matthew Brady and other photographers. There is good reason for that, but sketch artists like Winslow Homer and Alfred R. Waud also shaped public perception. Here we see a rendering of the village of Boonsboro drawn by Waud during the fighting at South Mountain. This appeared in the October 25, 1862 edition of Harpers Weekly. Somewhere along the way J.P Morgan purchased this drawing, which in 1919 he gave to the Library of Congress with other Civil War sketches.

(image//Library of Congress)

The 1902 Rochambeau Delegation

13 Saturday Oct 2018

Posted by in Antietam, General Grant National Memorial (NPS), Henry Cabot Lodge, Horace Porter, Monuments and Statuary, New York City, Spanish-American War, Theodore Roosevelt Jr (President), Ulysses S. Grant (General and President), Washington, D.C., William McKinley

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One of the most famous moments in American diplomatic history was the Viviani-Joffre Mission to the United States in April-May 1917. This was when the French politician René Viviani and Field Marshal Joseph Joffre, among others, came to America to discuss military and diplomatic details after the United States declared war on Germany that spring. Viviani, Joffre and officials from other Allied governments toured the entire United States for several weeks to meet the American people, many of whom, especially in the South and Midwest, were suspicious of European leaders’ intentions. Fifteen years earlier there was a lesser known diplomatic mission: the 1902 Rochambeau Delegation.

The British Museum acquired this painting of General Joseph Brugère in 1902, the same year this French military leader led a goodwill tour to the United States solidifying Franco-American relations. Many of the individuals involved would go on tour serve in the Great War.

The event was so-called because the central moment of the mission was the May 24, 1902 dedication in Washington D.C.’s Lafayette Park of a memorial to Jean-Baptiste-Donatien de Vimeur, Comte de Rochambeau, the French military leader who had fought with George Washington during the American Revolution. The early 1900s were an interesting moment in diplomatic relations. The United States had recently won the Spanish-American War and was becoming a true world power; the brutal Philippine Insurrection, the final phase in the Spanish-American War, ended on June 2, 1902. One month earlier, on May 6, General Joseph Brugère boarded Vice Admiral Ernest François Fournier’s Gaulois in Toulon and sailed for Washington. One of the driving forces of this mission was Horace Porter, the United States ambassador to France.

Porter had served under Ulysses S. Grant during the American Civil War and went on to serve in various capacities over the next several decades. He was the driving force to fund and build Grant’s Tomb, which finally came to fruition on April 27, 1897 when William McKinley dedicated his predecessor’s final resting place. Several weeks after that dedication Porter was off to Paris, where he would be President McKinley’s representative to France. Civil War veterans were still very much running American life; the president himself had been in the Battle of Antietam; his Secretary of State, John Hay, had been one of Lincoln’s personal secretaries; and right then in 1902 Secretary of War Elihu Root was putting Ambassador Porter in for the Congressional Medial of Honor for his actions at the Battle of Chickamauga.

Brugère, Fournier and a sizable contingent visited George Washington’s resting place at Mount Vernon on the afternoon of May 22 and were hosted that evening by Theodore Roosevelt at the White House. The big event came two days later when Ambassador Porter, President Roosevelt, General Brugère, Vice Admiral Fournier, scores of dignitaries, and thousands of others turned out at Lafayette Square Park for the Rochambeau statue dedication. Henry Cabot Lodge was the featured speaker. It was all a huge success.

A few days later the Brugère/Fournier contingent would be fêted across New York City. Among other things they got a look at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, dined with mayor Seth Low, and received a tour of Columbia University from college president Nicholas Murray Butler. Columbia is conveniently located next to Grant’s Tomb and on May 28 Ambassador Porter took Brugère, Fournier and the rest of the French delegates to the mausoleum that he had done so much to build. At the time the general public could not walk down to the sarcophagi as one can today. As leader of the Grant Monument Association however Porter was naturally able to take the Rochambeau delegates down the marble steps, where they all stood in hushed stillness for ten minutes. (At the time it was still only Ulysses; Julia passed away seven months later in December 1902.) After the visit, the delegation walked north of the tomb to the Claremont Inn, where several dozen people had a sumptuous meal.

(image/The British Museum)

 

 

Antietam’s 155th

17 Sunday Sep 2017

Posted by in Antietam, Governors Island

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Over the course of the day today at Governors Island, amidst the rededication of the Merle Hay monument, the author talks, and the rest of the programs, many of us noted that today is the 155th anniversary of the Battle of Antietam. It is hard to believe the sesquicentennial of that event was five years ago. While Americans were preparing for the Great War in summer 1917 they stopped to note the 55th Sharpsburg anniversary. Brooklyn held its own ceremony in Prospect Park on Saturday 15 September. As the headline notes above, there were still plenty of Grand Army Men around at this time. It is worth noting that what we now call Grand Army Plaza was still Prospect Park Plaza; the name change did not come until 1926. Some of the most prominent veterans at the 1917 turnout were Red Legged Devils from Brooklyn’s 14th Infantry Regiment. The juxtaposition of the two headlines, taken from the 16 September issue of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, reveal how the country was looking backward and forward at the same time.

(image/Brooklyn Daily Eagle)

Antietam plus 153 years

17 Thursday Sep 2015

Posted by in Antietam, Herbert Hoover

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The Cornfield at Antietam as it was in summer 2012

The Cornfield at Antietam as it was in summer 2011

I could not let the anniversary of the Battle of Antietam go unnoticed. It is one of my goals to attend a battle anniversary there sometime in the coming years. Usually we go to Gettysburg the week prior to the anniversary of that battle, intentionally avoiding the crowds of July 1-3. The Antietam remembrance seems more lowkey and doable. We have a friend who was ranger there for years before taking another ranger post in Washington D.C. He always spoke of the big crowds who show up every September 17 for the extended battlefield walks.

Antietam Day 1904: Not that many years ago the men who once fought the Army of Northern Virginia remembered their feats

Antietam Day 1904: Not that many years ago the men who once fought the Army of Northern Virginia remembered their feats

Antietam Day was a big deal here in Brooklyn for decades after the war. This is not surprising given the number of New York regiments in the Army of the Potomac. Remember that Brooklyn was its own municipality until 1898. One sees the headstone and GAR plaques of the men of the such units as the 14th Brooklyn everywhere in Green-Wood Cemetery. Prospect Park was the big gathering place for these commemorations.

The image is a little grainy but above is a shot of the event held on September 17, 1904. You can see that there were still hundreds of living veterans there to mark the occasion. Their numbers would dwindle markedly over the next decade. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle noted in 1914 that while preparations were being made for the 52nd anniversary the British, French and Germans were assembling on the Aisne for a battle that could dwarf Sharpsburg. The Prospect Park programs seem to have become more muted after that first Antietam anniversary during the Great War. This was probably a combination of weariness from the news overseas and the fact that Civil War veterans were becoming fewer in number. Who wanted to commemorate after Versailles?

The Civil War’s 150th anniversary created a surge of interest in battlefield tourism. Hopefully interest will not slow down just because the sesquicentennial has come and gone.

(image/Brooklyn Daily Eagle via newspapers.com)

 

The Civil War in my life

09 Thursday Apr 2015

Posted by in Antietam, Civil War sesquicentennial, Memory

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Longtime Strawfoot readers will recognize this post. I wrote it on September 17, 2012 for the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Antietam. I reposted it again on July 1st 2013 for the sesquicentennial of the first day’s fighting at Gettysburg. Now, for the final time, here it is on the anniversary of Appomattox. It is difficult to believe the Civil War Sesquicentennial is ending. When it began with the remembrance of John Brown’s raid in 2009 I had just gotten married and my father was still alive.

History of course is not as neat as commemorations suggest. Life just doesn’t work that way. The fighting still went on even after Lee surrendered to Grant. Joseph E. Johnston did not surrender to Sherman until April 26. Edmund Kirby Smith’s Trans-Mississippi Army finally laid down its arms on May 26. Still Lee’s army was the most significant, and logic dictates that April 9 is the day we pause and remember. I know that the blog has taken a few turns over the past four years, especially after I attended the World War One Centennial Trade Show in Washington last June. Still, the Civil War is my primary research interest and will continue so. Anyways from 2012…

Wesley Merritt's 1897 interpretation of Lee's surrender

Wesley Merritt’s 1897 interpretation of Lee’s surrender

Today is the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Antietam, the bloodiest day in American history. Last night my wife and I were watching some of the C-SPAN and other coverage, which led to a conversation about the Civil War’s role in my life. Some things have the ability to captivate us always. My list includes the Beatles, New York City, Elvis, both World Wars, Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone, Sinatra, and the American Civil War. Don’t ask me to explain; how does anyone know from where in the human imagination such interests arise? Now middle-aged, I have nonetheless reached that point where I am so removed from the events of my younger days to see where the roads turned. For me, the Civil War path has taken several twists.

The first was when I was ten and my uncle gave me a book of Matthew Brady photographs. I was too young to pick up on at the time but the book was a reprint of Benson J. Lossing’s History of the Civil War. Thankfully I was also too young to read the dense prose. If I had I might still be influenced by its early 20th century take on the War of the Rebellion. It was something like the Time-Life books about the Second World War many people had in their living rooms in the 1970s and 80s. Fun to look at, but not especially reliable. Still, the Civil War photo were captivating, especially to a latchkey kid whose parents had uprooted him from his home in Connecticut and transplanted to Florida before divorcing two years later. I lost the book over the years until seeing it again for $10 in a Border’s a few years ago. I shelled out the money but eventually gave the book away, worried about the accuracy not just of the text but even the captions on the photographs themselves. For starters, we now know that many “Brady” photos were actually taken by Alexander Gardner, Timothy H. O’Sullivan, or other members of Brady’s studio. The captions on old photographs are often wrong as well. I have read my Frassanito.

I got away from the Civil War during my high school and college years but had my interest piqued again when Ken Burns’s documentary was released in 1990. It is a dramatic film, beautifully choreographed, that inspired many of us to delve more into the literature. This in turn led me to purchase Bruce Catton’s American Heritage Picture History of the Civil War when it was re-released with updated maps, art work, and photographs in 1996. At this time I was going to graduate school and working fullltime at a large chain bookstore to make ends meet. Often I worked until midnight and came home too wound up to go to sleep immediately. I would sit at my tiny kitchen table eating my 1:00 am dinner and reading Catton’s lyrical prose. I was still too young and unaware that Catton was part of any historiographical “school.” Ironically, I never took a Civil War class in either grad or undergraduate school. This is especially unfortunate because I did my undergraduate work at the University of Houston and could have studied with Joseph Glatthaar.

The next turn came with the release of Tony Horowitz’s Confederates in the Attic in 1998. Many readers enjoyed it for its anecdotes about the levels of farbiness one finds at Civil War reenactments. What I most took from the book though was how little we know about the war, despite the tens of thousands of books written on the subject. Self serving regimental histories. Lost Cause mythology. The foggy memories of aging veterans visiting the battlefields of their youth. Flaws in the Official Records of the War of the Rebellion. It was all new to me. It was (and is) terrifying also to think that everything one knows about something could be wrong. Even worse is realizing that there might be no way ever to know the full story of something, even by extension one’s own life. The next year I visited Shiloh for the first time when I went out to visit my dad. Other than a quick one hour stop at Fredericksburg in 1997 when I got off the freeway during my move to New York, I had never visited a Civil War battlefield before. After that we visited Pea Ridge, Vicksburg, and Shiloh again. This is where I became fixated on the myths and memory of the war.

In 2008 I visited Gettysburg for the time, and the following year I went back with the woman who became my wife a few months later. That year we also went to Sharpsburg in what has become something of an annual pilgrimage. There is no substitute to walking a Civil War battlefield. On that same trip we also visited Harper’s Ferry on what was the anniversary year of John Brown’s raid. This got me thinking harder about the sesquicentennial and the opportunity it presented to think harder about American Civil War and its place in our history. I never romanticized the Civil War–and I was certainly never a Lost Causer–but I believe I think more critically and less sentimentally about that conflict than I might have when I was younger. This in turn led to another path, the one I am on now, where I started this blog to make the leap from buff to serious writer. I feel I am now finding my niche, which include the Civil War in New York, and Civil War veterans in the Gilded Age among other aspects.

In a nutshell that is the Civil War in my life. Last night, looking at the images from over the weekend on the Antietam NPS Facebook page, I couldn’t help but wonder how many of the children taken to the event by their parents will become captivated by this tragic event in our history. Some will forget almost immediately, but years from now others will look back on the commemoration of 2011-2015 as the spark that started it all.

(image/Art and Picture Collection, The New York Public Library. “The Surrender At Appomattox.” The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1897. http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47e0-ff16-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99)

One November day . . .

10 Sunday Nov 2013

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West Virginia . . . waiting fro AAA

West Virginia . . . waiting for AAA

We were halfway to Antietam yesterday, driving through West Virginia on what was a gorgeous fall day, when alas our friend’s car broke down in the middle of nowhere. The idea was to have breakfast in Shepherdstown, see the remnants of the last battle of the Maryland Campaign there by the Potomac, and then make our way to Sharpburg. Fate had other ideas, however. The most important thing is that we all made it home safely.

I promise more posts here this week.

The Civil War in my life

17 Monday Sep 2012

Posted by in Antietam, Memory

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Alexander Gardner image of Antietam’s Sunken Road

Today is the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Antietam, the bloodiest day in American history. Last night my wife and I were watching some of the C-SPAN and other coverage, which led to a conversation about the Civil War’s role in my life. Some things have the ability to captivate us always. My list includes the Beatles, New York City, Elvis, both World Wars, Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone, Sinatra, and the American Civil War. Don’t ask me to explain; how does anyone know from where in the human imagination such interests arise? Now middle-aged, I have nonetheless reached that point where I am so removed from the events of my younger days to see where the roads turned. For me, the Civil War path has taken several twists.

The first was when I was ten and my uncle gave me a book of Matthew Brady photographs. I was too young to pick up on at the time but the book was a reprint of Benson J. Lossing’s History of the Civil War. Thankfully I was also too young to read the dense prose. If I had I might still be influenced by its early 20th century take on the War of the Rebellion. It was something like the Time-Life books about the Second World War many people had in their living rooms in the 1970s and 80s. Fun to look at, but not especially reliable. Still, the Civil War photo were captivating, especially to a latchkey kid whose parents had uprooted him from his home in Connecticut and transplanted to Florida before divorcing two years later. I lost the book over the years until seeing it again for $10 in a Border’s a few years ago. I shelled out the money but eventually gave the book away, worried about the accuracy not just of the text but even the captions on the photographs themselves. For starters, we now know that many “Brady” photos were actually taken by Alexander Gardner, Timothy H. O’Sullivan, or other members of Brady’s studio. The captions on old photographs are often wrong as well. I have read my Frassanito.

I got away from the Civil War during my high school and college years but had my interest piqued again when Ken Burns’s documentary was released in 1990. It is a dramatic film, beautifully choreographed, that inspired many of us to delve more into the literature. This in turn led me to purchase Bruce Catton’s American Heritage Picture History of the Civil War when it was re-released with updated maps, art work, and photographs in 1996. At this time I was going to graduate school and working fullltime at a large chain bookstore to make ends meet. Often I worked until midnight and came home too wound up to go to sleep immediately. I would sit at my tiny kitchen table eating my 1:00 am dinner and reading Catton’s lyrical prose. I was still too young and unaware that Catton was part of any historiographical “school.” Ironically, I never took a Civil War class in either grad or undergraduate school. This is especially unfortunate because I did my undergraduate work at the University of Houston and could have studied with Joseph Glatthaar.

The next turn came with the release of Tony Horowitz’s Confederates in the Attic in 1998. Many readers enjoyed it for its anecdotes about the levels of farbiness one finds at Civil War reenactments. What I most took from the book though was how little we know about the war, despite the tens of thousands of books written on the subject. Self serving regimental histories. Lost Cause mythology. The foggy memories of aging veterans visiting the battlefields of their youth. Flaws in the Official Records of the War of the Rebellion. It was all new to me. It was (and is) terrifying also to think that everything one knows about something could be wrong. Even worse is realizing that there might be no way ever to know the full story of something, even by extension one’s own life. The next year I visited Shiloh for the first time when I went out to visit my dad. Other than a quick one hour stop at Fredericksburg in 1997 when I got off the freeway during my move to New York, I had never visited a Civil War battlefield before. After that we visited Pea Ridge, Vicksburg, and Shiloh again. This is where I became fixated on the myths and memory of the war.

In 2008 I visited Gettysburg for the time, and the following year I went back with the woman who became my wife a few months later. That year we also went to Sharpsburg in what has become something of an annual pilgrimage. There is no substitute to walking a Civil War battlefield. On that same trip we also visited Harper’s Ferry on what was the anniversary year of John Brown’s raid. This got me thinking harder about the sesquicentennial and the opportunity it presented to think harder about American Civil War and its place in our history. I never romanticized the Civil War–and I was certainly never a Lost Causer–but I believe I think more critically and less sentimentally about that conflict than I might have when I was younger. This in turn led to another path, the one I am on now, where I started this blog to make the leap from buff to serious writer. I feel I am now finding my niche, which include the Civil War in New York, and Civil War veterans in the Gilded Age among other aspects.

In a nutshell that is the Civil War in my life. Last night, looking at the images from over the weekend on the Antietam NPS Facebook page, I couldn’t help but wonder how many of the children taken to the event by their parents will become captivated by this tragic event in our history. Some will forget almost immediately, but years from now others will look back on the commemoration of 2011-2015 as the spark that started it all.

The Maryland Campaign continues

11 Tuesday Sep 2012

Posted by in Antietam, Civil War sesquicentennial, Gettysburg

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Reading is not enough when it comes to understanding the military components of our civil war. One must visit to grasp things more fully. It was not until I visited Antietam for the first time in 2009 that I realized how close it was to Harper’s Ferry, South Mountain, and other places. This changed my whole concept of the fighting in these places, especially in regards to climate, time, and topography. Visiting also taught me that to understand Gettysburg, Antietam, or any other military activity from the war one must understand the campaign, not just one battle from it. However big and dramatic these events were, they are just one piece in a larger context.

So looking forward to seeing the handwritten Emancipation Proclamation the week after next.