The strategist and the soldier

From The Long Road to Antietam How the Civil War Became a Revolution 
by Richard Slotkin

In this book, both the daily, even hourly details of the approach to Antietam, and the day long battle are described with precision and thoughtfulness. By dissecting the many generals' and commanders' strategies and tactics along with their command and decision making styles, the battle lines become a visceral reality at times.

The commander's view:

...[General] Lee understood and accepted the fact that battle is chaos. The strategist does what he can to create a situation in which victory is likely and the gains of battle are commensurate with the risks. but battle is the violent collision of two highly complex human systems, driven by different impulses, organized in different ways, with different strengths and solidarities. The outcome may turn on  actions far down the chain of command, surprising local successes that boost the morale of one side and demoralize the other, shifts in momentum that produce a series of disruptive effects. Lee, like Napoleon, was a connoisseur of this chaos.

September 17
McClellan's response... was characteristic... The core of his military  doctrine was to ensure against the possibility of defeat before assuming the risks inherent in attempting to win a victory. He mistrusted the chaos and fluidity of battle, in which events could take uncontrolled direction...Lee's response to the crisis, like McClellan's was characteristic...He embraced the chaos, confident in his own ability to read the play of forces and the ability of his corps and division commanders to execute his orders with initiative, energy and good judgment...
Lincoln certainly thought McClellan mistrusted the quality of his force... By failing to demand that his army march and fight as hard as the Rebels, he implied a belief that his men as men were inferior to their enemies



The soldier's view:
The basis of battlefield tactics in the Civil War is the clash of troops formed in opposing lines of battle...the attackers advance shoulder to shoulder, the individuals in the mass feel the volume and accuracy of defensive fire, registered as noise and fury, but also by the sound of bullet impacts on their neighbors in the line, the dull thud of a body blow or the sharp crack of bone-break, and they sense the weakening of their line as comrades fall right and left...they may back away or break and run to the rear-or come to a stand and begin firing again at much closer range.

By a creek they call Antietam Sept 1862

 

Sept 1862
lyrics and melody by Tobie Hoffman July 2014

Am\ G                                                            F/E

September 1862                                          Sharpsburg, Maryland  gray and blue
Am/G                                                             F/Em
General Lee had his eye on the north          Ragged men like hungry wolves
Am\ G                                                             F/E
The Potomac river behind his back             30,000 to attack
Am /E/Am

To strike at the heart of the Union

C/G                                                                     Am/Em
Lee’s army split his secret plan               Jackson racing  from the south
F/G/Am                                                               F/G/Am
As they marched through Maryland streets     Citizens hid behind closed doors
C/G                                                                     Am/Em
Maryland My Maryland *                               Could not rouse the soldiers ardor
F/G/Am                                                                               
So they camped and waited                                             

    Em/Am
 On the ridge along Antietam

 Chorus

Am/Em                                                                                   

Some wore blue and some war gray                             

 Am/Em

 Some turned round and some would stay

Am/G/F7                                                                              
Some lived on, Many died                                                

   Em/Am

 By the creek they call Antietam

70,000 men in blue                                                        
To the Union they were true

Wait at night in the rain and heat                                

Armed with the southern strategy                

But Gen. McClellan always cautious                               

Waited 18 crucial hours

To strike at the heart of the Rebels

At first light the battle was begun                                            

Surged back and forth in early morn
15 times by 10 am

                                                      

8000 men lay wounded or dead

Generals killed                                                             

Commanders wounded

Men loading and firing , others flee                            

What were the final words they cried?

On the cornfields of Antietam

Chorus

Federal army ever stronger                             

Overtook the sunken road

They shot their prey                                         

Like sheep to slaughter

frenzy seized them as they stood
Yankees  firing on their knees                          

Bodies  piled  by 2s and 3s                                                                

At The Bloody Lane of Antietam
   

Southern line nearly severed                         

 But from the south 3000 still

Dared to march for one last battle                   

There to smash the union’s will

Burnside of the northern army
pleads for help none would come             

No ground was gained
pushed back again

Cross the bridge above Antietam

 

Chorus 2

Some wore gray and some wore blue

Some laid down and some broke through
Some lived on, Many died
By the creek they call
Antietam                                                               

The muskets silenced, the sun went down,                                        

Lees army slipped away  was gone
Half his command  in the carnage
Returned to sacred southern soil

The wounded filling every building

Where four walls and a roof were found
In the farmlands of Antietam

Lee outnumbered three to one

Braced for another days attack
Lincoln wired his commander

Destroy the rebel army now

It is not prudent to pursue
McClellan waited  stopped again
It was too late to catch  his foe
Fled  away far from Antietam

Some wore gray and some war blue

Some laid down and some broke through
Some lived on, Many died
By the creek they called Antietam

More than 20,000 men
lost their lives, lost  their limbs
On the cornfields, bridges, and the roads
one day along Antietam

Gonna lay down my sword and shield

By a creek they call Antietam 
_______________________________________________________

From our friends at Wikipedia
*"Maryland, My Maryland" is the official state song of the U.S. state of Maryland. The song is set to the tune of "Lauriger Horatius" — better known as the tune of "O Tannenbaum" — and the lyrics are from a nine-stanza poem written by James Ryder Randall (1839–1908). While the words were penned in 1861, it was not until April 29, 1939, that the state's general assembly adopted "Maryland, My Maryland" as the state song.
The song's words refer to Maryland's history and geography and specifically mentions several historical figures of importance to the state. The song calls for Maryland to fight the Union and was used across the South during the Civil War as a battle hymn.^[3] It has been called America's "most martial poem."^[4]
Occasional attempts have been made to replace it as Maryland's state song due to its origin in support for the Confederacy and lyrics that refer to President Lincoln as a "tyrant," "despot," and "Vandal," and to the Union as "Northern scum."^[5] To date all such attempts have met with failure.

Why I am a northerner- a post in progress

When my family moved from Pittsburgh Pennsylvania to Maryland my mother Sylvia said "That is as far south as I'm willing to go."  I never asked (at age 8) what that meant, or why she was averse to living in the south, but the message was still clear. We are of a different breed, so different a culture that there is a line that cannot be crossed.

Indeed at that time in 1963, the area of Virginia around Washington still had a southern atmosphere, more rural than suburban, with architecture that shown of a agricultural time i.e. plantation time. Visiting Mt. Vernon was a benign excursion to another time and culture with little awareness of the practice of owning slaves even by such iconic heroes as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.
How lovely and quaint were the herb gardens and the view from the mansion.

My family is from another era and part of the globe-Eastern Europe, so the notion of having great-relatives choosing sides in this great war is not something I have had to think about. But the very idea of slavery is abhorent, and imagining how anyone could conceive of and defend capturing human beings and dragging them by boat in chains from their nations, their families, their culture and language is one that I cannot see choosing in any era.

I learn through  my readings that many northerners were not anti slavery, but pro North. They were concerned not so much with human slavery as with industrial protection and economics. So to be a northerner at that time meant for some to be only slightly more enlightened than not. It was as brave an act then to be an outspoken abolitionist in the north as it was to be for civil rights in the south in the 20th Century.

So to be from Maryland was confusing. As it should be. Here was a  divided state , a slave state even after Lincoln's Emancipation proclamation. It is where the state song adopted some 70 years later,  sung so enthusiastically by us school children in 5th grade is actually an anti northern  song, And where Montgomery County seemed like an island of progressive wealth surrounded by backwards southern ideals even in 1964.  I used to tell the story that when George McGovern, a progressive anti war candidate ran for president, that every county in Maryland except Montgomery County voted for George Wallace, the rascist governor of Alabama. That story is grossly incorrect by 4 years, as George Wallace ran against Nixon and Humphreys in 1968 not in 1972 against McGovern. The story is totally false, but the underlying pride is evident. We were not the bigots.

Despite the mythical story, Wallace's influence in the late 20th Century according to a notation in Wikipedia was so  strong that "First Nixon, then Ronald Reagan, and finally George Herbert Walker Bush successfully adopted toned-down versions of Wallace's anti-busing, anti-federal government platform to pry low- and middle-income whites from the Democratic New Deal coalition". Dan Carter, a professor of history at Emory University in Atlanta added: "George Wallace laid the foundation for the dominance of the Republican Party in American society through the manipulation of racial and social issues in the 1960s and 1970s. He was the master teacher, and Richard Nixon and the Republican leadership that followed were his students."

I've lived in Seattle and Ohio as an adult, spent 10 months in Israel where I still have family, and travelled to many countries in Europe. I've lived in Philadelphia for 24 years, one brother has lived in California for more than 25 years, and the other lived overseas and lives in the Maryland suburbs. So, it is hard to say that we have a loyalty to a cause other than being an American.  But I still have my mother's voice in my ears that "Maryland is as far south as I am willing to live."

When Lincoln stood in the line of fire

Ft Stevens 1 and Monocacy prologue

Starting a blog post like this after a 2 days of living history, conversations at 2 connected but vastly different landscapes and narratives is a feat that ‘gives me pause’. Pause to consider the many personal stories that are arrayed on each battlefield as well as the implications of the carnage and heroism that all of these ‘sacred’ places bring to mind. Though my relatives came well after the civil war, as an avowed northerner  without history or personal family stories related to these battles, I find that being a listening post and witness is a role that is satisfying.

Ft. Stevens #1

Walking onto the small corner field that is the remnant and replica of the Ft. Stevens battlefield, I see a man dressed in khaki vest, floppy canvas hat, both covered with buttons and ribbons. He walks past me and in an instant of curiosity I ask him my, by now, standard question “What is your relationship to this event?”  He turns to face me with eager and upright attention to answer proudly ‘My uncle (great uncle?) fought at Monocacy.”

 He continues telling me that while attending the Monocacy events during the week he was asked to read some of the names of the fallen during the formal commemoration. And there was his relatives name on the list. “I got to read my relatives name,” he poured out to me almost shaking, and I, almost in tears. In fact, he told me the story two times over as if he couldn’t believe it himself. “So I had to come down here today to see where the battle ended”.

The reconstructed Ft is small lot on the corner of Piney Branch Road and 13^th Street near Georgia Ave. These are all streets and intersections that I have crossed 100s of times in my life on the way to sites in the heart of Washington only a few miles down the road. Yet, "Who knew?" (not the first or last time I will say these words) and also, why didn’t anyone ever tell us these things when we were in school?:

• That the capital was nearly breached, which could have led to a very different outcome to the war (Lincoln being defeated, a treaty with the South on their terms, foreign powers recognizing the south)

• That Lincoln was in the line of fire and his surgeon who sat 3 feet away was shot .

• That sharpshooters were in trees where the current Walter Reed hospital stands a mile away

• That Washington was the most heavily fortified city in the world at the time, yet had only the “Invalid Corps’ and mustered clerks and other office workers to defend the city.

• And that just up the road 40 miles north was a significant battle that set the stage for the skirmish at Ft. Stevens