A Day In September is an account and an analysis of America’s bloodiest day of warfare, September 17, 1862, when the Army of Northern Virginia and the Army of the Potomac clashed along the banks of Antietam Creek near the town of Sharpsburg, Maryland.  Drawn extensively from accounts, letters and diaries of participants, each chapter’s subtitle is its prominent character: Who Would Be A Soldier, Robert E. Lee; A Problem of Engineering, George B. McClellan; The Assault Heroic, Volunteer BrigadierJacob Cox of Ohio; Organizing For Carnage, the Union’s Jonathan Letterman, M.D.; Passion and Irony, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.; War At The Operational Level, James Longstreet; Laid In Our Dooryards, Photographer Alexander Gardner;  Woman’s Work, Clara Barton and Emancipation, Abraham Lincoln.   The text is beneficially supplemented by maps, photos, an index and extensive bibliography. Author Stephen Budiansky begins with biographical introductions to the primary generals, Robert E. Lee and George B. McClellan followed by accounts of organization for the battle, the medical corps, hour-by-hour accounts of the battle itself and finally, the changes that flowed in its wake.   The contribution of this work to the Antietam canon is found in its subtitle, The World It Left Behind. This is the story, not only of a battle, but its lasting impact. 

This work sheds insights into Lee’s character and background I had not discerned from other reading, extensive though it be.  His devotion to the Army is presented as based, not in martial ardor, but in the alternative it offered to a younger son of limited means seeking to avoid domination by an overbearing father-in-law.  A quote during his service as superintendent of West Point is telling. “I can advise no young man to enter the Army.  The same application, the same self-denial the same endurance, in any other profession will advance him farther and faster.”  For himself, “The more comfortably I am fixed in the Army, the less likely I shall be to leave it.” 

Lee’s background having been presented, the text digresses into a study of the science of warfare, drawing on West Point engineering professor, David Hart Mahan, and French theorist Henri Jomini, before following Lee to the brink of the invasion of Maryland. 

The focus shifts to George B. McClellan, a West Point graduate who had two horses shot out from under him in Mexico and served as a railroad executive before rejoining the Army and assuming command of the Army of the Potomac.  Despite building boats too large for locks through which they must pass and failing on the Peninsula, McClellan still thought himself th b“ chosen instrument to carry out his (God’s) schemes” while Lincoln was resigned to “use the tools we have.” 

The characters having been introduced, the narrative flows into the battle and the plight of the wounded. Mars’ tales are told and men’s transformation from idealists to hardened soldiers are chronicled by the literati among their number, in this case prominently, Holmes, Ambrose Bierce and William Dean Howell.  Step-by-step military operations of both sides are examined.  Long before television brought war into living rooms, photographs carried its images far from the battlefield.  Note the haunting picture of the beautiful, majestic, but slain horse. The nurse’s work launched Barton’s reputation as “Angel of the Battlefield” that would make her a symbol of and spokeswoman for all who cared for those who bore the battle.  As war is too important to be left to the generals, the politicians played their roles through oversight and enunciating the causes for which the war was fought. 

The fighting ends, but memory endures in the lives its warriors.  It echoed in strife over military cemeteries, veterans’ organizations, battlefield preservation and the lessons it teaches. 

War History Network members will appreciate “A Day In September” not only for its depiction of the battle, but for its placement of Antietam in the evolution of the Civil War: how soldiers and armies got there, what they did and how Antietam changed them and the armies, nation and the world  it left behind.

Pick up a copy on Amazon here.