The Long Road to Antietam by Richard Slotkin

Author:Richard Slotkin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2012-06-21T16:00:00+00:00

PART FOUR

THE BATTLE OF ANTIETAM

September 16–18, 1862

CHAPTER 11

PREPARATION FOR BATTLE

THE NIGHT OF SEPTEMBER 16–17, 1862

TO HISTORIANS ARMED WITH HINDSIGHT AND A GOOD MAP IT IS easy to see how McClellan could have ravaged or even destroyed the Army of Northern Virginia on either the sixteenth or the seventeenth of September. McClellan’s refusal to attempt such a battle on September 16 can legitimately be blamed on his habitual excess of caution and his egregious overestimate of enemy strength. Yet the most puzzling aspect of his decision making is not his hesitation to attack on the sixteenth but his determination to attack the very next day. He cannot have doubted that the force at Sharpsburg would be reinforced on the sixteenth and would therefore be stronger when he finally moved against it. He still believed that Lee’s army, when united, would be at least equal if not superior in strength to his own. Nevertheless, when he telegraphed Halleck of his intention to attack “as soon as the situation of the enemy is developed,” he made no mention of fearful odds, made no attempt to hedge his responsibility for the ensuing result. This was not the McClellan of the Peninsula campaign, forever putting off the day of battle until his “outnumbered” army could be reinforced, his mood wildly swinging between predictions of triumph and hysterical prophecies of defeat for which he must not be blamed.1

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