The long road to Antietam: how the Civil War became a revolution

THE LONG ROAD TO ANTIETAM: How the Civil War Became a Revolution Richard Slotkin, Liveright Publishing Corporation New York, 2012, 478 pages, $32.95 BEYOND THE STRATEGIC premises surrounding the Battle of Antietam on 17 September 1862, eminent historian Richard Slotkin has given us an outstanding operational and tactical chronicle of warfare in the Virginia and Maryland campaigns of the American Civil War. The campaigns immediately led up to Antietam, whose significance lies not in the battle itself, "but in the campaign that produced it." Slotkin's narratives of maneuver and combat are enthralling and make up most of the book. This is no dry academic narrative. Slotkin bolsters his book with concise explanations of battlefield tactics and the pre-Antietam strategy that had been at an impasse for the Union, due in part to the vehemence of the Confederacy in their commitment to secession. Why another book on a battle covered comprehensively by other historians an untold number of times in the past? As Slotkin explains, his new study shows clearly how the Civil War was "a genuinely revolutionary crisis in American history." This was because of two monumental actions in the history of the United States: President Lincoln settled the question of civil over military authority, and the post-Antietam Emancipation Proclamation. The U.S. government went from a war of compromise and appeasement of the Confederacy to one of total victory through a strategic offensive against the South. Undeniably, "the Union could not be saved unless [Lincoln]. ... put slavery on the path to ultimate extinction." The changes wrought by the Proclamation would indeed be revolutionary, for Lincoln had "negated the fundamental law of slavery," augmenting the Proclamation through a nationwide suspension of habeas corpus that put even civilian dissenters at risk of arrest for fomenting anti-Proclamation sentiment. The effects of the Proclamation did not simply hold civil implications but national military ones as well, for it "undermined the Southern economy and social order by drawing large numbers of slaves away from their plantations." Black men were recruited into Union military forces. Integral to Slotkin's thesis is the contention between Lincoln and his top field commander, George McClellan--a political general par excellence who'd take no risks in battle if it might have adversely affected his own anti-Lincoln political goals. …