THE FIRST VOLUME of D. Scott Hartwig’s two-part chronicle of the September 1862 Maryland Campaign, To Antietam Creek, was published in October 2012. With Hartwig’s long-awaited second volume—‘I Dread the Thought of the Place’: The Battle of Antietam and the End of the Maryland Campaign—now out, one might think the accomplished Civil War historian would be ready for a respite of some sort. The September 17, 1862, clash between Robert E. Lee’s and George B. McClellan’s armies at Sharpsburg, Md., remains America’s bloodiest single day, and Hartwig provides here a remarkably intense, blow-by-blow study of a battle that produced more than 23,000 total casualties and forever changed the divided nation’s future. He recently sat down with Civil War Times for an exclusive discussion of his landmark study.
You of course established yourself as supervisory park historian at Gettysburg National Military Park? What was your inspiration for such a full-fledged study of the Maryland Campaign?
Several reasons. I never forgot Bruce Catton’s treatment of Antietam in , and the battle had long intrigued me. When I became interested in writing this, there were only two real books on the and Jim Murfin’s . Compared to Gettysburg, for such a major battle, Antietam was very lightly covered. That has since changed, but when I first started it was true.
