The Maryland Campaign of September 1862

Ezra A. Carman’s Definitive Study of the Union and Confederate Armies at Antietam

Joseph Pierro

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• eBook ISBN: 9781135912390
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

Completed in the early 1900s, The Maryland Campaign of September 1862 is still the essential source for anyone seeking understanding of the bloodiest day in all of American history. As the U.S. War Department's official expert on the Battle of Antietam, Ezra Carman corresponded with and interviewed hundreds of other veterans from both sides of the conflict to produce a comprehensive history of the campaign that dashed the Confederacy's best hope for independence and ushered in the Emancipation Proclamation.

Nearly a century after its completion, Carman's manuscript has finally made its way into print, in an attractively packaged one-volume edition painstakingly edited, annotated, and indexed by Joseph Pierro. This edition, the first to publish the entire Carman manuscript, including the fifteen appendices, is designed for ease of use, with standardized punctuation and spelling, and conveniently footnoted explanations wherever necessary. The Maryland Campaign of September 1862 is a crucial document for anyone interested in delving below the surface of the military campaign that forever altered the course of American history, and is still the only complete edition of Carman's work on the market.

**Due to an unfortunate case of mistaken identity, the man currently appearing in the frontispiece of The Maryland Campaign of September, 1862 is not the actual Ezra Carman, but someone who looks remarkably similar to him. The real Mr. Carman can be found at: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/cwp2003001783/PP/. We apologize for the mistake, and will correct this error in further printings.

1

Maryland

In the early days of the War of the Rebellion, Maryland was represented by the Southern people as a weeping maiden, bound and fettered, seeking relief from the cruel fate that had deprived her of liberty and forced her to an unholy and unnatural alliance with the North. Southern orators and writers debated largely and eloquently on her wrongs, sentiment and song were invoked to save her, and General Robert E. Lee records that one of the objects of his campaign of September 1862 was, by military succor, to aid her in any efforts she might be disposed to make to recover her liberties.¹ It is well, therefore, before entering upon the narrative of the military campaign, to consider the condition of the state and see what liberties had been taken from her and wherein she had been oppressed.

Maryland was at heart a loyal state, although she had much sympathy with her Southern sisters. Her position was a peculiar one. Bounded on her entire southern border by Virginia, having the same interest in slavery, closely connected with her by business interests and family ties, she watched the course of that state with great anxiety. Slavery was the source of much of her wealth, and she had a greater financial interest at stake in the preservation of the Union, with slavery, than any other Southern state. It is estimated that the value of the slaves in the state in 1861 was fully fifty million dollars, and her proximity to free territory made them a very precarious kind of property. The largest slaveholding counties were those adjacent to Washington and in the southern part of the state. Like Virginia, a part of her territory was bordered by free states, and the free state of Pennsylvania had the same effect on Maryland that free Ohio had on western Virginia. After the secession of the cotton states, many, believing the Union hopelessly divided, favored a grand Middle Confederacy stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific, leaving out the seceded states and New England. The best men of Baltimore and of the state opposed secession; they as strongly opposed coercion. They desired to be strictly neutral. Many were ready to make common cause with the seceded states should North Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia take a position of resistance to the Federal government. Like the other border states and states north and west, a majority of her people could not and did not appreciate the impending crisis and fondly hoped that the Union might be preserved. The state had been faithful in the observance of all its constitutional obligations, was conciliatory in all its actions, and had kept aloof from the extreme schemes of the Southern leaders. It was as little disposed to take political lessons from South Carolina as from Massachusetts, and it is safe to say that four-fifths of her people regarded the action of South Carolina and other cotton states as rash and uncalled for. But they were almost unanimous against coercion.

Immediately after the election of Abraham Lincoln, Maryland governor Thomas H. Hicks² was solicited to call an extra session of the legislature to consider the condition of the country and determine what course should be taken. The secessionists had made a careful canvass and found that a majority of that body were in full sympathy with them and would act according to their dictation, could they be convened. Their intention was to have a convention similar to those by which South Carolina and other states had been declared out of the Union. Hicks well knew the designs of these men and refused to convene the legislature, again and again refusing when repeatedly urged and threatened. It was also urged upon him by those who honestly believed that Maryland, by a wise and conservative course, could control events, that she had influence with the North and South, and that this influence could be exercised to promote harmony. But the greatest pressure came from those who desired an expression of sympathy with the South, those who would have the state follow the example of South Carolina.

On the twenty-seventh of November, Hicks, in a letter to ex-governor Thomas G. Pratt³ and others, replied to these urgent appeals, declining to convene the legislature for reasons that he fully set forth. He did not consider the election of Lincoln, who was fairly and constitutionally chosen, a sufficient cause for the secession of any state, and he purposed to give the Lincoln administration proper support. He knew from personal observation that an immense majority of all parties were decidedly opposed to the assemblage of the legislature. He would at least wait until Virginia acted. He would await the action of the national executive, whose duty it was to look not to Maryland alone, but to the entire Union. He believed that to convene the legislature would have the effect to increase and revive the excitement pervading the country, then apparently on the decline.⁴

A large and influential body of the people believed in the governor and confided in his judgment. He was born and lived in a slaveholding county of the state, was himself a slave-holder, and had always identified himself with the extreme southern wing of the Whig party. In hearty sympathy with those who were defending Southern rights, he was opposed to the policy of secession and distrusted those who were leading in that direction. With some apparent inconsistencies, he was, however, a Union man, and his persistent refusal to call an extra session of the legislature at that time doubtless prevented the secession of Maryland and performed an estimable service to the Union and to the cause of humanity.

In the appointment of commissioners by the seceding states, Maryland was specially remembered. On December 19, 1860, the commissioner from Mississippi, Alexander Handy,⁵ addressed the citizens of Baltimore on the object and purposes of the secessionists.⁶ Upon his arrival in Maryland, he had asked the governor to convene the legislature for the purpose of counseling with the constituted authorities of Mississippi, as represented by himself. The very day Handy was addressing the citizens of Baltimore on the peculiar designs of the secessionists, Hicks was writing him that the state, though “unquestionably identified with the Southern States, in feeling[,] … is also conservative, and, above all things devoted to the Union of these States under the Constitution.” The people intended “to uphold that Union,” and he could not consent, “by any precipitate or revolutionary action,” to aid in its dismemberment.⁷

Handy was a native of Maryland, and his speech to the people of Baltimore on the nineteenth made a deep impression— of which those in sympathy with the South took quick advantage. They called a meeting for December 22 at the Universalist Church to “take some action in regard to convening the legislature.” The meeting was fully attended, and a free interchange of opinion resulted in the appointment of a committee to wait upon the governor. The committee discharged this duty on Christmas Eve and urged him to convene the legislature.⁸ They used taunts and threatened him. They intimated fears for his personal safety should he decline their request, said that blood would be shed and Lincoln not permitted to be inaugurated. To which, the governor responded that he was a Southern man but could not see the necessity for shedding blood or convening the legislature.

Following this there were meetings in Anne Arundel, Prince George’s, Queen Anne, St. Mary’s, Charles and other counties of the state, with resolutions demanding an extra session. Public meetings and strong resolutions were supplemented by personal appeals and social blandishments, but all to no purpose. The governor would not yield.

From Alabama came as commissioner Jabez L. M. Curry, a minister, former member of Congress, and a man of character and ability.⁹ Hicks was absent from the capital, but Curry informed him that, as a commissioner from the sovereign state of Alabama to the sovereign state of Maryland, he came to advise and consult with the governor and legislature as to what was to be done to protect the rights, interests, and honor of the slaveholding states; to secure concert and effectual cooperation between Maryland and Alabama; to “‘secure … a mutual league, united thought and counsels,’ between those whose hopes and hazards” were “alike joined in the enterprise of accomplishing deliverance from Abolition domination”; and to oppose that anti-slavery “fanaticism,” that “sentiment of the sinfulness of slavery … embedded in the Northern conscience,” that “infidel theory” corrupting “the Northern heart.” “To unite with the seceding States,” said the sanguine commissioner, “is to be their peers as confederates and have an identity of interests, protection of property and superior advantages in the contests for the markets, a monopoly of which has been enjoyed by the North. To refuse union with the seceding States is to accept inferiority, to be deprived of an outlet for surplus slaves, and to remain in a hostile Government in a hopeless minority and remediless dependence.”¹⁰

On the sixth day of January, 1861, the governor appealed to the people in these words:

I firmly believe that a division of this Government would inevitably produce civil war … We are told by the leading spirits of the South Carolina Convention, that neither the election of Mr. Lincoln nor the non-execution of the Fugitive Slave law, nor both combined, constitute their grievances. They declare that the real cause of their discontent dates as far back as 1833. Maryland, and every other State in the Union, with a united voice, then declared the cause insufficient to justify the course of South Carolina. Can it be that this people, who then unanimously supported the cause of General [Andrew] Jackson, will now yield their opinions at the bidding of modern Secessionists? … That Maryland is a conservative Southern State all know who know any thing of her people or her history. The business and agricultural classes—planters, merchants, mechanics, and laboring men—those who have a real stake in the community, who would be forced to pay the taxes and do the fighting, are the persons who should be heard in preference to excited politicians, many of whom, having nothing to lose from the destruction of the Government, may hope to derive some gain from the ruin of the State. Such men will naturally urge you to pull down the pillars of this “accursed Union,” which their allies in the North have denominated a “covenant with Hell.”

The people of Maryland, if left to themselves, would decide, with scarcely an exception, that there is nothing in the present causes of complaint to justify immediate secession; and yet, against our judgments and solemn convictions of duty, we are to be precipitated into this revolution, because South Carolina thinks differently. Are we not equals? Or shall her opinions control our actions? After we have solemnly declared for ourselves, as every man must do, are we to be forced to yield our opinions to those of another State, and thus, in effect, obey her mandates? She refuses to wait for our counsels. Are we bound to obey her commands?

The men who have embarked in this scheme to convene the Legislature will spare no pains to carry their point. The whole plan of operations in the event of assembling the Legislature is, as I have been informed, already marked out, the list of Embassadors [sic] who are to visit the other States is agreed on, and the resolutions which they hope will be passed by the Legislature, fully committing this State to secession, are said to be already prepared.

In the course of nature I cannot have long to live, and I fervently trust to be allowed to end my days a citizen of this glorious Union. But should I be compelled to witness the downfall of that Government inherited from our fathers, established, as it were, by the special favor of God, I will at least have the consolation, at my dying hour, that I neither by word or deed assisted in hastening its disruption.¹¹

The governor had a powerful supporter in the person of Henry Winter Davis, a representative in Congress from the city of Baltimore.¹² On the second of January, Davis issued a strong appeal to the voters of his district, taking ground against the calling of the legislature or the assembling of a border state convention. He denied that Maryland had been wronged by the general government and asserted that her interests were indissolubly connected with the integrity of the United States. She had not an interest that would survive the government under the Constitution. “Peaceful secession is a delusion,” said Davis,

and if you yield to the arts now employed to delude you, the soil of Maryland will be trampled by armies struggling for the national capital …

If the present government be destroyed, Maryland slaveholders lose the only guarantee for the return of their slaves. Every commercial line of communication is severed. Custom-house barriers arrest her merchants at every frontier. Her commerce on the ocean is the prey of every pirate, or the sport of every maritime power. Her great railroad loses every connection which makes it valuable …

Free trade will open every port, and cotton and woolen factories, and the iron and machine works of Maryland would be prostrate before European competition.

The hope held out to them by the secessionists that Baltimore would be the emporium of a Southern republic was a delusion too ridiculous to need refutation; nothing intended for the South would ever pass Norfolk. He opposed the calling of the legislature because the halls of legislation would immediately become the focus of revolutionary conspiracy. “Under specious pretexts, the people will be implicated, by consultations with other States, by concerted plans, by inadmissible demands, by extreme and offensive pretensions, in a deeply-laid scheme of simultaneous revolt, in the event of the inevitable failure to impose on the free States the ultimatum of the slave States. Maryland will find herself severed from more than half the States, plunged in anarchy, and wrapped in the flames of civil war, waged by her against the government in which we now glory.” In the face of such circumstances, he contended, there was no justification, no excuse, for convening the legislature. Within its constitutional powers it would do nothing, and there was nothing for it to do.

As to a meeting of the border states, Davis was utterly opposed to it; the Constitution forbade any agreement betw...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• Editor’s Note
• 1. Maryland
• 2. The Confederate Invasion of Maryland
• 3. The Confederate Army Crosses the Potomac
• 4. General McClellan and the Army of the Potomac
• 5. The Advance of the Army of the Potomac from Washington to Frederick and South Mountain
• 6. Harper’s Ferry
• 7. South Mountain (Crampton’s Gap)
• 8. South Mountain (Turner’s Gap)
• 9. From South Mountain to the Antietam
• 10. McLaws and Franklin in Pleasant Valley
• 11. The Field of Antietam
• 12. The Prelude to Antietam
• 13. The Union and Confederate Armies
• 14. The Battle on the Union Right and Confederate Left: Daybreak to 7:30 a.m.
• 15. The Battle on the Union Right and Confederate Left: 7:30 a.m. to 9:00 a.m.
• 16. The West Woods and the Dunkard Church
• 17. The Sunken Road (“Bloody Lane”)
• 18. The Dunkard Church
• 19. The Middle Bridge, the Fifth Corps, and the Advance of Pleasonton’s Cavalry Division
• 20. The Rohrbach (Burnside) Bridge
• 21. General Lee Recrosses the Potomac
• 22. Shepherdstown Ford
• 23. The Results of the Maryland Campaign
• 24. Lincoln and McClellan
• Appendix A: Organization of the Army of the Potomac in the Maryland Campaign
• Appendix B: Organization of the Army of Northern Virginia in the Maryland Campaign
• Appendix C: “My Maryland”
• Appendix D: Union Losses at Maryland Heights and Harper’s Ferry
• Appendix E: The Surrender of Harper’s Ferry
• Appendix F: Union Losses at Crampton’s Gap
• Appendix G: Confederate Losses at Crampton’s Gap
• Appendix H: Union Losses at Turner’s Gap and Fox’s Gap
• Appendix I: Confederate Losses at Turner’s Gap and Fox’s Gap
• Appendix J: Strength of the Union and Confederate Armies at Antietam
• Appendix K: The Mortal Wounding of General Mansfield
• Appendix L: Casualties in the Union and Confederate Armies at Antietam
• Appendix M: Union Losses in the Maryland Campaign
• Appendix N: Confederate Losses in the Maryland Campaign
• Appendix O: The British Perspective
• Index